Bman

Unfortunately I have to confirm everything said below

Scam operation

They advertised a no-deposit service, they then surprisingly took a £350 deposit, never returned and disappeared

Reported to the authorities

Be aware of the scamming operation

I was attracted by their “guaranteed higher price”, which however had a date of expiry

I received the prepaid packaging from them very late, so that the guaranteed price period had shrunk (I had to proactively call them to get the package sent and lost 5 days)

Once the phone was in their possession, they maintained that dust stuck into the speaker was a sign of wearing, and the battery was very conveniently 2% below the threshold of excellent condition, so they dropped the price initially locked by -53%

Which would have been ok to refuse, but they had me locked in at that point, because if I wanted my phone back - they would have charged £30 to send it, which basically made the net amount of selling it elsewhere non-economics

Also - nowhere close to be “same day payment”, they had my phone for 8 days and I had to chase a payment 4 times

One to avoid - plenty of honest competitors out there

This website is a scam operation - you can read online the thousands of reports and negative press

Unfortunately I didn’t read before using

I was prompted to pay this amount as it was supposed to be applied against the money owed to a coach I was booking for a session

To my surprise - the coach never replied, and I found myself having subscribed to a monthly subscription without ever having been communicated so, or requested so

After that, I started to be contacted by a number of spurious accounts via a same standard message, and none of those seemingly more legitimate profiles ever returned a single one of my messages. After a few days - I started to be contacted by what looked like being sex workers

I searched this company online and realised thousands of people had the exact same experience

I tried to contact them multiple times - including a “live chat” which is just a pre-set series of options and messages that lead nowhere, and the company is entirely non-responsive

This is scam operation, which I have also reported to authorities

FirstPort recently became the managing agent of our building, a mid-sized 160+ units development in London, and the service level and conditions of living in our estate have downgraded dramatically since, while our costs have skyrocketed (more than +50%) with no explanation

In the space of 2 years we had 4 different building managers, with gaps of multiple months with nobody on site between one another – while still been charged. No continuity plans were ever made, so each new-comer has been incapable of providing essential services for long after installing

Communication is insufficient and very difficult – the last building manager hasn’t picked up the phone once since his start last fall, residents meetings / reporting have stopped altogether, most email sent are ignored or replied to with long delays, and when they are – often involve these long templates of barely relevant pre-drafted service refusal excuses. When issues are escalated to the helpdesk, the waiting time normally surpasses the 45min, often involves dealing with people with an insufficient command of the English language, often completely unaware of how the Firstport business operates or what to do in the circumstance, and most of the time end up just bouncing any responsibility back to the absent building manager

The out of hours service (supposed to cover for emergencies when onsite personnel aren’t around) operates between 9am and 5pm only and during weekdays only – so all our recent emergencies (including a water outage, a sewage leak and a recent security issue) have all been left unattended / unactioned for days

We have had recurring issues with trash collection (unrelated to the strikes), simple maintenance fixes (like doors or garage gates) are never done permanently and systematically break down again within weeks, essential services like reviewing CCTV are refused giving different silly excuses to different people, and even the police mentioned that they were unable to reach our building manager when trying to make contact past a crime we reported, which was under investigation

This level of disservice is accompanied by a rather irritating attitude of denying communication, pushing back on essential services and most frustratingly – by a vertical increase in costs and charges.
In the past 2 years the development costs increased by +50%, the building accounts were distributed with 20 months of delay, through different sets of documents contradicting each other, and still today no explanation has been given around the cost increase, despite continued demands for clarity.
Their online payment system often misses payments received and automatically charges non-sensical penalties of 20%. They have this practice of slotting unjustified extra charges to the bill, that nobody at Firstport is capable of explaining, and over which more penalties are charged when the payment of these unidentified costs is refused – and this appears to be a common practice of theirs as evidenced by the multiple similar comments on this platform too. In fact, Barry Gardiner MP recently raised the issue of FirstPort's unfair charges in Parliament, the company is currently the subject of a petition for investigation, and has a long history of wrongdoing and scandals well covered in the press before and after the name was changed from Peverel.

Sadly, is rather unlikely that any individual experiencing the damages and frustration of dealing with Firstport will ever be able alone to change his / her managing agent, but the hope with this post is to help anyone still in the lucky position of making a choice, to save themselves and avoid this business. Or at least to create history around the continuation of the company bad practices

I contacted them among a number of other short-term letting agencies.

I was ultimately captured by the friendly and reasonable manners of her front-office manager Veronica. She's very amiable, and was reasonable in negotiating a couple of adjustments I wanted to make to the agreement.

Trouble started when their operating representative got to my property. This lady comes in to check the property, note where things are, do inventory, and ask possible particular requirements. In the case of my property this is particularly relevant, because is a warehouse conversion with some special features that need to be known.

Note - the lady doesn't even have a piece of paper and a pen, nor she has a phone out or something to take notes on.
 
When I ask if she is not taking notes, she asks me for a pen and paper, which I provide, and for the rest of the chat she just writes down two half-sentences without even completing one - visibly just to address my concern and pretend notes are being taken. 

So - ZERO NOTES OF THE DISCUSSION / PROPERTY DETAILS TAKEN.

When I go for about a month, they manage to find 4 tenants. Hard to judge performance under this point of view. Seemed reasonable - not impressive nor disappointing. It was plain high-season, and in my experience another agency managed to do better in a less favourable time of the year, although hard to compare - as it depends on a number of factors.

The real trouble comes when I am back
- My two large windows of the living room are broken
- The kitchen electric black stoves are heavily scratched
- The bedroom carpet has coffee and shoes marks in multiple places
- The tenants fully helped themselves with house supplies (which to an extent is fine) but here they drank 3 pretty expensive wine bottles I had, they took away the perfume of my girlfriend and a full pack of toothbrushes...
- On a big mirror I have, I had a pen drawing of an artist friend of mine (the portrait of a lady) which I specifically mentioned to the operations lady I wanted to keep and preserve. When I get back I find it wiped out, and the blue colour of the pen has been dragged on the white wall next to the mirror, which is now stained

Anyways

I don't make any scene, I just mention the facts and I only ask for the damages to the windows and the stoves - that are pretty clearly visible as soon as you step into the living room. So I contact Veronica again and this Naushad dude pops up out of nowhere. He is entirely unaware of the circumstances or the property. He just immediately says that 

"damages are are part of the cost of rental"

That starts to irritate me. We have a first exchange, I point him to their agreement, and he agrees that that statement was stupid. So he now says that

"it's difficult to spot damages if they are not visible"

Said by him who doesn't even know what property are we talking about, nor has he ever been there or asked for images. This is just another attempt to refuse responsibility. When I show the pictures of the damages - which are so damn obvious - then he changes version again, and now

"they can't check all properties because different housekeepers check the properties in and out"

Which essentially makes doing the inventory completely useless, and means that they just DO NOT CHECK properties for damages as a standard practice, in fact he adds

"a housekeeper will not be able to check the flat as this would require carrying out an inventory which is not economical or viable in short lets"

So they don't check property for damages because it would cost too much to them (?!). At the end, he just keeps adding more and more offensive excuses and refuses to pay damages. I end the relationship and ask for my keys to be sent back. They even lose the keys and takes 3 months for me to get them back.

Bottom line

By trusting them I ended up with more damages than revenues, and a painful and offensive treatment.

Don't fall for the friendly manners of Veronica - the operations behind her are plainly and simply set up to be ENTIRELY DISREGARDING of your property, and they will refuse to pay the damages they procure up to the point of being utterly ridiculous and frankly offensive.