Kind: Articles

My rant about ALP Property Management continues to gain interest and attention from all kinds of folks. Recently I received an e-mail from a young man (who’d like to remain anonymous), telling me about his experience with what might well be Aberystwyth’s least ethical estate agent.

If you’re interested, his story is below. Do bear in mind of course that this is his experience and his opinions, not mine.

Part One
My story begins in 2003. I had just moved out of my shared student house. The people I’d been sharing with frequently played very loud music at ungodly hours of the morning and I’d had enough, so I figured that I’d find myself some new accommodation.

I looked around several property companies, but none of them seemed to have anything in my price range. It was then that I stumbled across ALP Property Management. The agent was welcoming and helpful and found a few properties within my price range. I chose a few that looked good and he told me to come back tomorrow when he’d be able to take me to look around them.

Returning the next day, the agent seemed to be bending over backwards to help me, giving me a lift to several different properties and showing me around them. I liked one of the properties and agreed to take it; a small bed-sit for £60 per week. Back at the office, I handed over £100 holding deposit, and, a few days later, returned to sign a contract and give him a further £165. The total deposit was £265, £5 of which was for the “key deposit”. I also parted with £260, to cover the first month rent.

So far, everything was going well, and I thought little more of it until the day I was due to move in. I went along to the office to pick up the key and begin moving my stuff. This time I was not greeted with the same welcome. The agent seemed very slightly agitated. When I asked for the key, I was told:

“Unfortunately I made a mistake with your property. The rental price is £65 per week instead of £60. You’ll need to give me an extra £43.32 to cover the excess on the deposit and the first months rent. I’ve drafted another contract for you to sign here.”

He showed me a new contract with these new terms.

“I can’t give you the keys until you sign it.”

These may not be the agent’s exact words, but this is the gist of what I was told. At the time, I was confused by this. I felt that this was wrong of him, but thought that there was nothing I could do about it. I told him to wait while I got the money.

Instead of getting the money, I went and got some backup in the form of my fiancé and her parents. We went back to the ALP offices again to confront the agent. We told him that what he was doing was illegal as I’d already signed a contract to £60 per week. The agent told me that he’d lost (convenient, that!) the contract and so I had to sign another one. Unfortunately for him I had a copy of the contract with me. Once he realised that I wasn’t backing down, he gave up and gave me the keys. He apologised and said that he would pay
the extra £5 per week from his own wages.

He also showed us the contents of his top drawer, which contained a ripped up contract bearing my name. He told us that he panicked when he realised his mistake and ripped it up himself! Not only was what he was doing illegal, but he knew it!

Part Two
While at the property, so new neighbours moved in upstairs. These new neighbours were probably the noisiest people one the planet. Every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday night they would play loud music before going out and even louder music upon returning home, often until 5am. Since this was a little familiar – the very reason that I moved out of my last property – I decided to have a word with them. Not surprisingly, they ignored me.

Since their property was also rented through ALP, I thought that maybe the letting agency could have a word with them for me. I went into the offices and explained my problem to the agent. I explained why this was such a problem for me and tried to be as humble as possible. I was essentially told that “boys will be boys” and there was “nothing they could do about it”.

Part Three
One day when I went in to pay my rent, I was told:

“I tried to get into your place the other day, but the key didn’t work so I couldn’t.”

I remembered feeling relieved because I had not been told about anyone being shown around: this was the first I knew about it. It worried me more that he might have been lying… Maybe he had been in my property and shown someone around! The very thought of this angered me.

Part Four
When I came to move out of the property, I didn’t want to take any chances. On the final day when the agent came around to inspect the property, I had my parents, my fiancé and her parents all waiting in the room. When he walked in and saw the amount of people… surprise surprise, he was a nice as pie.A few months later, I still hadn’t received any bills from the property. I rang British Gas to enquire about the electricity account, which the ALP assured would “all be taken care of”. British Gas had no knowledge of me renting the property and said that the electricity was being supplied by another company. I rang the letting agent to find out who was supplying the electricity, as I didn’t want to be hit with a huge bill. The response I received from ALP was hostile, saying that it wasn’t their responsibility. Getting nowhere, I said:

“I fail to see how why you don’t know who is supplying the electricity”

To which they said:

“Don’t be cheeky to me. If you want to sort this out, then come into the office and we can talk, but don’t get cheeky with me!”

And they put the phone down.

