BNS Property Services Reviews 164

Sometimes it all depends on who you are fortunate to deal with, fortunately for myself I have recently been dealing with Jade who has been prompt and extremely helpful, if BNS had more employees with her level of customer care I’m sure they would have a 5 star review, thank you Jade

Can only echo what the rest of the bad (but I suspect honest) reviews say about BNS. The most slow, unresponsive, mind-bogglingly frustrating company I've ever had the displeasure of coming into contact with. Absolutely useless, avoid if you can.

BNS are dreadful and similarly to other negative reviews I could literally talk about it for ages but in a nutshell: they are ignoring requests, are extremely slow in responding, spend our money on expensive contractors of their choice, overspend in their budget and tell us to pay the difference on the top of what we've already paid and so on. To be honest I am quite surprised that this business even still exists with that terrible service.

EDIT: There response was not related at all to my complaint. BNS has also increased the service charge demand by 40% with no justifiable reason.

Shocking property management company, do not use.

My wife and I until recently owned a flat in Villa Rosa Weston s Mare managed by BNS. For a considerable number of years I would have described the BNS performance as poor. Ever since Jade Tarrant took on the oversight of our block the change for the better has been remarkable, Gone were the days of endlessly awaiting a response, and having to endure bad manners and patronising behaviour from BNS. Jade is a credit to BNS and always polite, courteous, and professional. Thank you Jade for your considerable efforts in improving the service provided by BNS.

Here is the review i promised this morning, i hope you gain something from it.

I called on 30th July then 4th August and today. On all occasions i was not allowed to talk to anyone except reception, who made me describe the same problem three times. No one ever called back.

The third time i promised a bad review if no one called back so here it is, you are welcome.

I am just trying to get an entry phone sorted for my elderly and infirm dad at tuscany park who needs to let in carers and food deliveries. Is that important to you?

Bns managed my flat in apsley road soon after Bruce's son took over a while back and let the building insurance lapse. Avoid them.

Update; BNS have booked to fix the entry phone system now

Where do I start with this.

What about why can't I give 0 stars.

Background. I own a property in a shared building in Bristol which has been 'managed' by BNS for over 15 years. They were OK in the noughties but have creepingly and progressively raised costs and got worse over the years to now where they manage around 300 properties and are really just about the money these days.

Here goes with the list:
- Unncecessary spurious charges (e.g. terrorism insurance).
- Use of own contractor companies (e.g. Hybrid Property Solutions, Priority 1, Konex, Block Plus, Business Non Stop, Spherical). The list goes on.
- Negligence to remove objects casuing fire risk / blocking basement access.
- Not taking meter readings when attending for inspections. Wanting to charge for it.
- Charging owners (yes charging the people who employ them) for late payment of levies which haven't been agreed and are only needed because BNS charge so much in the first place.
- Refusing / delaying to return funds to owners after more than 3 months since cancellation of services. Guidelines which BNS stated is legally applicable. Naughty BNS.
- Failure to ensure buildings insurance was in place for a period where it could have been implemented on an installment payment basis.
- Failure to provide finance statements at termination of contract in a timely manner.
- Condiiton of handover data (non existent filing structure).
- And my personal favourite introduced in the last year.....a fee (that translates as a charge to the owners) of £400+vat (that's £480) for all instances where a 'Section 20' (that's a few pieces of paper) is required to raise a levy (additional funds). Now note a Section 20 is required for any works costing more than £250 per owner. Think about that for a moment. Imagine there are 4 owners in a building (not unusual) and some work will necesitate raising an extra £1001 (not out of this world), then BNS will charge their bosses (the owners) £480. Yup, you read it correct. £480 or 48% of the levy. Now that's creative, for only producing a few sheets of paper. Marvelous. Somebody's got too much time on their hands to come up with that one.

I honestly don't know how this company has got this far. it must be purely down to cornering the market as decent management agents in Bristol are few and far between. I can't count the number of times I and the other owners have discussed changing agents, only to be stumped at the lack of options elsewhere and reluctantly deciding to 'just stay with BNS'. What fools we were.

The most hilarious thing about it all I've just noticed is that on their website (near the bottom) it adverises that BNS can save you Time, Money, Stress...... Well. I don't know what to say about that one. They should definitely change their website to say BNS can 'Waste lots of your time', 'Take lots of your money' and cause you lots of extra stress'.

Use if you want to waste time and get ripped off. They are basically an invoice creation machine. Somebody somewhere must have a yacht. You know who you are.

Anyway, the future looks bright as we are now managing the building ourselves and saving a small fortune in the process. It's not difficult but just takes some time. It definitely shouldn't cost what BNS charge for doing very little. And its good being in control of things. There should be more personalised honest managing agents out there. Maybe in the future.

One final thought: I think the review statistics says it all, don't you? 30 reviews with 37% bad and 47% average or below. I rest my case.

Beware.:)

A terrible and urgent leak at a few properties managed by BNS and they were very slow to fix it. Water is still pouring from the flats and this has been going on (unnoticed) for several weeks. This is an emergency and something needs to be done.

