Regus - London, Strand Reviews 10

Good location and nice staffs

I’ve been at Regus Strand for over two years, and it’s been a great experience. The team here is fantastic always friendly, helpful, and professional. The facilities are always clean and well-maintained, making it a comfortable and productive place to work. Highly recommend!

Every negative review about this organisation replicate our experience. I was pressured to sign one year tenancy for my Company even though we only wanted 3 months. Their Customer Service was great till we signed. Once we signed and made payments we couldnt get through to any one anymore.

All they are about is money. Customer service on site is so poor and yet and the staff are lobbying for good customer service rating.

They could not provide essential telephone service needed for our business. But they constantly bombard us with Rent arrears email even when we were not in arrears.
The last straw was getting locked out of our Office space even while our account was NOT in arrears.

I agree that this sort of Landlord/ Organisation shoud not exist in the UK in this age.

Dame Bhymbhola
Attachments
9:50 PM (1 minute ago)
to michelle.spire

Hi Michelle,

I hope you are well.
I read your response to my online review.
its really disheatening and shameful to read for lies, false defends and defamation.
I'm sure I copied you in my response to Farah's similar email and I attached all evidence of my payments and payment confirmation of my rent till date till i tendered my tenacy termination in June.
Your Company sure doesnot operate on fair grounds, I guess you feel you are too big to be moved. but trust me my case will be an exception.
Its my right to give a review of my geniune experience and I provided evidende to TR otherwise they would have brought it down.
You responded initially and requested I get in touch to resolve the issue. I did but you never acknowledged nor replied my mail.
Farah contacted me and tried intimidating me on the phone but I know what I experienced and i stood my grounds.
She promised to investigate and get back to me but rather she got back with lies and print out of failed DD.
I replied and provided evidence of payment and DD was an attempt to take double payment which I cancelled from my bank. infact on one occassion I spoke to Reception and it was mutually and voluntarily returned.
What you wrote is wrong and you should be ashamed f yourself.
here attaached again in my evidence of all payment exactly as I stated.
I will forward this emai to Trust pilot. I'm very ready for your legal action.
not only will I claim my deposit, I will be asking for damages of all revenue loss by my company and against defamation from someone who should no better.

Regards

I have used every possibility to end the contract, followed every possible instruction and your company still keeps charging me every month for a service I have ended. You should absolutely be ashamed of yourself, this kind of company should not exist in the 21st century.

REGUS - IWG is a fraudulent company. Firstly, they overcharged us. They didn't discover this through their own investigation, but rather we started to complain about it. The complaint process was tedious, but they accepted it and refunded the amount.

Our company voluntarily sent the monthly fees to them, meanwhile, our contract had ended and they continued to receive the payments. Despite having no right to these funds, they accepted and spent the money. This is fraud and embezzlement.

We notified them of this: they said, and also state on Trustpilot, that it was our fault. Yes, the overpayment was our mistake, but receiving someone else's money without entitlement doesn't give them the right to spend it. REGUS - IWG in London thinks this is legal for them.

Their response was dismissive: suggesting that we should be more careful next time and not send them money haphazardly.

What kind of reasoning is that? It's not their money! They're just common fraudsters: we're going to Scotland Yard to report them! A gang of scammers! Be careful, they could deceive you with anything. READ IT ON TRUSTPILOT. #IWG #REGUS

A week later from my last post and nothing has changed. As ever, posting publicly gets a quick reply and then an email from a Customer Care Specialist saying that they are coordinating with the relevant team.

WHO ARE THE RELEVANT TEAM?

I got a phone call from a Community Sales Manager who asked me what the situation was - which was surprising as she is copied on my emails. I was told that the problem has been escalated but not told who to and what impact this will have. Nothing has happened.

There is a fundamental problem with two of our offices. They do not have ventilation. Heaters warm a room, they don't circulate air. This has been a problem since we were forced to move here in December. Regus have a quote to get it fixed but have not fixed it. Apparently they are having difficulties getting a second quote. I wonder if it is because they don't reply to emails or take responsibility. Please please please just get it fixed.

As ever, the property level team are unable to help because they get no help or support from their corporate team.

Regus don't care about basic health and safety.
Regus don't care about their clients.

