Irresponsible agent

This is my first bad experience in Singapore, after three months living here (it’s not too bad given the length of time actually … ) . I hope this is an exclusive one and not a reflection of all the people working or involved in this industry.

We recently rented an apartment. The owner is a couple — a british husband and a singaporean wife, they seem nice people, and we were hopeful that we could have a decent negotiation with them. And we did, more or less. After a month living in the apartment, we encountered some problems with some of the fixtures, and informed the landlord’s agent about this. A week passed, two, a month, nothing’s been done to fix the problems. Then we contacted the owner, and a technician was sent to try to fix the problems. However a new sparepart had to be installed, and took another month to eventually decide what to do next.

Anyhow, to cut the long story short, we were very disappointed with the service and the respond of the estate agents whose responsibility are to help the landlord and tenant dealing with problems related to the property, like when ac or washing machine is broken and need to be repaired, etc.

And I have a feeling that the agent gave bad advice to the landlord, like installing cheap household equipment, naturally with the consequence of bad quality, to reduce the cost (this means for the advantage or interest of the landlord– instead of for the tenants who live in the property — which would reflect good on the agent).

The impression I get is that basically they’re just not interested to help or to have anything to do with the tenant anymore, once they got the deal.

But luckily (Javanese philosophy: there’s always something positive/bright side within the negative or bad thing; or in javanese: untungnya … ), we were not ‘cheated’ by agents and landlords like the stories of a number of people in some expat forum.

Since this blog mainly is about my experience living in Singapore compared to Jakarta, so I have to point out how it was done in Jakarta.

In Jakarta, where many people think is a very tough place to live, at least in these areas, the estate agents are polite and helpful and will do their best to give a very good service to the tenants, even after they’ve got the deal. The customers are served like a King, or in my case, a Queen.

I read in the expat and local forum, that it seems these days customers should not expect a good service from estate agents in Singapore, like it used to be, owing to the property booming. And apparently the tenant do not have an equal position or bargaining power with the landlord and the agent. Does anybody have this kind of experience as well? Good experience would also be welcome.