Westken Estates

We let a flat via West Ken estates from January 2010 — Febraury 2011. Before seeing flats with them, I was super hesitant as I had read tons of horrible, negative reviews online. Yes, some things that they do are a little peculiar… but in the end, we received a great flat.
My fiancé and I went to see another flat on Barons Court Road with the estate agent. She met us outside and showed us the flat. It looked like there were some works happening in the building, as there was plastic tarp down on the floor of the entryway. Besides that, the flat was great (despite the tube right outside the back window). It was a cute studio flat for 200 pounds a week.
We walked with her to see another flat on Avonmore Road, and there was another couple waiting there to see it, too. A bit strange — as I’m not used to group appointments. We weren’t actually able to see the flat, as there was some mixup with the keys and the estate agent had the wrong set.
Because we needed to move straight away, my fiancé and I ended up putting in an application for the Barons Court flat. We emailed over the required application information and that was that.
When it came time to do the deposit, etc., we met at Westken’s offices. Yes, it does look like the front room of a house near Paddington in a small mews. I was a bit uneasy in paying then to receive keys later, and all that stuff. We had one issue when signing out lease about our cat. We were told verbally that the cat would be okay, but when it came down to sign everything, we were being charged about an extra month’s rent in case the cat ‘damaged anything.’ We came to a solution that we would sign the lease, as is, and pretend we didn’t have a cat. If the cat messed anything up, we would be liable. It felt a bit sneaky, but honestly — she was an indoor cat. What could she do?
We came back a few days later and picked up our keys, and that was that.
We didn’t have any other encounters with the letting agency during our tenancy. We dealt directly with the landlord on the flood that happened to our flat and with the return of our deposit. If I could remember the landlord’s name, I would write something on him. THAT was the worst situation of my life.