Complaints Procedure

Trade Nest Stays is a trading name of Maine Property Solutions Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 16187542, with its registered office at Office 1, Izabella House, 24-26 Regent Place, Birmingham B1 3NJ ("we", "us", "our").

If something has gone wrong, we would rather hear it from you than not. This page sets out how to tell us, what we need from you, how long we take and what happens at each stage.

Who can complain to us

Three different people can raise a complaint and we treat all three seriously, whether or not they signed anything.

The company that booked the accommodation — our client, who signed the agreement and pays.
The person actually living in the property. You did not sign our agreement and you did not choose us, but you are the one who knows what is wrong. You can come to us directly and we would rather you did than wait for it to reach us through your employer.
A partner operator whose property we have booked. See the separate note below.

Is something wrong right now? That is not a complaint yet

If something in the property is broken — the heating, the hot water, the power, a lock — that is a fault report, not a complaint and it needs an engineer rather than a letter. Tell us straight away, on any of the channels below and we will get it attended to.

Our target times for attending a fault are [SUPPORT RESPONSE TIMES — cl 6.2]. Where the accommodation was booked by a company, those times also appear in that company's agreement with us.

A complaint is what happens when a fault was reported and not handled properly or when something else about the way we have dealt with you has gone wrong. If you are not sure which one you have, send it anyway and we will sort out which route it takes.

How to complain

Use whichever of these is easiest. None of them is the wrong one.

Email: info@tradeneststays.com — please put COMPLAINT in the subject line.
WhatsApp: +44 7498 446659. A complaint made on WhatsApp counts from the moment you make it. We will write it up and send you the acknowledgement by email, so that you have a written record as well.
Post: Complaints, Trade Nest Stays, Maine Property Solutions Ltd, Office 1, Izabella House, 24-26 Regent Place, Birmingham B1 3NJ.

There is no form to fill in and no particular form of words you have to use. We will not refuse to look at a complaint because you raised it later than you might have done.

What we need from you

The more of this you can give us, the faster we can answer. If you do not have all of it, send what you have.

The property address and the unit or room if there is more than one.
Your reference. If you are our client, your agreement reference. If you are staying in the property, the name of the company that booked it. If you are a partner operator, your partner reference and the award reference for the booking.
What went wrong, in your own words.
When you first noticed it and when you first told us — the dates and roughly the times and who you told. This is usually the single most important thing you can give us.
Any photographs, sent as the original files from the phone or camera that took them rather than pasted into a document.
If your complaint is about money — the invoice or period it relates to.
What you would like us to do about it.

What happens and when

Stage 1. We will acknowledge your complaint within [ACK WINDOW] and tell you who is dealing with it. We will then give you a full written answer within [RESOLUTION WINDOW]. That answer will deal with every point you raised, separately, in the order you raised them and will give the dates each conclusion rests on.

If we are going to miss that date, we will tell you before it passes rather than afterwards, with the reason and a new date.

Stage 2. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can ask us to review it within [STAGE 2 WINDOW] of the date of our Stage 1 answer. Tell us what you think we got wrong. We will acknowledge that within [ACK WINDOW] and give you a final written answer within [REVIEW WINDOW]. A review is a fresh look at the whole file, not a re-reading of the first answer and wherever we can it is done by someone who did not handle it the first time.

If the property belongs to one of our partners

We sometimes supply accommodation from our own portfolio and sometimes we source it from a partner operator. Either way, your agreement is with us and putting it right is ours to do.

What that means in practice is that your complaint is answered on our timescale and any remedy you are due is not made to wait on anyone else. That side of it is ours to deal with, not yours to chase.

If you are a partner operator

The same stages and the same timescales apply to you. Raise it on the channels above with your partner reference, the award reference and the period concerned.

Where any sum is not in dispute, we do not hold it back while a complaint is open. Anything else about payment, deductions or the condition of your property is governed by your Partner Supply Agreement with us.

Deposits

Money we are not entitled to goes back to you straight away. Where any part of a deposit is not in dispute, we return it without waiting for the rest of the complaint to be settled and we do not hold it back to influence the outcome.

Where we do intend to make a deduction we will tell you in writing within [DEDUCTION NOTICE WINDOW], item by item, with a description and evidence of the cost. You then have [DISPUTE WINDOW] to dispute any of it. Deposits are otherwise governed by your accommodation agreement.

What we record

We open a file for every complaint and keep the correspondence, the dates and any photographs or documents either side relies on. We also record what caused the problem and what we changed as a result, so that we are fixing the cause rather than just answering the complaint.

How we handle your personal information and your rights over it are set out in our Privacy Policy. We keep complaint files for [COMPLAINT FILE RETENTION].

[STOWELL — data complaint wording, including the ICO route for a data-protection complaint specifically. Do not draft this here.]

If you are still not happy at the end

We would rather be straight with you about this than imply something that is not true.

Our Stage 2 answer is our final answer and that is the end of our complaints process. Trade Nest Stays is not a member of an ombudsman scheme, a property redress scheme or any alternative dispute resolution provider, so there is no further stage we can refer you to. We would rather tell you that plainly than point you at a scheme that would not take your complaint.

Your legal rights are not affected by anything on this page. Our agreements are governed by the law of England and Wales and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.

Contact

Complaints and any question about this procedure: info@tradeneststays.com, WhatsApp +44 7498 446659 or write to the registered office above.

Last updated: [DATE OF PUBLICATION].