Connells Group Reviews 

Absolutely the worst estate agent going and also very rude over the phone

Worst agent experience of my life. I was assured of a dedicated agent before signing the contract and was then passed from pillar to post with no continuity. Had agents doing viewings who had never seen my house. Connells proposed using their conveyancing solicitors to both me and potential buyers (conflict of interest). The solicitor firm I was given (Swiitch) were beyond awful and I had to check every document for them due to their lack of interest/diligence/experience. The solicitor firm my buyers were given (Conveyancing Direct) are owned by Connells (another conflict of interest) and were slow and unresponsive. My onward purchase was also handled by Connells and that seller was also using Conveyancing Direct (third conflict of interest). Due to Connells not doing their upfront due diligence, the purchase failed and subsequently my sale failed. Lost money and spent 7 months of my life in a stressful situation. Awful, incompetent, disgraceful

CONNELLS ABINGDON
Worst estates agency ever and poorly behaved managing. DO NOT TRUST, either for selling or buying a property.
I have experienced the worst encounter with the senior branch manager Miss C-R White.
For the past 6 weeks, I have started the process of buying a 1bed property in Reade Avenue, Abingdon. The objective of this investment was for my son to live while studying at University in Oxford.
White has took over the administration of the sale from a young employee who has since left or made redundant from her job.
White has done nothing than misleading me or the vendor as she refused several times to transfer my messages to the seller/owner of the property, those messages were related to negotiation. Which lead me to offer full asking price but later on I found out through valuation than the property is worth far less. So I went back to her as she is supposed to be the one to mediate between me and the seller. She simply REFUSED to go back to the seller with my new offer which was reflecting the valuation report. Outrageous!!!
Beware homeowners and investors, her favourite word is “confused”, a tactic to misleading. So miss «I am confused » has crashed the sale, less than 24hr after the seller agreed to a £5000 discount. Yes, you read it well. All because of a misplaced ego.
Miss White this is your role, to deal with people in a kindly manner, specially people that’s paying you commission to deal with their property.
This was the most appealing behaviour and poorly professionalism, dishonest I have ever experienced in the world of buying and selling property. What a disgrace and a dishonour for her own title, senior branch manager and profession, estate’s agent.
So, please do not fall for her «confusion» game. CONNELLS Estate’s agent in Abingdon is to be AVOID at any cost. They will make you lose your hard earned money, in fees to broker, solicitors and valuer.
And moreover, at the time of writing this review, it has been more than 48hr that I am awaiting a formal withdrawal letter outlying the reasons the seller has dropped the sale. After several exchange of emails she told me to go to my solicitors and tell them about the withdrawal, that I do not need a letter. She will only give the letter when her administrator will return to work. But when miss White??? Simply appealing.
Those are the kind of people who fails businesses. She is failing CONNELLS GROUP and the panel of Connells Group’s investors.
This branch in Abingdon is definitely bringing a bad image to Connells Group and investors. Avoid at any cost Connells Estates Agencies.

Extremely poor service after a rep visited to undertake a valuation on behalf of a mortgage company for a remortgage. Our house price on zoopla is showing £244,000 as the low end up to £264.000 high end. We had previously been on the open market for sale at £260,000 - £265000 and had received lots of viewings in 2 weeks, but decided to stay put and took it off the market.

The agent had no interest in listening to me about all the works we’ve had done since moving in, (we’ve done a full Reno) and then valued it at £245,000!!! Practically the lowest possible! We had 4/5 previous property valuations for local estate agents, there lowest was £255,000 3 weeks ago. your rep was here maybe 10 minutes? didn’t want to chat to me about the house, nothing. This has affected our mortgage offer.

He is seriously undervaluing properties clearly and this is having an affect on peoples mortgages and payments. I was even told I wasn’t allowed to appeal and ask for a second opinion so we’ve had to restart our remortgage application with a diffent company completely.

Very poor service.

Worst estate agency group of companies in the world!