Problems happen - we completely understand that. We do not understand how a company can be so inept when reacting to problems (or not reacting at all)

** edit following Regus comment: our centre manager is not in direct contact with us. I have to seek them out to find them and am then told that someone else is dealing with it and that they wish they could do something but can’t.
We have not been offered comparable alternatives. We have not been updated on progress because there hasn’t been any. We have been told to wait for them to receive a second quote to solve the problem from December. I have asked how long it will take and no one knows, so maybe in 2 years, we will still be waiting for the mysterious second quote.

Not ok. Please fix it. Please take responsibility. Please care about your clients wellbeing and experience in your buildings.

Asking me to continue to speak to people who go 10 days+ without replying to emails and who then aren’t able to update or help because they aren’t responsible for fixing it is laughable.

After 18 months of working with Regus we requested early termination or permission to sub-let our space for the remaining few months of our contract, due to a change in our market conditions and the need to downsize of our team. Regus refused on both counts but agreed to flexible payment terms. Then without discussion or agreement moved new tenants into our space and moved our property into storage, running 2 x contracts on the same space at the same time, and invoicing and chasing payment for both. The center staff said they had been instructed not to communicate this to us. We have been advised that this is illegal and that Regus should have 1) discussed the matter and come to an agreement with us first, 2) terminated our contract before activating a new contract, and 3) returned excess rent and deposit within 30 days of contract termination. Two months on Regus have still not terminated our contract nor returned our funds (c.£50k), and continue to send us from pillar to post wasting our time and theirs rather than communicating clearly and constructively. While the center staff are helpful they are not empowered to action anything. The middle management are childish and on a power trip, making promises and then smugly refusing to take action. And the group CEO is nothing short of disengaged and negligent. We have now logged the matter with the Police and have a crime number against this incident for financial fraud and discrimination. Judging by the testimonials below financial fraud is just business as usual for Regus. Reviewing the responses from Michelle Spire this group seem to have a bog standard defense against every and any customer complaint. This is clearly not an above board business, but a cultish business with mind control over its employees, and disdain for its customers. If you are looking for a mature, professional, responsible office provider, Regus is not for you. If you’re looking for an expensive, low quality facility, dishonest management, inconsistent billing, and a disengaged top team – then Regus will be right up your street!

Having been a customer for the last few years, during which my experiences were “OK” (mail was routinely delayed, but otherwise facilities were adequate), my experiences over the last month (December 2023 – Jan 2024) have been far from satisfactory. The issues began when I was given two days warning that our location was to be shut and transferred to another location. Initially I queried what transition arrangements they would be putting in place to be told 5 days later that they would only be “picking up” the mail from the old location for a week (7 days from the closure date. e.g. with 2 days warning) and wouldn’t be putting any forwarding arrangements in place. (While we were not impacted by this as we have a VOIP telephony system, those with telephone services would also not have their numbers transferred over.)

At this point I looked for contingency arrangements and asked for my agreement with Regus to be cancelled. Two days later I received confirmation that that the agreement had been terminated (together with a credit note) so though a difficult period, at least it was settled.

During the holiday period I received a notice saying my agreement would be automatically renewed (which was curious as I had already cancelled my account), but none-the-less I clicked on the “I do not wish to renew” link and reviewed my account details which showed no active services. A few days later I received notice that Regus had tried to take a payment from my account and a two days after that “confirmation” that my account had been renewed.

I responded to each of the messages, informing them that I had cancelled my services and asked them to investigate the issue. I also reviewed the online account which was still showing no active services.
10 days later I received an email acknowledging that I would like to cancel my account, but would need to do so via the online portal. Again, I reviewed the account, which was still showing no active services, and responded with the confirmation of cancellation, the credit note and a screen print of the online portal.

The next day I received a message saying that the reason I wasn’t seeing any services to cancel was that I was looking at the wrong online account. Apparently, a new account had been created on January 3rd, weeks after I had originally cancelled my account and this was the service that had “auto-renewed”. I was also advised that I could cancel this service, but would now be locked into the term of the “renewed” agreement.

It’s not bad enough that the original site was closed with little warning and next to no transition arrangements, but I also now need to address this (with which the local staff seem unable or unwilling to help). While I recognise that this could be down to the confusion around the site closure or systems issues, it does look suspiciously like some rather unethical business practices.

If anyone at Regus that has the power to help with this reads this review please get in touch. (Account 11764462 or 14245778 ).