Portico 

Horrible experience, the worst possible customer service I have ever seen. We’ve used Portico to manage our home whilst we were away, traveling.
They were extremely good at communicating until we signed their service agreement. Then, once it was done, we were left in the dark. Our guests were left without response to their requests, leading us to poor reviews on AirB&B. This whole experience with Portico managing our home was extremely stressful for us throughout our travels. They never reply to your request for information, they never did the exit process of our tenants, they short paid us on the last month (we had accepted for them to collect the rent on our behalf). If you are landlords who care for their home, DO NOT USE PORTICO.

I didn't rent directly from Portico but they bought the local letting agency''SPENCERS'' so I had to deal with them for 4 years. During the tenancy ,they hardly did any maintenance and each thing took ages.i had to deal with so many people for single repair. I had a family and couldn't move out as you guess how difficult to rent in London.
I ended my tenancy 4 months ago for emergency reason. I gave my notice but had a contract with them for other six months so I found a tenant move in to avoid being charged. I emptied the flat on 27 th of March and did deep cleaning but they wanted to charge me cleaning.they arranged check out with Simon Martin inventory manager.but last minute was cancelled while I was waiting in the flat.they charge you when you miss appointment but they didn't even apologize.
They were ready to move asap but Marc McIlevey and Gokhan handled letting so slow and didn't care at all so new tenant had to wait 2 weeks to move in which cost me financially. I found the tenant ,did everything but they charged me and new tenant for admin fee of £700.They didn't even move their finger but pocketed all the money.Marc was so unprofessional and talking to me always ''my friend'' on the phone and demanded money to make things quicker.He said that he doesn't care about tenant but Landlord only who pays his salary.
Whenever I called or emailed them,they were either in meeting or out of office and receptionist wasn't kind and helpful at all.i wanted to complain and see the senior manager in head office but was told to sort my complain with the person i complained about.that was weird. Simon Martin inventory manager had the wrong key and blamed me that I changed the lock as he wanted to do inventory alone and they wanted to charge me for that.They don't want you to be around during inventory to charge you more for check out. Please have your check in report so you can compare because they wanted to charge me for 2 cracked tiles ,bended blinder and some marks on the floor which was on the check in report.It took me 4 months to prove those were in flat before I moved in.Himen Joshi dealt with my check out and deposit return.He wanted to double charge me for check out fee of £151.20.i exchanged 40 emails and so many phone calls to prove that these damages were there before I moved in.He replies all the email by ignoring your questions and inquiries but only creating reason to deduct money from you deposit. He even once wrote to me that this is the practice of the letting industry to deduct money from deposit when I proved him that all his claims were false.He meant that he had to create reason to rip you off after I paid all my rent on time and causing no damage.WHAT A SHAME THEY EXIST IN SUCH A GREAT CITY LONDON.Thanks God I had check in and check out reports ,plus I took pictures and record video so they had to come to the point that I didn't cause these damages. The internal communication was zero.he tried every way to charge me £80 for the damage which was there already.after 4 months battle,I got my deposit back today.so I can write my experience with PORTICO LETTING.
I sent email ,Millicent Matthews, from renewal admin, about refund and new contract.She got back to me 3 weeks later.She directed me to Helen Miller from Portico account.
I had done advance rent payment as I had contract with them.Once new tenant moved in, I requested Helen Miller from Portico account to refund my rent and sent me the bill but it took her 3 weeks to reply and 2 weeks to refund and refused to send me the bill.She sent me excel sheet with my payments with no detail.If I didn't pay rent for a week, they will issue me warning or give me notice but when it comes to them, they can delay to refund the money for months.

I claimed that they should refund me full rent but they deducted £350 for their fault.

I don't remember how many people ,I dealt with during this process.i requested many times to meet with senior manager from head office but they just simply ignored and didn't arrange any appointments.I looked all the reviews before writing mine.i went through each of the things mentioned.These are real stories.Avoid this PORTICO LETTING ,PROPERTY. WHATEVER THEY ADVERTISING,THEY ARE ALL LIE AND REALITY IS OPPOSITE.THEY WANTED TO CHARGE FOR NONSENSES AND THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT TENANT BUT ONLY LANDLORD.THIS IS THE SHORT FORM OF MY EXPERIENCE WITH PORTICO.

THE WORST SERVICE I HAVE EVER RECEIVED AND I URGE ANYONE TO AVOID TO DO ANY KIND OF BUSINESS WITH PORTICO PROPERTY LETTING.

I CAN PROVE MY EXPERIENCE AND REVIEW WITH ALL EMAILS AND REPORTS ,I EXCHANGED DURING 4 MONTHS.