Part Five
In 2005, I was returning to Aberystwyth after my “Year In Industry” as part of my degree. This time, I was looking for a property to share with my fiancé. Unfortunately, once again, the only company with any affordable property was… you guessed it… ALP. I told my fiancé that I didn’t want to go with them, but she told me that many people were saying how they’d cleaned up there act. I was still sceptical, but after seeing that they had a lovely house to rent, I decided (against my better judgement) to rent with them again.

This time, the renting went fine. They were very nice throughout the tenancy and I actually started to think that maybe they had cleaned up their act. I was wrong!

When we came to move out, we had arranged with the agent for him to inspect the property on the Friday. It was made clear that he was looking round to assess any damages. It was also arranged (and had been verified several times) that he would decide how much of our £546 deposit would be returned and write us a cheques there and then.

Friday came and so did the agent. He looked around the property for a total of five minutes. He said that he didn’t want to be long as he was “meeting the boys down the pub for a drink”. After he had looked around, both me and my fiancé asked him if we would receive the full deposit. He told us that we would. We asked if he could write a cheque. His response was as follows:

“We don’t give cheques anymore. Instead we do direct bank transfers as it’s a better way to prove transactions took place. Give me your bank details and we’ll transfer the money next week.”

Straight away, alarm bells started ringing in my head! We had specifically asked for the cheque today, as we were leaving Aberystwyth. But, in the interest of good faith, we took his word for it. We figured that he’d been good throughout the tenancy, so it would be fine. We moved home and awaited the transfer.

A week went by… No deposit.

We telephoned the agent at ALP and were greeted by the familiar hostile tone. It turns out that although we were promised the £546 refund, he has since been round the property with “a more thorough inspection”. He’d found sufficient reason to withhold £114. When asked what the reason was, we were told that the oven was dirty and there were crumbs in the toaster. We offered to come back to Aberystwyth and clean the dirty items, but alas we
were told a professional cleaning company had to be employed. We tried pointing out that the entire house was dirty when we moved in but to no avail. Oh yeah… Did I mention that we left a sofa and a chair (totalling £70) in the property out of good will? Apparently that didn’t count for much either.

I have since been in touch with ALP to request receipts for the “professional cleaning”. I was told that they will be sending them to me. Fingers crossed, eh?

I’ve heard other stories about ALP, and I’d love to collate them all here together in one place. If you’ve got any horror stories to tell about them (or even if you’ve got something nice to say) leave a comment with your e-mail address and I’ll publish them.

Claire and I’ll be out of town for a couple of days, visiting my folks and going to my cousin’s wedding. This means that this week:

• There won’t be a Naruto Night.
• There won’t be a Geek Night.
• Troma Night will be held at Matt P‘s new house. Hopefully he’ll be cool and useful and post a message on his blog teling you all how to get there, and I’m sure Paul will be his usual supportive self as far as helping set up tech to play the more unusual film formats is concerned.
• And if we’re really lucky, Adam will record Dr. Who for us, which we’ll trade him a copy of for giving his cake slice back (we’ve been looking after it ever since Bryn‘s birthday).

I’ve got my mobile if anybody needs me, and I’ll try to check my e-mail a couple of times while we’re mobile. Have a great weekend, everybody.

Troma Night starts tonight at 7pm at The Cottage or your other favourite Dr. Who watching place and continues at 8pm at the Arts Centre for “The General” before returning to The Cottage no later than 10pm (and probably a little earlier). There’ll be somebody (probably Jimmy, perhaps others) waiting at The Cottage to let you in if you get there before we get back from the Arts Centre.

We’re not sure what we’re watching yet, but I’ll bet Paul has some ideas.

My friend Paul is doing a survey (WayBackMachine link) into different hot and cold beverages and other lifestyle choices preferred by different kinds of geeks, looking for correlations (do all web designers really have pony tails? are mac users more likely to drink specialist coffees?). If you’re any kind of geek and you haven’t done it already through reading his blog, give it a go.

Well; the move was a successful one, although – as always – moving house is an excessively stressful and difficult experience. The weather remained good, and we’re very grateful to friends like Matt, Andy and Jimmy for all their help with the move. Claire and I still haven’t finished unpacking – the living room and bedroom are still full of boxes, although the kitchen, study, and utility room are starting to look as they should – but the important things are working: computers, network, internet connection, and so on. I thought I’d commemorate the new internet connection with this blogpost. Perhaps, if I can find the box that the batteries and the link cable are in, I’ll take some pictures and put them on here. It’ll also give me an incentive to keep unpacking stuff.

