Unida Place - www.unidaplace.com

I have had the worst experience with UNIDAPLACE.

They are extremely friendly before signing the contract. Once you've sign the contract, be prepared to spend the worst year of your life !

It would take hours to describe all the bad things that happened during my year in a UNIDAPLACE flat, but I can just give a few examples :

- in the middle of the winter, their inefficient handyman came to change something about the gas meter. After a few hours, it stopped working and we had to wait 5 days to have it working again. So imagine it was snowing outside : 5 days with no hot water, and no hit !! It was aweful

- if you are one day late for paying your rent, they will charge you. They won't tell you anything but they won't forget and take it out of your deposit

- they say that a cleaning lady come every 2 weeks. this is not true. That poor girl they hire has too many flats to clean and cannot possibly clean every flat every 2 weeks. Twice we had no cleaning lady for 8 weeks !!

- they say they pay for internet but if there is any problem, they will not bother to do anything for you. We didn't have internet for 2 months !!!

- the radiators in the main areas didn't work properly. They always said they would repair it but they never did.

- the buzzer (to let people in downstairs) didn't work when I moved in. I asked for it to be repaired, and they NEVER did anything. We were on the 4th floor with no elevator. Each time I had a friend over, I had to go downstairs to open the door after they called me. And even worst : when I had a delivery, I had to wait outside for the postman or the delivery man to come, otherwise, no way to reach me.

- my window was broken. They had it repaired. But obviously the guys who came to repair it were not very efficient because the window didn't close properly. I asked them to repair it again but they NEVER did anything. I had to spend the whole winter with a window slightly opened. What did they do about that ? They gave me pillows to stop the cold to enter from the window !!!!

AND they say that you cannot ask for your deposit back 28 days after you moved away. It's been 2 months now. They keep saying they will do it very soon, or keep saying that the woman who takes care of this is not in the office at the moment. They owe me more than £1000.

The guy who owns the agency isn't honnest at tall and all his employees follow his instructions. He isn't even 30 year old. He rips off all his costumer and especially foreigners who come to London and don't know anything about the city.

MY ADVICE : RUN AWAY , or you will REGRET IT !

I always been pretty satisfied with Unidaplace. It's an agency, so of course they are here to make money, but they are pretty friendly and always answer your emails

I recently had to move from London after 6 months in the flat. Because I signed for a 12-month lease, I had to find a replacement. I followed their instructions and found the perfect candidate who signed the lease and paid the fees. Two days before he was supposed to arrive, the agency sent me an email telling me that the landlord wanted the flat back.

I asked them if it would affect my deposit. they say that it did not, and that the money would be put on my bank account very shortly.

They sent me the check out statement that I confirmed, I sent my bank details, so the payment could be made. It has now been 5 weeks that I confirmed the check out statement and I never had my money back. I send them emails every week and they tell me that they will chase the payment and do everything they can, but they never do.

I am still waiting for the 620 pounds that I paid and that I never got back !

Was not told of the admin fees (£200) and key deposit (£50)until after having agreed to take the place.

After having paid £300 to reserve the flat, while reading the contract I noticed I wasn't allowed to have people sleeping around at mine - i could get evicted if i didn't warn unida place and if i didn't pay a£15 charge for the extra person PER NIGHT...

Shambolic!!!

The experience of dealing with them was a nightmare. There were many hidden charges that were not mentioned ANYWHERE in the lease agreement. These guys hold you ransom with the deposit money, and they

are out to scam individuals who are unfamiliar with the city or need a place urgently. When issues arise in the apartment, they take a long time to revert and the problem is seldom fixed. There really isn't much to say here. Avoid at all cost!!!

They wanted us to pay for the debts of the former flatmates including the gas setup! Thank god I always check everything meticulously so I asked the agent at Unida Place for more detailed bills. She would take so long to send me the bills that the direct debit had already been made so my money had already been deducted and I couldn't get it back. She wouldn't agree to compensate the next month's bill and she would even charge me £12 extra each month for asking for the bills!

A few weeks later the heating stopped working and we called Unida Place to get it fixed. At the end of the month we where charged more than usual. When we asked why, Unida Place said that it wasn't our fault but that they charged us for the paperwork we made them do to bring someone in to fix it!!!

There where so many more dodgy things with this agency... I even contacted the Council to ask their opinion and they told me to report it to the authorities without hesitating. I have never been in a trial or spoken to lawyers or judges, they scare me and I felt really alone as I just came to study for a year to the UK but I should have done it as they kept pushing my limits and taking stupid amounts of money from me.

Avoid Unida Place, they don’t care about you at all, they just care about your precious money!

Very disappointed with this agency, the day we signed the contract the agent was really kind but once we signed everything and made the payments for the deposit they have been systematically ignoring our calls due to the washing machine not working or some problems with the heating. We spent over two weeks without heating at home, sleeping with two douves and cooking with our coats. What really put us off was that they where continuously trying to scam us charging more money through different nonsense excuses, either by trying to make us pay for the gas installation on December (we started living there in February) or charging us £7.50 for each electricity bill we wanted to check.

Avoid them if you can, their moto is "we help young professionals and students" but they just try to take our money just because they think we may be naive in some way. I have so many complaints about them I would be able to write a book, even my flatmates had several other complaints which were unbelievable. The city council were completely on our side and encouraged us to take them to trial, due to time and energy we finally decided not to but we think future tenants should know about the perils of making any sort of business with this company.