Unbelievably poor service in every way. It's really amazing and flabbergasting how bad the Portico 'service' is. I was a tenant for ten years (luckily not anymore) with them as a management company. Portico were utterly awful in every way: service, communication (both amongst themselves and with us), organization, competence, basic courtesy, turnover, often intelligence.
This organization must have ENTIRELY the wrong leadership and training. (Even when we were looking to buy a flat, their listing did not show a floor plan, and the agent took over THREE WEEKS to get back to our email that expressed interest in viewing a flat?!
I could fill a book with examples of how poor Portico is. I wish even one person they had seemed like they were professional.
I cannot wish them upon anyone. Do be warned!
This "award-winning" nonsense is obviously rigged in some way.
They do deserve a reward for Utter Ineptness, I suppose.

Worst agency I've ever worked with. They were all milk and honey before we signed the tenancy agreement, after which they took ages to respond to any concerns and enquiries or to get things fixed.

When we moved out they tried to charge us money for leaving them some expensive lamp shades instead of leaving bare lightbulbs, as well as trying to squeeze as much money out of us as they could. 260 + VAT to place 2 tiles??

It is now 3 months since we moved out and we still haven't received our full deposit back, we now have to go through TDS to get our money.

Avoid at all costs!

Awful experience, like many others here.

If you rent with Portico, prepare to be ignored throughout your tenancy. They never reply to emails when anything goes wrong (even big things like a shower leaking to the floor below) and they dont even fix what they promised to fix before you move in.

Pretty sure our account manager didn't even exist, never heard from him on any issues we reported.

They also deducted a ridiculous amount from our deposit even though their check in report was the worst I've ever seen.

Absolute joke of an agency, DO NOT WORK WITH THEM

Portico manage some nice properties for many different landlords.

We were gracious enough to pay half a year’s rent in advance.

The following things have happend whilst renting our property through Portico:

• We were never told by Portico a tube line ran underneath the property and had no idea until it was too late and we spent our first night at the property only to realise in horror

• The property had numerous faults when we moved in including broken locks and a faulty shower we could not use

• Our complaints and issues raised were regularly ignored by management

• One of Portico’s handymen installed a replacement lock back to front on our front door

• We also had to report a faulty sofa and Portico tried to blame us for the fault without having inspected the issue themselves

• Portico sent in their staff into our flat without our permission and were in breach of our tenant rights and in breach of contract

• Portico tried to blame certain issues of their own making on the actual landlord

• Staff are arrogant, genuinely lie and ignore / do not respond to things when asked to by email

• Portico make it clear (in writing) they don’t care about you the tenant, only the landlord

• We met the previous tenants from our flat and they had all of the exact same issues as us. As did our neighbour

• If you don’t believe us check out all the other Trustpilot reviews for yourself

We promise you’ll regret renting with Portico

Do not use Portico! Throughout our tenancy we had multiple issues which it took Portico forever to fix. This included our toilet breaking and them not sending anyone to fix it for 4 days! When they did send someone to fix it, it was a portico handyman, not a plumber, so it took him multiple days to fix the problem.

When we finished our tenancy we then had a dispute over the deposit as they wanted to charge for a professional clean, even though it did not state this in the contract. We had to take the case to TDS, which we won. However, this meant that it has taken months to get our deposit back.

It is way more trouble than it's worth to rent through Portico, I wouldn't rent through them again, no matter how nice the property is!

This awful company should be banned for doing business. They are just ripping people off. I don't know what Portico were thinking taking over Spencer, which was a decent agency to deal with for us as as tenants.

This company is really dismal, I am going to report to TDS because my deposit stucked and Poritco not doing any thing, not even writing to landlord and delaying thing on purpose.

I have reported this company to BBC WATCHDOG and my Local MP. If you come across this review, and you are or have been in the same situation, please do the same, report them, it's a prevalent issue with them with deposits.

Stayed in property for over 5 years and was with Glendmeads then Portico comes in and all started mess. Wouldn’t recommend this agent to even my worst enemy.

STAY AWAY FROM PROTICO

I do not recommend this agency. I was conned into giving a good review after my first experience of a viewing. Once my partner and i had viewed another flat we were interested in we sent in our offer, got told to raise it, which we did and then the agent never got back to us. She relayed false information back to me and frankly was a waste of time accusing me untrue information. DO NOT USE THEM.