They took two weeks to get a brochure together which was full of errors and then we moved to an IAMSOLD deal with the same group. This company is worse than totally useless. They have no customer service and never ever answer their phones. Hundreds of enquiries go unanswered. They are really just going through the motions but have no interest in selling your home at all., They advertised ours at the wrong price and wrong description and did not make it clear we were in an auction. They have negatively impacted the market. They are anti sales. If you want your house NOT sold or sold for less than it is worth then go ahead and use one of this group of companies. - Plus there is no way in the world to complain about them internally. No email. No address and no one ever ever ever answers the phones in any of their estate agencies.

Sold our property though the Southampton Bitterne branch and it was one of the worse experiences of our lives. Verbal agreements and prior discussions to signing with them were not honoured in the contract. After going through their compliance team and met with no resolution, our complaint is currently being reviewed by the property ombudsman. There is zero customer service or apologies for things that go wrong and if there are any delays or issues you will be met with the fact that when you sign a contact with them you are agreeing to pay their fee for completion of a sale only as it's not an SLA. Therefore you are not signing for an agreed level of service which basically means they can do whatever they want. Even management and Area Director's don't give a toss and was even told by one that we were making a mockery of their contracts. Connells are hard nosed and don't look at vendors as humans, but simply as a financial transaction, despite house moves being one of the most stressful experiences in peoples lives. We had to chase for feedback of which was always pretty vague, their vendor app never worked depsite asking numerous times for it to be resolved, we had to rewrite the description of our property, changed the photos on the advert and took better ones with a Samsung phone. Oh and be aware of their photographers who when you suggest photos for your property, you will likely be met with 'no that won't work' or when you make suggestions on a USP for your property for it to be ignored as what do you know? (You have only lived in the property for X number of years) As it turned out s requesting for a change in photos and layout ended up with the sale we needed. After being stuck in this contract with them and no way out to sell our property quickly (we had bought a I am Sold Auction property) we took matters in to our own hands and did the viewings ourselves. After Connells marketing the property for 6 weeks with 10 viewings and no offers, the 4 viewings we did ourselves resulted in 2 offers of which one we accepted. After questioning all of this with Connells their response is sorry you are unhappy but we did get you to completion....well after paying £2.5k they didn't really get to us completion on their own. They registered an applicant and we basically secured the buyer ourselves.

Please be warned about their tactics and their lack of transparency. The one saving grace was Adam who once we had an agreed sale was always amiable and friendly chasing up legal aspects. He is completely wasted in this toxic environment when it seems that the negotiators 'own' applicants, so don't be surprised when you call and want feedback, if you aren't talking to the negotiator who signed up the applicant you are unlikely to get any useful feedback.

We now have another property for sale and wouldn't touch a traditional agent with a bargepole and have signed up with purple bricks for £399. After learning that anyone can take photos, and do a floorplan plus your own viewings this is a considerable saving. We have been really impressed with the ease, speed and follow ups we have already recieved with an online agent compared to a traditional one. At he end of the day remember with Connells you are not signing a SLA, you are only signing to commit to paying their fees when you complete - regardless of how they perform until you get to that point. When you run into issues with them don't expect any apologies, or compensation with them, expect to be gas lit and blamed for not reading a contract properly.

Today I was advised by my solicitor to buy a home insurance for my newly purchased home. I spoke to Mr. Trevor Ward | General Insurance Expert of Connells Group regarding the price competitive and high quality quote. He was prompt and empathetic listener and provided a very good quote to me. This review is a token of appreciation to him.

Have had no end of problems from the get go as a managed tenant previously and a tenant about to vacate a property. They came in with landlord without permission, were caught on hidden camera saying all kinds of unprofessional and nasty things and now being pressured to have viewings when I'm doing the most stressful thing moving home as a single parent of two children, one of whom is autistic so as you can imagine it's been a nightmare avoid if you have them letting your property/managing a letting

Had a call with one of the mortgage advisers at Connells group and made it very clear that I wasn’t interested in any other products other than new mortgage deals.

Did they listen, “No”

What should have been a 15-minute call turned into one hour going through irrelevant questions.

This bogus company will try to flog you all sorts of products to earn commissions and I ended up sorting the new mortgage deal myself.

Save yourself time and money by avoiding this
company.

