Intercounty, Saffron Walden

We rented Orchard Cottage in Ickleton for just shy of 5-years and Intercounty, Saffron Walden acted as the 'middle' company we dealt with only at the start of the tenancy and then the end. Initially the set-up was fairly straightforward, they took their pretty big chunk of change for doing very little and we got on with moving in. However toward our moving out date 5-years later it came to light that our (the tenant’s) follow-up comments to the original, and quite poorly evidenced, check-in inventory had never been filed/saved, and they’re kinda' necessary to back-up any potential issues, especially when you have the type of landlord who’ll re-straighten used nails, circling for potential extra cash to pick up. Now to be fair, e-mails from the particular Intercounty employee we dealt with were answered reasonably quickly, yet every single one was just a simple 'I cannot comment' fob-off, and it's really hard to see why we even had to deal with Intercounty at the end of the tenancy. Anyway, the biggest gripe is, Intercounty (or rather this individual employee) filed the paperwork to return our initial deposit, which was 2-months worth of rent, but this was done with a deduction of 27% for 'alleged' rent arrears. Fact is though, with bank statement evidence we could prove we were not in any arrears, in fact we'd manage to over-pay rent slightly so were actually owed money by the mathematically challenged landlord. But Intercounty were not interested in this 'evidence' and merely took the landlord’s say-so without him supplying any evidence to back up his fictitious claim. So it’s interesting to note that Intercounty state 'If deductions are proposed we do understand this will not always be received well however there will always be supporting evidence in relation to this'. Erm, really? So where was the supporting evidence we were due? Intercounty, I shall repeat, just sided with the landlord based solely on his say-so without him providing ANY evidence, whereas we have full black and white financial statements showing exactly how much was paid and when, proving NO money was owed by the tenants at the end of the tenancy agreement. So we were needlessly stuck in a 3-month wait for the remaining 27% of our deposit to be returned, which it eventually was after an independent third-party inquiry, as bank statements do not lie (unlike landlords). Yet with just an inkling of common sense and the brief time to look at our hard evidence Intercounty could've saved all parties the time and hassle incurred because, let's face it, the only side Intercounty are currently making money from is the landlord, David Human (and his many, many properties).