Both A S Moon & Partners, based in Northumberland, and CityWest.co.uk Limited, based in Hounslow, have been banned for multiple failures including failure to comply with parts of the The Property Ombudsman’s (TPO) codes of practice.
Other failures included partial co-operation with the Ombudsman’s investigations following complaints and non-payment of the Ombudsman’s penalties.
The decision to expel CityWest arose following a complaint from a potential buyer who paid the agent £2,500 for what he maintained was a deposit, but the agent said was a fee for speaking to mortgage lenders and arranging suitable solicitors. The fee was not returned when the purchase fell through.
The Ombudsman called the fee charging an unfair business practice, as the buyer, whose first language was not English and was buying for the first time, was not made aware that this was not standard industry practice. Despite the agent claiming that they “charged him accordingly” for their time, the buyer was billed before any work had been carried out.
The Ombudsman also upheld a complaint about poor communication, and awarded a refund of most of the fee and compensation for aggravation to the complainant, totalling £2,800.
The decision to expel A S Moon & Partners from voluntary TPO membership arose following a complaint from a landlord of two properties, who said the agent returned a deposit to his tenant in full despite there being damage to the property and without checking the landlord wished to claim against it. On a second property, the landlord complained about not receiving rent and failure to carry out a check-out inventory despite providing a managed service to the landlord. The landlord also complained that A S Moon & Partners had failed to respond to his complaint. The Ombudsman upheld all the complaints to varying degrees and made the award of £750.
Gerry Fitzjohn, vice chairman of the TPO Board, said: “In these cases, both agents have failed to pay awards made. […] I would like to remind agents of their obligation to co-operate with any investigations by TPO.
“Cases of non-compliance are taken very seriously and dealt with by the Disciplinary and Standards Committee (DSC) of the TPO Council.”
