Tenancy review for 10 Kingsbury Street in St Peters And North Laine, Brighton rented from Phillip Samouel rented via John Hilton Ltd

Landlord rating: 1

Barely any contact with them, however upon moving out they showed themselves by inspecting the house for what they considered to be damage. This is where I drew the line.
When we moved in, one of the rooms (let's call it bedroom 1) had marks on the walls, these were noted in the check-in booklet, therefore we won't be liable for them when we move out right? Wrong. The landlord decided to take photos claiming this same damage was actually in bedroom 2 and was not present when we moved in. Fortunately, I still had the original check in booklet and was able to compare the images of bedroom 1 to what the landlord took so they got called out on it. The fact is this damage was on two walls, and they were charging £50 a wall. I cannot lose £100 of my deposit on this but the landlord being happy to be such a genuine scumbag by doing this caused me to give 1 star. This is the only interaction we had with them during the entire tenancy and they attempted to do the worst thing they could.

Agency rating: 3

Throughout the tenancy the agency were quite good other than a few things:
1) damp in my room due to a wardrobe being attached to the wall, I was quoted £40 to sort this out however upon closer inspection the wardrobe was attached by 2 screws, surely removing those and pulling the wardrobe forward by 3 inches isn't worth £40?
2) charged with a drain clean upon moving out which we were not liable for
3) occasionally turning up to the house unnanounced
4) not communicating at all during the deposit return process, we left the property in the middle of August and are still waiting for our full amounts as of the 10/10/2019 despite being in constant communication via email and phone, we just wanted what was ours back.

Property rating: 4

The house was recently refurbished with all new beds and furniture, this, we thought, would be a great benefit of choosing this house. However, as expected it was extremely cheap quality stuff that didn't have much wear in. The house had a structural problem that caused damp throughout the same wall across 3 floors and another room had damp due to poor ventilation throughout the property. White walls and light brown carpets are throughout the property which as expected get incredibly dirty, almost certainly a way of getting more cleaning costs out of the deposit.

Area rating: 6

It's Brighton so buses are everywhere but the links to London Road shops are invaluable to students especially with Aldi being there.