Making a formal complaint
As a regulated RICS firm we have in place a Complaints Handling Procedure to enable you to escalate issues or concerns that you have been unable to resolve with your local Office. We will endeavour to assess the facts fairly and our goal is to find an amicable solution for all parties. If you are not happy with our final response however, you will have the opportunity to have your complaint reviewed and considered by an independent redress provider.
We do not want you to be unhappy and would therefore always encourage you to raise any concerns with your local office at the earliest opportunity. This helps us improve our relationship with you and often enables issues to be addressed swiftly to everyone’s mutual satisfaction.
Your formal complaint
If you have been unable to resolve your complaint with the local office, you may escalate the matter by writing to us. We ask that you put your complaint in writing to make sure that we have a full understanding of the reasons for your complaint. Please provide as much detail as possible including:
- the office you have been in contact with,
- what service we were providing,
- where you consider we have failed to meet expected standards, and
- what solution you would ideally like to achieve.
You can write to us at,
Carter Jonas Complaints,
51 Northbrook Street,
Newbury
RG14 1DT
or email us at complaints@carterjonas.co.uk
We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint within 3 working days.
Assessing your complaint
We will investigate the circumstances of your complaint including contacting the local office and we will provide a summary of our findings within 15 working days of the acknowledgement.
If you are still not satisfied, you may contact us again and we will have a further 15 working days to provide a Final Response.
Independent review
If you are still not satisfied when you have received our Final Response, or 8 weeks has elapsed since you first wrote to us, you can choose to take your complaint to an independent redress provider, as listed below.
There are different providers depending on who you are and the type of service your complaint relates to; we will advise in our Final Response which redress scheme is appropriate.
What is not covered
Please note we are unable to consider disputes between landlords and tenants which must be dealt with locally.
Our lettings teams will always endeavour to assist both parties to resolve any such issues and where appropriate will recommend that end of tenancy deposit disputes are referred to the appropriate tenancy deposit protection scheme for independent adjudication.
This procedure is not applicable for concerns arising from legal or regulatory obligations including, but not limited to matters arising in relation to Data Protection and Anti-Money Laundering.
Outstanding monies
You should be aware that if you have any fees or payments outstanding (including rent) these will remain due. In the event monies are due and you are in dispute with us The Property Ombudsman (TPOS) advises that you make payment on a “without prejudice” basis which means the payment cannot be used as evidence should the dispute proceed to Court.
We hope it will not be necessary, but we would remind you that we will be entitled to follow our normal procedures for collecting any outstanding monies due including where appropriate applying interest charges or initiating Court proceedings.