Slow to respond to queries and can never get through on the telephone. Am still waiting for light bulbs to be replaced after bring this to BNS's attention weeks ago. When acting as a Director was given incorrect advice as to who was responsible for the cost of a major repair, also requested roof survey was undertaken whilst scaffolding in place - request ignored by the Property Manager. Insurance claims shut down before works carried out, insurance claims paid out before works even completed, the list goes on. I am a previous employee of BNS and can only say that, in my experience the quality of their work has diminished dramatically in the last three years.

Be warned they are slow to respond until they want something from you! They overcharge on management fees and in order to look like they have kept the rate the same over the year/years they add a year end adjustment charge. When you ask what this has paid for you get a fluffy response. I can’t see anything different from when I was paying £100 less per month to now. Sorry but I feel ripped off. They are also slow to respond to emails I have to chase several times

I’m fairly skeptical when it comes to management companies and agents but I believe in giving credit where credit is due. Having gone through a string of (fairly average) managers over the past couple of years, I must commend Shannon at BNS who has come in on our block this year and given the site, and it’s owners a breath of fresh air.
She is a friendly reminder that there are a small handful of genuinely helpful people trying to do a good job. Although her presence is reasonably new, I feel a confidence I didn’t feel prior to now and look forward to (hopefully) seeing some much needed changes happening on site and behind the scenes as well.

Very helpful management company. Great customer service - the team are friendly when you call them.

Jade was so helpful, I needed to get in touch with a lot of house occupants to coordinate a day for them all to have a fix done on their ventilation systems and Jade coordinated the whole thing and sent me a spreadsheet with all the info I required on. Easy!

Rachel set up our AGM and ran the meeting very effectively using Microsoft Teams. All issues raised were recorded and minutes circulated very promptly afterwards. She also address our concerns about how long it has been taking to send out Year End Accounts and arrange AGM's over recent years with some useful information regarding our expectations and a constructive solution to fix our next AGM date already. Wow! Thanks Rachel it was probably the least stressful AGM for On The Park Ltd. I have ever been to. and your work in chasing down maintenance issues over recent months has been much appreciated.
UPDATE 2025 - the above was about the last good thing that happened. We havent had an AGM since and are now leaving BNS due to dire service over a number of years.
e.g. A major project saw scaffold erected and no levy raised causing all our reserves to be used up. The roofers found and reported some roof issues but BNS did not instruct them to repair. The scaff came down, a year later the roof failed causing damp and black mould in severral flats - another £10k scaffold bill to repair it. When we investigated why our bank was empty we found over £5k in service charge arrears which BNS had done nothing about. We nagged about that in 2024, its still not solved.
Then our electric supplier charged £29k to our direct debit in error. That never appeared in our accounts. I started nagging, told BNS it was missing it took months before anyone even replied. They had NO IDEA 29k had gone from the bank or where to. When it was refunded 6 months later, that £29k didn't appear in our accounts either. I had to tell them to reconcile the suspense account. Clueless.
Mislaying the deposit paid to a contractor resulted in a delay for decoration we are contratually aobliged to do and had promised Bristol City Council would be done.
This year they have falsified monthly Emergency Lighting (EML) inspection records, claiming to have reported faults - faults which did not exist and had not been reported. I raised it with head of compliance, but nothing changed until April when the monthly EML inspections stopped completely. Our own contractor found faulty light units but BNS did not approve the job to replace them.
Dont get me started on accounts. Our 2022-23 accounts are still in draft, they haven't made the changes requested for incorrect postings. We now have to get 3 years accounts done properly by another accountant.
The situation at BNS gets worse and worse. When you get given a property manager thats any good, you know they wont last long. Our last one was about 6 weeks. I predict a proper auditor will find a big black hole in processes and money management. God forbid any major H&S issue caused by their shoddy standards.

It is a pleasure to have Jade Tarrant as the manager of our building and accounts. Jade pays excellent attention to details, communicates with great skill, responds quickly, and is always available. Jade leaves me with a smile and more confident in what is happening. I hope she will continue to be our manager.

I have been working with Jade Tarrant regarding the property where I am the director. I have always found Jade very helpful, energetic and delivering on agreements. Since the property requires more maintenance Jade has provided a clear lead to deal with the issues and is always available to get in touch with in case of urgent need. I am happy to work with BNS and Jade in particular to get maintenance solutions for our building.

I have recently been dealing with Jade Tarrant for various queries that have come up within my building. I have found Jade to be super helpful and whenever I have been in contact with her she has always responded to me in a timely manner and her customer service skills are above and beyond and always tries to help sort out any problems. I feel like when I have issues that I know if I email Jade they will get dealt with. Thank you very much :)

BNS manage our property and I joined the board of Directors approximately 4 years ago. BNS have always provided us with a professional and comprehensive service.
However recently it has become even more efficient with the Appointment of Jade Tarrant as our property manager.
I find Jade to be highly efficient, proactive rather than reactive and every interaction I have had with her has been a real pleasure.
Issues are delt with quickly with thought and care.
She is an asset to the company and BNS should look to employ more staff like her.

Professional management company who offer a comprehensive service. They work collaboratively with leaseholders to ensure a more relevant and ‘bespoke’ service than we have experienced elsewhere.