The group on the whole is a shambles. Disorganised and full of liars who pressure you into signing a contract with them.
Slow response and lack of urgency from the mortgage broker, never answered his phone and required to chase via email numerous times just to get a response. The Bairstow Eves Collier Row salesmen told us numerous lies to get us to sign a contract with them to sell our property. Was promised full sales progression services to help us with the sale of our property and purchase of the next. This service was not provided and we were updating their "sale progressor" with the updates as she was always about 4 weeks behind what was actually occurring. We were left to having to chase the purchase and sale at every step of the way. Paid a large fee for next to no service. If you wish to pay an extortionate fee to have the privilege of being ignored and needing to do all the work yourself, this is the company to use.

I used Connells for our recent re-mortgage and cannot rate them highly enough. We hit a number of hurdles along the way which we hadn't anticipated. Anthony Travers is exceptionally knowledgeable and professional. He dealt with the whole process seamlessly. I cannot thank him enough for his patience and reassurance. Am delighted with the outcome and will not hesitate to use him in the future. Thanks so much Anthony.

Please please please save yourself the stress and DON'T rent with Connells. From the start of our tenancy they were absolutely shocking. We met with a random woman who checked us in but she couldn't be more eager to get out of the door and be on her way. Left multiple tenants with one front door key, one fob and no keys for the back door at all. Had to chase up for weeks and weeks to get some sent. Ended up just going to get my own keys cut as it was going nowhere.
You are constantly being passed from person to person, there is never one single point of contact when you have an issue, and there is plenty of issues. They gave us the wrong codes for: The main gates to enter the flats, the bin storage and then when they changed the gate codes to get in they didn't even inform us! Had to ask other confused tenants in the car park before we got an answer. The actual flat hadn't been cleaned well at all when we checked in, dirty and hairs everywhere. Was months before someone arrived to fix the blocked drainage in the en suite, but it was still broken anyway. Now trying to get our deposit back is of course proving to be a nightmare, taking weeks to even get a reply. Please, if you are thinking to rent with Connells save yourself the time and go elsewhere. They put the minimum possible effort in and do not deserve a single penny of your rent. AVOID!

The worst service I've ever received. We received our flat dirty, untidy and with broken furniture and facilities. They advisors are absolutely unhelpful and unprofessional.We were reported repairs month ago in our first week of tenancy and still nothing is done. Think twice if you decide to use Connells because is the worst UK real estate agency I've ever had. Next week I'm going to inform local authorities about tenancy issues.

Rubbish service
Pressured into using their services
their trusted panels of business they use for their services are useless as they don't respond for months

AVOID AT ALL COSTS

Terrible agency. They operate like scammers, being that they are only after your deposit. Rude staffs as well. They don’t reply their mails, you have to keep calling them for updates. They made my renting experience stressful and traumatic. Ontop of all that stress, they threatened to withdraw my application after I’ve done my part as best as possible. Avoid them if possible.

Exceptionally Poor Service.
You get passed from pillar to post. Really incompetent and lazy staff, slow processes and systems. As a landlord I dont have time to chase them continuously for things they should have sorted out weeks ago.

So poor experience with them. Before peyment was taken, the Sequence Brooker was ringing every day. After payment made, totally change atitute. Lack of communication, no reply, ignoring, waiting forever, lying.
Because not receiving support from broker I made bad mistake pull out from property I was hoping to buy. Always been worrying when problem comes because this broker is not with you when really need.
They charge big amount of money for lifetime service. But no service after payment

Don't expect anything they say to actually happen. I have been waiting for the return of my deposit for 6 weeks now. New tenants have already moved in to my old apartment. They first promised they'd return it after the checks were done, then they promised it would be after a couple of weeks, then it was the next day and so on... still waiting. Have had to open a dispute with the TDS just to get it back. Avoid if possible.

Phil and the team have just been so amazing wouldn't have got through this with out them so helpful filling out paper work,printing and sending for me can't thank them enough Simon

I've had no dealings with this company ever but for some reason a person called Michaela Woolley keeps bombarding me with emails!?? Even after I block her they get thru! Why can't they get the message 🙄