The Property Ombudsman Reviews 393

The case was handled incompetently and without impartiality. The adjudication manager ignored the core issues, failed to review the documents thoroughly, and sided with the letting agents without proper investigation. They didn’t understand the difference between a Guaranteed Rent Agreement and a standard Tenancy Agreement, nor did they attempt to contact me for clarification. The process was delayed for over a year, and a payment the letting agents had agreed to was later cancelled—unfairly citing time limits, despite the delay being caused entirely by their own process.

Most concerning of all, after delivering an unfair and poorly reasoned outcome, the adjudication manager stated that all further emails from me would be ignored.

Great service, had I not contacted the ombudsman I would never have got my refund from the estate agent. Particular thanks to Karen for making the process easy

Really poor experience. They are set up by the property industry to create the appearance of accountability and offer the potential for redress whilst in fact making zero contribution on either front.
First it is incredibly hard to have a complaint accepted in the first place, there are so many hurdles to jump. Then you have to wait up to a year. Finally, without seeking to fully understand the complaint, ask for further information to support it or, still less, offer any assistance in the face of incompetence and unreasonable behaviour by the property company, they decline to adjudicate on the complaint.
They really are a complete waste of time - but that is exactly what the industry wants.
The government should now set up an independent service at the cost of the industry - judging by my experience and that of other reviewers, self regulation clearly isn’t working.

Summary: TPO claim to be independent. However their costs are paid for by their members (Estate Agents), based on guidelines and rules set by their members (Estate Agents) who they are meant to adjudicate. Independent? Possibly. Impartial? Absolutely not! If you are a tenant, you have a chance of having the TPO listen to you. But if you are a landlord (read the reviews others have left!) you have next to zero chance. Don't waste your time with the T.P.O.

Your Move had treated me horribly with hidden fees and terrible service. They were going to charge me close to £2000 to leave, even though the property was out of lease. So I complained to the TPO. I waited approximately ten months for my case to be assigned. I understand they were inundated with complaints, and this is outside their control (I accept that). A year later, I received my adjudication which I can only describe as completely one-sided and in favour of the real estate agent. I had to wonder if my emails and corroborating evidence were even read ... as one by one all of my complaints was declared "non supported." I work in finance and law, so for my complaint to be swept aside ... well I'd hate to think what chance a lay person has.

As an experiment, I decided to appeal to see what would happen. Without any further contact, I received a formal email repeating, "I therefore reject this ground of appeal" several times. The one shining light was that by this time, the tenant had left, and I was able to leave Your Move without charge.

There are a shocking number of one star reviews of T.P.O. that I wish I had read prior to lodging my complaint. Don't waste your time with The Property Ombudsman. They need to be replaced by a truly independent Government body.

I found the level of incompetence at a level that I have seldom found anywhere. A total lack of comprehension of the process time line, or contractual liability. When I was finally able to speak to someone I was told that I had been rude despite her admitting that they got it totally wrong. Really do not bother.

the company is not interested and the way the whole procedure for complaints against agents is a farce -
do not waste your time and effort. they are paid by agents and their associates so obviously they are on their side.

this ombudsman should be completely independent which they are not

Professional and efficient process, grateful to Hannah and her help!

This place is a rats nest head to toe.

Another UK Ombudsman thats not fit for purpose.

Do yourself a favour and take your matter to small claims court its cheap and takes a month or two to mediation on average.

These incompetent passive agressive cretins will waste at least 6 months of your life.

Elinor Iles as an adjudicator has been a tremendous support in a difficult case. She has taken the time to thoroughly investigate the evidence and ruled in my favour with housing law on her and my side. I thank you Elinor for your expert care regarding this matter.

Utterly horrified! When I first contacted them, they said don't wait, send us your complaint in as soon as possible which they then accepted! What followed was zip! First the gargantuan wait time. 13 months! Then, they just write your complaint off in a single email, blatantly ignoring their duty of care to the complainant, ignoring evidence, completely ignoring their own powers and show zero interest in the complainant with a complete lack of impartiality, making rude statements and don't even bother at any point to speak to the complainant in person. Despite being asked to actually speak on the phone to the complainant on multiple occasions they just ignored the request! Seems very odd to me. Why would you not want to discuss with the complainant? In short I have come to the conclusion based on how I have been treated- They are actively enabling terrible and unprofessional behaviour from agencies and agents! Enabling people to behave in all sorts of aggressive and actually illegal ways without enforcing accountability or enforcing best practice. They don't even offer so much as compensation for the complainant which is totally deserved despite not having asked for it! They are as culpable as the agents themselves in my opinion and clearly it's shared given the volume of complainants making a complaint about this service provider! This service is meant to support complainants!!! Not actively enable corrupt, aggressive, greedy, agents and their agencies! Regulation of the property industry is not only NEEDED- it MUST be enforced by the government and include this so called Ombudsman service. Clearly the Ombudsman has a large volume of improvements to make, judging from the huge amount of really bad reviews! I'm still waiting to hear from the person in charge! My case should still be open, as I have till the 16th to submit questions! Which I have done and they have not been answered adequately! Yet once again I received an email from the adjudicator as of the 10th June saying the case had been closed. This is not acceptable. I have not said I am satisfied nor has my window to question what I have received re "the fob off emails" closed. So I'd like to speak to the person in charge! If you don't mind. Thank you!

