I am a first time buyer and at present looking at properties in Hertford and Bengeo. I have been dealing with various Estate Agents and have found all of them good on customer service but lacking on properties in my price bracket apart from Steven Oates in Hertford. I have seen quite a lot of properties with Steven Oates now and at the start I thought they were quite professional. However as I have progressed along the journey of house hunting I have since learnt that Steven Oates Estate Agents are a bunch of rude, time wasting cowboys and gobby girls that would not know good customer service or how to treat people if it smacked them in the face. The reason for my fury is this: About 9 weeks ago I found a property, unfortunately with Steven Oates. I put in an offer of the asking price which was accepted, all good I hear you cry, well since that time, nothing...I mean nothing, has happened in the way of it moving along. The third person in the chain has not found anywhere and as far as I can tell the wideboys and girls at Steven Oates really don't give a flying crap if I wait around forever for a property that may never complete. By the way I have never had one point of contact throughout my dealings with Steven Oates but to name a few of the useless twits there is Sammy, Samantha, James and the one who is supposedly looking after me now,Olli. They never call me back, I have to chase them constantly for answers and progress on a chain that seems unable to complete. I since found another property which again is with Steven Oates and they arranged for me to go and see it. There was no chain, both myself and the vendor were ready to move. I told the vendor I would offer them the asking price first thing the next day when I could speak to Steven Oates. This I carried through and surprise surprise I had to call the high and mightys that work in that shop to find out whether I had been successful. As you can imagine my offer was not accepted. Now as it turns out I was fortunate to bump into this vendor when in Hertford town last night and guess what they said!!!! Appartently my offer had never been put forward to them but they had sold their property to a young man who actually paid more than the asking price. Well why was there a need for him to pay more than the asking price since no one else had seen the property apart from myself and my offer was not put forward and the answer is that Steven Oates screwed him over as well. So ladies and gentleman in conclusion to all this rambling Steven Oates in Hertford owned by Colin Kyle and staffed by baffoons lied to me, causing me to now sit in a never ending chain where I could loose the property, they lied to the new owner of said property and made him offer more than the asking price and they lied to the vendor, also screwing them out of the chance of greater offers. All in all I would not trust estate agents anyway, I dont think anybody does but I would strongly warn anybody to think twice about using Steven Oates especially the one in Hertford.