Purple Frog, Nottingham

The agency was utterly abhorrent to work with. To my knowledge, this is the first review I’ve ever written; I’m not one to make a fuss of it when something doesn’t go my way. However, even I have my limits and I regret that my passivity may have ever contributed to this vile company’s assumption it can tread on the rights of tenants without consequence. I have suffered through this miserable organisation’s garbage for coming up on 18 months now, and I urge anyone who thinks complaints against PurpleFrog are exaggerated to read through everything below before making the mistake of using this group like I did.

A disclaimer, to begin; on the rare occasion I successfully managed to talk to someone at PurpleFrog they were understanding and tried as much as possible to struggle against their organisation in order to provide myself and my housemates our basic human rights. This company’s rot spreads from the top down.

Upon arriving at the house I found the entire building in an absolute state; I spent the first day alone in the kitchen, scrubbing what was clearly years worth of grease and mold from between each tile and off each handle and hob-piece the previous cleaners had somehow managed to miss, though I’d be shocked if the higher management had actually sent cleaners and not just a pair of their lowest paid workers with a scrubbing brush. The floors were so sticky it took 3 runs with a mop for the water to stop coming up gray. The skirting board was unattached to the base and just lay in the middle of the kitchen floor. The cupboards had no backs and instead opened onto bare piping (which I would a few days later learn had mice in it). When I went to open the chest freezer I found it hadn’t been cleaned and was full of moldy scraps of raw chicken and vegetables, and smelt like raw sewage. The carpets were unwashed. There was clearly painted over dry rot. The garden had weeds up to my waist in every crack that took three full days to pull out, with dandelion stalks thicker than my finger. The microwave’s inside had rusted. There was no kettle, no toaster, no iron, and the vacuum was non-functional. When I went to turn the heating on, I found that the boiler (from 2001, which I was later told by a contracted plumber he had recommended replacing several years ago) turned out to be out of pressure and require a screwdriver to add water to; the screw itself had a head so old and worn the screwdriver could barely stay inside to turn it and slipped out repeatedly before I could turn the valve back off. When the boiler started to go over 2 bars of pressure, water began flooding out of every pipe and it took multiple tries to get the emergency maintenance to call a plumber out; the plumber recommended replacing the entire system, but PurpleFrog clearly weren’t willing to pay for it and just said to keep using it if the water had stopped coming out of it.

PurpleFrog never fixed that pressure valve. It also took them several months and several reminders to finally send someone to clean the freezer which was clearly a health hazard. After that, the house more or less stayed together for a month before the shower, which was lined with lino sheet screwed to the walls instead of tile or sheet plastic began to leak into the downstairs; this took upwards of a month and several dozen phone calls to fix. Then, the boiler we’d been told to ignore started breaking down again. First we spent several days without hot water or heat whilst PurpleFrog sent multiple plumbers all of whom told them to replace the system and were clearly replaced until PurpleFrog found someone who said it was fine. Eventually they relented and replaced the boiler, but were apparently unwilling to pay the plumbers to properly rewire the thermostat system to the new boiler. Shockingly, the thermostats then all broke leaving us without heat again. Next PurpleFrog sent someone to force all the thermostats open, but this made every radiator in the house permanently active including several in rooms we couldn’t open as the owners were away with the only key; PurpleFrog did not own spares. Finally, after two weeks in midwinter during which time we had no hot water and no heating, PurpleFrog sent someone to fix the system. I would like to note that during this time they would give vague estimates on a fix date before those days would come by with nothing happening, and due to clear understaffing it would often take upwards of a dozen phone calls a day to get a single response; even the emergency line went to voice mail more often than not.

The straw that has broken the camel’s back occurred last weekend. After getting a functional boiler and heating system last year, fighting PurpleFrog all the way, we finally got through a month without a critical issue this year. However, the issue I reported on the first day in this house finally occurred; the screw we have to use to keep the boiler pressurised finally became too worn to close. The last 3 days water has been pouring out of the overflow part of the house whilst we are once again without heat in winter. We have called PurpleFrog every day and they have done nothing. In fact, when I called the emergency line to first report it I was told it was my fault for not having had it dealt with earlier, something I found laughable after reporting it 18 months ago and having had nothing happen, as well as for daring to put pressure back in the boiler when it was at 0 bars. This is the fourth time in 18 months where there have been catastrophic failures, mostly in midwinter, which PurpleFrog have been too money-grubbing or lazy or both to try to fix. I’ll also use this moment to remind tenants of their rights; if you have been left without hot water or heating for over 24 hours after reporting it, your letting agency is committing a crime. Don’t try to be understanding like I was. Threaten legal action; these people are not worthy of your respect and will happily gaslight or insult you in a heartbeat so long as it doesn’t affect their bottom line.

I’d like to round this off by saying that I don’t consider it coincidence that the first time I considered self harm was in the middle of fruitlessly trying to contact these comically evil gremlins during a 2 week duration of having no hot water or heat in midwinter. My hair has fallen out in clumps, I feel nauseous every day as I fear what basic decency I’ll have to fight to maintain next, I can feel my body start to shut down under the pressure. Every day I know my warmth or hygiene is beholden to this miscarriage of a company I feel like I’m starting to die, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. So don’t use this farce of an organisation; you’re worth more than that. To PurpleFrog, I look forward to the day I never have to live with your odious little practices again and I will dance on your grave when your joke of an organisation finally collapses. Perhaps that’s uncivil, but you’ve gotten far more civility from me than you deserve anyway.

I joyously await the day I can say goodbye to you, PurpleFrog.

Sincerely, an unhappy customer.

Our house was in a DISGUSTING condition when we arrived, and Purple Frog refused to clean it properly - we had to do it ourselves. They ignored most of our maintenance requests until we threatened to report them to The Property Ombudsman and they tried to charge us £250 when moving out for cleaning of a small, spotless 3 bed house which was never carried out. We only got our deposit back, two and a half months after the tenancy ended, when we involved UoNSU and threatened to report Purple Frog to The Property Ombudsman. Our deposit was never protected, and this is illegal. You will have to fight if you want anything in your house fixed or if you ever want to see your deposit again.

To summarise, Purple Frog will only do something for you if you threaten to report them to The Property Ombudsman (though this is very difficult in practice), involve the fantastic people at SU Advice or threaten legal action. They are dishonest and despicable, and we wasted so many hours emailing them to exercise our basic rights as tenants.

The agency was "ok" until, without any previous notice, they informed i had to vacate the property at the end of my short-hold tenancy. When i asked if i could renew the contract (4 months before the end of it) they told me it was already been rented out months earlier.