Pointless. There to review service and then say they couldn't know what would have happened if it had been looked at differently. Also took 7 months to even respond.

Very poor service. Wrote a very long and detailed complaint with lots of evidence of 6 months harassment, agent threatening to illegally enter our home and failing to comply to their own complaints process... They found that the agents were allowed to enforce 6 months of interrupting our peaceful living, calling us multiple times a week to arrange viewings, emailing us to complain that two days a week wasn't enough to permit strangers into our home, threatening to enter our home without permission despite us saying we would call the police if they did, and when we complained the estate agency basically said they did not care at all and refused to have an independent review of the complaint... ombudsman only found that they should have taken more care in how they spoke to tenants as they'd caused one of the tenants to become suicidal from stress!! Their offer of £150 compensation is an extremely poor substitute for anything to deter this behaviour in future or to compensate for 6 months of ruined enjoyment of our home and a further 5 months of additional harassment... it took 9 months to get that far and the estate agents refused to hand over documents!
Also submitted evidence that the estate agents claimed to have deleted my data against TPOs own guidelines and the law and they said they couldn't include this.
Absolutely useless, I hope they can issue a review of this judgement as at the moment court seems like the only option to deter criminal estate agents.

What a shamble of Property Ombudsman! They are supposed to be here to help people, yet they do not accept your case, they call you to pontificate on how they cannot do what they should do, then recite all the things you can read online. Anyone knows where Property Ombudsman can be be actioned into some legal action, they really are not doing what they are supposed to do.

I have raised a complaint about an agent. I had evidence ignored by my adjudicator and also had a pitiful penalty proposed where they were found to be culpable. The only way to end this charade is to contact the press and your mp. I plan to do this. Unless action is taken this will continue and others will face the same outcome.

I had waited a long time to get my complaint in sight and resolved, and I had almost given up on TPO. Then a Resolution Officer wrote to me out of the blue and she obtained for me a goodwill award and apology from the property management company. TPO are to me the last authority to take my building manager to account so I hope the timeline to accept and investigate a complaint could be shortened before reaching a resolution. Tenants/Leaseholders' rights should also be reviewed and updated. My complaint was filed with the property management company since January 2024 but they turned a deaf ear. My experience was they were allowed a long time to do their internal investigation but quick to impose charge and penalty without consent or even notice to their tenants/leaseholders.

I wish i can rate Zero.

I filed the complaint since Aug2024, I waited over 6 months and still no progress, no agent pickup the case, then i wrote the first review in trustpilot on Feb2025(over 7 months), and i emailed to the customer and was told the case was escalated. Again, there was still no agent to pick up the case, that means ZERO progress in 10 months. If you count on their services, it is probably time to forget it.

Have to wait a long time to get an adjudicator assigned, and you might not agree fully with the ruling, but TPO are literally the only way to take RMG to account.
The whole leasehold process needs overhauling, but I’m grateful for the diligence of our adjudicator in the interim.

After a Data Protection Subject Access Request I can see The Property Ombudsman wrote to the service management agency. "We have no final response from you on file. We will move to review the case." (Note in fact the service agent had never sent any reply to all four stages of their own complaint request from me the customer).

SIX months later from The Property Ombudsman "Your case is unlikely to succeed and is closed. We will not enter into any further correspondence with you."

It means that any of their companies they are The Ombudsman for can ignore all of the customer's complaints including going through the whole escalation process with the original company and The Property Ombudsman will find that the complaint has no merit or chance of success.

There is no point using The TPOS service if they allow the companies they supposedly make findings on to ignore the customers as the go through the internal complaint process. The TPOS allow them never to issue a final viewpoint letter (or any response) and will rule against you.

It is exactly what I thought. The companies pay The TPOS to judge them. So to keep them paying them they don't judge them and even with bare clear facts in front of them just remove the complaint from The TPOS system.

Update - after the reply from The Property Ombudsman I notice they can reply to TrustPilot reviews within 24 hrs. Yet even after five months of a complaint being in for one of their agents they hadn't got around to make findings on it.

When they say you have a case they should explain why. We waited over 6 months to be rejected. And now we have nothing to help us take our complaint further. Shocking

Please don't dismiss the difficulties I experienced. My letting agents authorized an unsafe gas engineer who ultimately caused irreparable damage to my boiler. Despite clear evidence, the letting agents denied any responsibility, falsely attributing the issue to an aging boiler. After lodging a complaint with the Ombudsman, it took over a year for them to respond, siding with the letting agents despite the evidence I presented. It is difficult to understand how their advisors can justify such decisions. Ultimately, I sought legal advice, and after a year and a half of stress, the letting agents agreed to cover the £3,000 cost to replace the boiler. If you look at any bad letting agents and managing agents they will be subscribed to The Property Ombudsman.