Winky-Worthless (Winkworth)

Member Name: Maiakins

Product:	Winkworth
Date:	12/12/03 (3805 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good website

Disadvantages: Unreliable, Overpriced, Poor time-keeping

There is a particular breed of PSB (Public School Boy), which you should avoid at all cost. They are distinguishable by their braying voice, their swanky car, their floppy curtain hair and general arrogance. These dangerous predators can be found in their natural habitat - any central or west London estate agents. Winkworths estate agency is brimming full of these strange creatures, ready and waiting to screw you over. I have been bitten several times, but luckily I lived to tell the sorry tale ?

ABOUT WINKWORTHS
Winkworth is London?s largest independent estate agents. It has 52 offices in the UK, most of which are located in London. It is currently expanding into Sheffield, where it has 6 offices.

It has both property rentals and sales, as well as auctions and chartered surveyors services. Generally speaking, it has a mixed range of properties from small studio flats to multi-million pound penthouses.

SEARCHING FOR PROPERTIES
If you are looking to buy or rent a property, you can search through their selection either on the office window or by going inside and speaking to an agent. They also have a website, which is updated regularly: www.winkworth.co.uk

Much as I detest Winkworths, I have to admit that the website is excellent and hence I am feeling generous enough to give it 2 stars (though my heart wants to give it zilch).

It is easy to search for properties in a specific area, and you can narrow down your search to: how many bedrooms; price range; and property type. If you want, you can look in more than one area at the same time.

Once you have found a property you like the look of, you can browse around the details with a floorplan, virtual tour (with cameras spinning around the various rooms) and a location map. This is a really helpful feature to help you decide if you want to look around the property in person, and also useful for gaining comparisons of what you get for your money.

The
best bit about the website is their London price guide (found under News and Information). This gives you the price range of various properties in different parts of London. So, for example, you should expect to pay between £275,000 and £500,000 for a 1-bedroom flat in Kensington, compared to £90,000-£130,000 in Croydon.

MY EXPERIENCE: RENTING
The first time I used Winkworths was when my husband and I were looking to rent a property in London. We found a 1 bedroom flat with Winkworths. We paid our holding fee (a few hundred pounds), signed the contract saying we intended to rent the flat, gave them all the details of our personal references, bank, employers and so forth. They checked these all out and were fine. We then paid our deposit (£1500).

It was the day before we were due to move into the house. We?d packed up our old house and were about to load everything into the van. You will not believe what happened next - we received a call from Winkworths saying that they had decided to rent the flat to someone else. Apparently, someone came in with a bunch of cash and all their references. The person offered to pay an extra £50 a month. Despite all the contracts, references, deposit we paid ? it all meant nothing according to Winkworths.

You can imagine what a stink we made. They eventually gave us back our deposit, but even so, we were left in a real dilemma. The next day we were due to move out of our rented accommodation and had nowhere to live (as someone was moving into our old place). Thanks to Winky-worthless we had to sleep on a friend?s floor for a month or so while we found somewhere else to rent. And all our stuff had to be put into storage, which we ended up paying for. We did think seriously about sueing them, since they had signed the contract. We sought legal advice and were told we had a good case, but it was a busy time and we were getting married and didn?t want to get into a court battle.

MY EXPERIENCE: BUY
ING
Despite that awful experience, when it came to looking to buy a house we did not rule out Winkworths completely. Since we were looking in other parts of London, we thought that perhaps those agents might not be so bad since they were different offices.

How wrong were we? We made an appointment to look at a flat with the Stoke Newington office. At the specified time, we waited outside the flat in the rain for half an hour. When we called the office, it was on answerphone. When we finally got hold of someone the next day, there were no apologies at all.

The next time we used Winkworths was the Blackheath office. Guess what? Again, the person did not turn up. In case you are thinking we are forgetful and writing down the wrong time, this never happened to us with other agents. The next time we used the Blackheath office, they triple-booked us.

In addition to the terrible time-keeping and service, they knew hardly anything about the properties they were trying to sell. Even the most basic background information was too much for the agents to cope with. And as for the properties themselves, they were noticeably over-valued compared to other properties in the area with other agents.

MY FRIENDS EXPERIENCE: SELLING
I have never sold a property, so cannot discuss my personal experience of selling with Winkworths. However, my friend Barbara was recently selling her house. She got several local estate agents in to value the house. The Winkworths agent came in and within 30 seconds said 200K and started to walk out the door. All the other agents had done a thorough valuation, checking for damp, structural subsidence and the like, all the time asking lots of questions. Not Winkworths. Although Barbara asked them to look around the house, they said it was not necessary. They did not even go upstairs, nor did they know how many bedrooms the place had! How can you do a valuation like that? Not surprisingly, she did not use Winkworth
s!

CONCLUSION
When you are looking for somewhere to live, either renting or buying, it is important not to narrow your options. It therefore pains me to completely rule out Winkworths. But I have only had terrible experiences with them and from friends I have heard nothing but negative stories. I am sure they probably have some good offices in London, but I am yet to come across them. So, until I hear of good experiences, I will continue to call them Winky-worthless!

Summary: