Complaint Review: Ainsworth Lord Estates - Darwen Select State/Province

We approached Paul Ainsworth Lord of Ainsworth Lord Estates in September 2011 to ask if he could take over the letting and management of one of our properties in Darwen.

We went with Ainsworth Lord Estates because there were a considerable amount of 'Let Agreed' boards and excellent reviews online about them.

It since turns out that they are paying for fake reviews from people in Pakistan and India on Google Places and other review sites online.  This abuse has been reported to Google in a hope they ban the agents website on the Google search results pages and remove their videos on Youtube.  

We have also placed complaints with Zoopla and Rightmove.

The video testimonial on You Tube is also fake. And in a dodgy attempt to outsmart YouTube and Google they have paid for fake comments and 'likes' on most of their other videos.  This is very obvious way of an attempt to get their terribly put together presentations to the top of Youtube and to get them listed on Google.

It were these tactics that got them our business initially and we are certain other investors and landlords outside the area of Darwen will have also been fooled by this. 

Over the following couple of months after we gave them the first property, we stupidly asked Paul the owner of Ainsworth Lord Estates to do the management of our other properties in and around Darwen. To our knowledge no management contracts were ever signed. We have requested copies of these but they will not provide them. Nor will they give us details of the tenants in the properties.  We have had to try and contact the tenants ourselves but when we are based over a 40 minute drive away, its proved very difficult.

We have recently discovered that one of the properties in Darwen is actually empty and has been empty for some time.  We were never made aware of this but this was in fact a regular occurence over the period we used this agent.  Tenants would come and go and we would only realise this when we checked their hard to read rental statements.

We have a sneaky feeling that this agent has taken the tenant from this particular property and placed him another one of his properties elsewhere.  We asked the agent where the tenant had gone and why we were not advised he left. But we did not get a satisfactory answer.  We are trying to locate this tenant and we know the truth will come out!

This property in question has been left in a bad state of repair and the tenant obviously had pets and were smokers.  The cost to put this property back into a good state of repair will be in the £1000's.  Ainsworth Lord will not give us details of the tenant or the deposit so we will be left to cover the repair costs ourselves!  Meanwhile we are now down on rental income which is a massive worry.

It was also not long after Sept 2011 that problems began to arise with monies being paid to us late or not at all. Money was paid into the wrong accounts dispite countless phone calls and emails from us to the agent to try to rectify the matter.  The statements were always extremely confusing.

We spoke to the letting assistant/manager called Fran and she sent an email accepting responsibilty for a lot of the errors.  On one occasion they were blaiming incorrect payments on the fact that they had switched management systems.  On another occasion they blaimed it on the fact Paul Ainsworth Lord was on holiday and only he could make online payments. And on another occassion it was blaimed on their move into new premises.  We have emails to support these facts.

There were constantly unauthorised repairs.  We subsequently had to send an email to advise that we were lowering the repair authorisistaion amounts so we could a tighter control of the repairs.  But they continued regardless with unauthorised repairs.

We received constant complains directly off tenants that they were getting ignored by the agent, hence they came to us.  At that point we were not aware of the repairs hence we agreed to undertake the repair.  We have multiple letters off current and past tenants to support these claims.

One tenant got so anoyed with the bad service from the Ainsworth Lord Estates that they threatened to issue us with a Statutaory Demand. We made the necessary repairs and reinbursed the tennant and paid a nominal amount as a gesture of goodwill. We complained to the agent but they would not assist us and advised us that we should not have paid the tenant any money and should have let them issue the stat demand.  They said he would help us get out of it legally. This tenant has provided a letter detailing their dealings with the agent which will be used in evidence against them.

We also visited another property in the area which was being managed by Ainsworth Lord and the tenant would not answer the door.  We gazed through the window and we were totally shocked to see the state of the property in side.  How this tenant has been left to treat our property in such a way is disgusting!

After a long time of bad service we advised the agent that we were removing the properties from them.  The stress created by this letting agent resulted in me having a nervous breakdown. Paul was made aware of this and has since called us liars and made a stupid comment that I was not poorly at all.

We agreed to give them two months notice on the condition they worked with the new agent and assisted with a smooth transfer of management.  This agent then stopped paying us our rents.  Dispite emails and phone calls asking where our rents were we got ignored.  After two months on a Friday evening before the Easter Weekend the agent sent us a statement stating that they were keeping the two months worth of rental income.  The statement detailed that there was a penalty charge of 2 months rent totalling over £2000.  Hence according them we owed them money. There was a note on the statement that said unless payment was made within 7 days they would not release the keys, tenancy agreements and any other paperwork.

After checking the facebook profile of Paul Ainsworth Lord and Deborah Ainsworth Lord his wife, that Saturday they posted photos of themselves in St Ives having a great time with their kids.  Meanwhile our weekend was ruined as we had no money to even pay for food for our children!

I cant help but wonder that the timing of the sending of this statement was on purpose in an attempt to get maximimum impact which would ruin our weekend. They must get a weird kick out of it.

Since this day we have missed mortgage payments, been unable to cover credit card fees and other loads.  The fact this agent has kept our rental income and created other issues to properties, and has started a chain of events which could see us in financial ruin.

My fiancee has been crying daily and whole events over the last two years has placed a stress on our relationship which is affecting our two young children.  We are now looking at a seperation as the strain as become too much.

We have sinced sent letters and emails detailing our complaint and we have never received a response.  We have requested a copy of their complaints proceedure as per the Ombudsman guidlines and our requests have been ignored.  

On the 8^th May 2014 we went in to the agents office unanounced.  We spoke with Paul Ainsworth Lord and after a one hour heated discussion the only thing he would release was the keys. He was extremely cocky and arrogant and said 'take me to court, I know the law'. 

His offices have an excessive amount of CCTV cameras and notices advising about the CCTV hence he must get a lot of angry people in there.

I told him how this matter had affected my fiancee and he replied 'Well there is no love loss there!'.  I did extremely well to keep my calm.

This man is obviously in denial and is totally oblivious to the fact there are a que of people including building contractors, tenants and other landlords all filing complains about him to the property ombudsman.

It is everyones fear however that this man has previously had a business go under.  And he may well do it again with this one and take everyones rental income and deposits.

As mentioned above, after doing a lot of research in the area of Darwen we have been placed in touch with several landlords and tenants that have had similar experiences with this agent.

All the evidence and people we have spoken to has suggested that this man is a crook.  This agent has a duty of care to tenants and the landlords and he has failed on all accounts.

We have since discovered that they have a tactic with the 'to let' and 'for sale' sign boards where he puts lets agreed on properties that he owns when tenants are already longstanding in there.  He is making false claims and misleading statements that he is the leading letting agent in the area. 

We feelreally stupid now for not doing our research initially.  We were warned not to use Paul Ainsworth Lord from day one but we ignored the warnings and got suckered in by the conning marketing tricks.

Contractors, builders, landlords, tenants and even the other letting agents in the area are totally ashamed of the attitude and tactics of this letting agent.

This company needs to be stopped.  We have heard stories of landlords and tenants being in total dispair after their dealings with this company.  Although what has happened to us and the affects it has had on my family are really bad, there are in fact worse stories than this which I'm certain will be publicised very soon.

Apparently Paul Ainsworth Lord and his wife Deborah Ainsworth Lord visits the Church each week for mass. They both need to ask God for forgiveness.  I can only hope that members of the Church read this and look at them with utter disgrace and total pitty.

If anyone is reading this and have been affected by this letting agent can they please get intouch so we can do a 'class action' against him.