Just like last time, I’ve come up with a convenient way to make available to you all our new address and phone number (yes, the phone number has changed) without too many crazy stalker types getting hold of it without excessive effort. Just do the “Where Is The Cottage?” quiz and you can get all the information you need – all you need to do to answer the quiz’s questions is know a little bit about The Place, where we lived previously. Off you go.

Right; better start reading some of these million e-mails I’ve received while I’ve been offline.

Tomorrow’s the big day when Claire and I move virtually everything we own from The Place to The Cottage. We’re picking up the keys at 9am, and we’re likely to be doing our first unloading at about 9:30am.

This is where you come in. Yes, you! While we could probably manage this box-moving farce all by ourselves, we’d rather have the company of our friends to help us lift heavy things, push things around, pack things, unpack thinigs, and shout at Claire when she keeps trying to get away with sitting down and doing nothing or at Dan when he tries to ride any wheeled box or filing cabinet down the hill. In exchange for your help, we’ll supply you with food and probably booze throughout the day; plus you’ll get to see The Cottage before it gets filled with people next weekend for Geek Night and, perhaps, Troma Night.

But better than that, you’ll earn our love and respect, which will be dispensed in multiples of 1, 3, 5 and 10 unit “Love And Respect” vouchers, redeemable for sexual favours at The Cottage’s gift shop.

If you can’t help on Monday there’s always Tuesday and Wednesday, when we’re also likely to be moving stuff and cleaning up The Place. Vouchers have no cash value and are not actually redeemable or existant. The Place, The Cottage, Love and Respect are copyrights of Dan & Claire’s Marvellous Journey Ltd. The Cottage gift shop may or may not actually exist. Food will probably be provided by Upper Limit Cafe and Burger King – at least until all the kitchen stuff is moved in – and alcohol by Thresher and Kanes, but this is open to negotiation and liable to change without notice. If you want to help, please phone at least quarter of an hour before you can turn up to save you from walking to the wrong place and finding us not there, natch. Bring your own umbrella.

It’s been awhile since Geek Night went on ’til 3am. And what a Geek Night. I’ve just introduced the usual crew to a board game (or will it end up as a computer game?) I thought up earlier in the week, and after a few playtest games to refine the rules and the cardset, we’re really getting together something which is really enjoyable and a great laugh. It’s like… Fluxx meets nanofiction. Like the trading element of Settlers of Catan meets the backstabbing of Munchkin, but with a better definate-length and less last minute struggles. It’s got the exciting close finishes of Il Principe but it’s as easy-going as Carcasonne.

Well… I like it anyway. And it got great feedback from the folks who sat around for three games of it this evening.

I’m thinking of calling it Neumann. Watch this space.

Right; off to Harlech today with Claire and some Singaporeans. No, if you don’t know or can’t work out why, it’s probably best that way.

In any case, we’ll be back for 7pm for Doctor Who and Troma Night at The Place. The second-to-last ever Troma Night at The Place…

Saw The Hills Have Eyes and Hostel at the Arts Centre Cinema‘s “Horror Double Bill” last night. The former was a mediocre horror flick which improves dramatically once you’ve got a lone guy fighting mutants with a baseball bat in a desert. The latter was a pretty good psychological thriller with a charmingly well-paced warm up and character introductions before everybody starts being mutilated: it’s improved by the fact that there’s surprisingly little gore – at least to begin with, with the sound effects making implications for themselves as to the content – but I’ve a feeling it’ll be ruined by a sequel.

I feel that we’re certainly making the most of the bank holiday weekend: too much, even, perhaps. With Faye‘s birthday (and some shopping for jungle-themed stuff, of course) tomorrow, Troma Night, this trip to Harlech, and whatever-it-is I’m supposed to be doing on Monday (can’t remember what it is, but I’m pretty sure I’ve arranged something… it’ll come back to me)… and meanwhile, what we should be doing is packing in anticipation of our upcoming house move. We’ve got a lot to do. Ah well.

Tony Long at Wired has written a great article. An extract:

1968. It was the height of the Vietnam War, the year of My Lai and the Tet offensive. Student riots in Paris nearly brought down the French government. Soviet tanks put a premature end to Czechoslovakia’s Prague Spring.

In the United States, the streets were teeming with antiwar protesters and civil rights demonstrators. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated within two months of each other. The Democratic convention in Chicago dissolved into chaos. And by the summer, America’s cities were in flames.