DONT GET INVOLVED WITH THESE PEOPLE. The agent's are the most sleazy salespeople you will ever have the misfortune of meeting. Our's did not disclose that the landlord had filed for a building permit and we were thrown out after 6 months. We also had many issues with the flat (leaking ceiling etc.) and they NEVER bothered to send anyone. Now they can't even be bothered to give me and my partner references on time for us to move into a new flat as soon as possible. WORST. COMPANY. EVER. Avoid like the plague.

Would give 0 stars if I could.... The worst experience ever. I was with them for 4 years. Initially, I rented with Spencer’s then they converted to Portico which was the biggest mistake. How unprofessional and unreliable are they I cannot explain. They took months of my health and life. Multiple emails and phone calls. Never heard back. Hours of time off from work to visit the branch in person. Head office has no clue what’s going on in the branch and vice versa. So disappointing. In different personal circumstances I’d go the legal way.

The poorest work ethic I have ever experienced. They decide to hold on to your deposit and never responded for endless calls. Embrace that you are dealing with thiefs and act from there. Make sure you ask deposit protection to help you!

Worst year of my life.

Wouldn't give us keys to the place for a week and threatened us with eviction when I queried why I should have to pay a full month's rent.
Left keys to all their advertised properties at our house. I've even argued with their CEO- who is reflective of her many branch's attitudes.

Whether landlords are aware or not of their practices, we only got back our deposit in full due to me complaining to the landlord, who luckily is the church of England so sympathy was available... full deposit given back within the week.

The charges for name changes and all other admin fees are actually crazy.

I used to think Foxtons was the worst but they have taken the crown. Never again

We had problems before we even moved in! Our original move in day was delayed by nearly 2 weeks all because they didn't send us the guarantor form for a week! And their excuse was "well the intern is leaving soon" as if that somehow makes it ok to leave people homeless for 2 weeks!

Ever since moving in we had more problems. First of all the check-in inventory was completely wrong, including every room saying "no windows found". When we moved in, most of the windows did not open and some were sealed shut illegally due to them being loose and whistling. They eventually sent someone to take a look - a week before we moved out!

Despite reporting repairs multiple times, it took weeks and sometimes months to get a response. They would randomly reply within a day, then vanish for another week, then come back saying they'd fix the more unimportant repairs. For example, our garden door did not lock property the entire year - and the garden is publicly accessible!

At one point we went a week with no heating - while the weather was -2 degrees outside, which is also illegal! It took 3 days just to get hold of someone on the phone/email as their stupid phone system cuts you off after 10 minutes on hold, effectively booting you back to the bottom of the queue.

Now after moving out, we finally get our check-out inventory and it was very bad. It was done 3 weeks after we moved out, during which the house has not had any other tenants inside. Yet now the check-out is full of things regarding dust/cobwebs, despite the fact this would have accumulated during the 3 weeks of empty house. It is also full of things that were reported in the check-in - before we even got into the property.

They have always been polite and acted helpful, but as a company they are beyond terrible!

Would give 0 stars if I could...

If I could have chosen zero stars then I would have done. If only we had read the reviews on trustpilot before we rented - AVOID PORTICO THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY SHOCKING. Where should I start - here’s a few examples
- took months to fix anything
- did not complete the work included as condition of our offer (told us they had, we found out once we arrived with our furniture on move in day)
- sent unqualified person round to do electrical work
- no response for weeks to an urgent maintenance issue
- provides safety certificate with issues and said “you said you wanted a safety certificate - you didn’t say it had to pass”
- attempted to make ridiculous reductions from deposit when we moved out despite the fact there was no damage

It’s interesting that they have very high staff turnover - one great guy was new and left within a couple of weeks. Probably shows what a nightmare they are as an employer as well as a tenant.

Eventually we got our deposit back in full via the deposit protection scheme disputes service. For anyone reading this battling with Portico about deposit deductions, use the dispute service, don’t waste your time continuing to engage with Portico

I don't know what Portico were thinking taking over Spencer, which was a decent agency to deal with for us as as tenants.

This company is horrific. They take months to fix anything. They illegally enter our property without us knowing about it. They take weeks to respond to emails (or don't respond at all). They lose the keys. They charge extortionate contract renewal fees every year. When we did negotiate a lower fee, they still chased us for not paying the original amount.

I'm dreading to think what we'll have to go through when we finally move out, based on the reviews here.

STAY.AWAY.

I have never experienced such lack of communication or competence from the staff at Portico.
Very keen to contact before you sign the contract - as soon as they have your money they ignore you.
Avoid at all costs - they are absolutely terrible and even an amazing property is not worth the rubbish from them.

They don't respond to issues or respond to emails. They just make continual excuses and refuse to take any responsibility for their actions.

Avoid if you are a tenant.

They are returning the deposit even after 2 months