User score:
25%
What the tenant had to say:
In 7 years of renting properties, Leah Jay is the worst agent we have had.
Leah Jay is a communications blackhole: your messages will go in, but acknowledgement, or a call back, will simply never happen. It's as if you never called at all. Except for when they need new tenants, then they'll simply spam your email inbox with things that could be handled more effectively and efficiently by a friggin' phone call.
When we would report property damage to Leah Jay we would never know if they passed the information on to the owner; and if they did contact the owner, we never heard what the response was, or if there was a plan to fix the reported damage. In the time we were with Leah Jay, only two items of damage were ever repaired - and we had to nag to get it done.
Want a shining example of Leah Jay's communication skills? The property had a built-in water filter in the kitchen. Unexpectedly, the company that made the filter called to make arrangements to replace the filter as their records showed it was overdue. This replacement was going to cost money, though, so we gave the company Leah Jay's contact details so they could discuss it with the owner; we also contacted Leah Jay - once to report that the filter needed to be replaced because the filtering tap had reduced to a trickle; once to inform them of the company calling to replace the filter; and once to see what was happening with the filter - but not once did Leah Jay respond. There were several minor things that needed to be repaired or fixed just like this water filter, but they weren't.
What astounded me the most, though, was how malicious the final inspection was. Leah Jay were overly nit-picky and wanted to charge for unnecessary services. Leah Jay intended on recovering costs from our bond for services to repair damage that easily fit under NSW Fair Trading's definition of "fair wear and tear", and it wasn't until we mentioned that we had spoken to NSW Fair Trading that they agreed with our arguments. At the very least that shows they are willfully dishonest and deceptive.
And finally, Leah Jay uses DEFT to handle rental payments; if nothing else, that should be reason enough to avoid them. Any agent who condones the use of DEFT also condones the blatant ripping-off of tenants. The notion that the tenant should pay a fee for the privilege of paying their rent is absurd; DEFT is a corporate-backed, profit-gouging, rort mechanism for lazy real estate agents to palm of their rent collection duties to.