… 

But as bad as things were then, they seem infinitely worse now.

Well, Claire and I’s move is now confirmed: on 5th June 2006 we’ll leave The Place and head down to our new home, The Cottage. As usual, all offers of help with the move will be much appreciated and rewarded with beer and/or food, depending on the time of day at which the assistance is rendered. And, like last time, we’ll be putting photos online as we take them. Ooh; look, here’s some now!
It doesn’t really feel like we’ve lived in The Place that long: it’s less than six months ago that we moved in, and we’d hoped that we’d have been there a little longer. Nonetheless, The Cottage is lovely: nestled away in a little-known about part of town, surrounded by some fascinating architecture, and with a couple of nice perks I’m sure I’ll fill you in on as time goes on.

It is, however, a little bit smaller than The Place. Some of this space will be reclaimed: for example, there is no bed in the spare room which will give us more space to populate with desks, chairs, and computer gear. Some of it is less-able to be salvaged: for example, the living room – while as long as the one at The Place – is noticabley narrower, and also suffers from the addition of a dining table to it, rather than in the kitchen as is the case at The Place.

As a result, things may become more than a little bit cozy in September, when Troma Night once again comes into full swing. To be honest, we’re just not sure. Maybe it’ll be fine with a little jiggering and pokering, or maybe we’ll have to go with Plan B – the relocation (perhaps on a week-to-week basis) of Troma Night to various venues around Aberystwyth. But there’s nothing to worry about yet (or, perhaps, at all) – we’ll just have to wait and see.

Well, not Paul‘s curry per se, but the-one-he-organised.

Except he didn’t organise a time. It was always a bit up-in-the-air because it depended upon what time Ruth and JTA would have finished their cock-beating activities.

Well; I’ve done the research for him and collated that with his proposed times, and we get 7:35pm as the final time. There. Now you all know.

As Matt said, there’s an open mic night at The Angel, tonight at 8pm, £2 on the door. In the past, these open mic nights have been variable, with some really good performances and some less good ones, but the audience demonstrates it’s Aberystwyth spirit and is welcoming to pretty much anybody.

So, I’m going to pick up the microphone, and, this time – as I’ve been given about eight hours notice rather than the eight minutes I got last time – I ought to be able to rustle up a couple of “knock knock” jokes in advance, so I don’t just have to rip off everybody else‘s material in a methodical manner.

Want to see some of Aberystwyth’s upcoming comedy talent? And me? See you at The Angel.

Ahoy there, mateys. Troma Night tonight will be kicking off simultaneously at Adam‘s and at The Place at 7pm sharp for Doctor Who, and then reconvening at The Place for the rest of the evening.

If you’re not coming along for Doctor Who, then try at least not to turn up at half-past seven, just as the Doctor will be legging it from the cybermen, or you’re likely to be glared at most severely. By 7:30 you’ll have already missed your chance for a coveted spot on the couch, anyway.

I’ve no idea what we’ll watch. Paul‘s got at least one Troma flick we haven’t seen, as well as a mammoth collection of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 I’d love to make a dent in. And I’ve got a copy of Howling VI: The Freaks, who’s 3.7 star rating on the IMDB gives it’s fans the right to call it the “best sequel” to the original Howling. That should be sufficiently dire.

As far as good movies are concerned, I’m open to suggestions.

Just over a month ago, sick of the interest rates, I paid off my NatWest credit card by going into the Aberystwyth branch and saying “how much money do I have to give you to have you cut up this card and never bother me about it again?” I paid three-hundred-and-something pounds, direct from my bank account, then had the lady behind the counter cut up the card. There we are, done.

This morning I received a letter from NatWest Credit Card Services indicating that I’d missed a payment. I called them up to complain, and was told that the branch must have made a mistake in calculating the sum I owed them, because my account was labelled as being active and I still owed forty quid.

Then they said that it must, therefore, be their fault – the mistake of the branch that had mis-advised me (they took my word on the conversation I’d had in the branch) – and closed my account, dropping the remaining debt.

While it’s obvious that this was the correct thing for them to do – it was, indeed, their mistake that had caused the problem – I was impressed that they behaved in this way. They are, in the end, a bank, and over the years we’ve become used to banks screwing us over with ludicrous charges, seemingly just for the fun of it. Meanwhile, NatWest have consistently provided me with excellent customer support and an attitude of genuinely trusting me as a customer.

Bravo, NatWest. I have no problem with continuing to recommend you as a bank.