Rowan Corporate Relocation - Very unimpressive!! (Other Services / General Comments)

Member Name: maggiemay

Product:	Other Services / General Comments
Date:	07/08/00 (59 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: Hassle and Stress, They would sell you short to make a quick sale (a good thing to remember if you are buying a property where the owners have relocated - put in a low offer esp if they have already moved out!)

Two years ago we relocated from one part of the country to another. As it was a company move and my husband's company were paying our relocation expenses, we had to do everything via their chosen corporate relocation company.
The move involved us being given a guaranteed price for our house so that you can go ahead and buy another property without waiting for yours to be sold. However Rowan have to
estimate the value (and this is often at a disadvantage to you being some £8-£10k below the market price). They do say that anything over this figure you receive, but our experience showed that if we hadn't been very actively involved in any negotiation with the Estate Agents (who we had chosen ourselves) then the property would have fetched £4000 less than it eventually did, and we would have been the losers. Luckily for us we had already had the house valued by several Estate Agents before Rowan became involved, as their "preferred" agents who we get the impression we would then have been forced to go with, were one of the lower valuers, who sell them quick, sell them cheap. So imagine what a loss you would make on a guaranteed price that was £10,000 lower than an already very low valuation figure!! We had to have their "preferred"
removals company, and because our furniture had to go into storage for 3 weeks whilst the new house was being finnished,they went with a company that was near to them (and obviously on some sort of deal)despite there being a BAR member of the same group in our nearest city, that we had experience of ourselves, and new to be good. The ones we ended up with,had a bunch of big kids that were more interested in chasing each other around with water pistols, than packing our home into cartons. They packed the deep fat fryer in with our best curtains, and lost my husbands steps in their storage depot. But these were minor things compared to the pressure that was put on us to move out before our new home was c
ompleted so that our buyer could get in early. Rowan were suppose to be working to help us, but were so scared of losing a buyer that they caused us so much unneccessary grief. We have a disabled child, and I was pregnant at the time, yet I had to go and live at one end of the country and cope for 3 weeks with our 3 existing children, whilst my husband was at the other end in a tiny Bachelor flat. The stress this placed us under was enormous, Rowan totally disregarded our feelings, and we got the general impression that they would do whatever was necessary to save as much money as they could as it wasn't us but my husband's company who were paying their bill. However we did feel justified in complaining most strongly to my husbands employers about the way Rowan had dealt with us, in the hope that they would decide not to use them in future, and spare other employees what we had to go through.

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