Shan Karen
WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS PLACE Positive things I enjoyed: 1) Made so many friends and connections as it felt like a Uni accommodation, but for professionals and students too. 2) They celebrated festivals and events from a wide variety of cultures around the world. 3) Onboarding process was fast. 4) Maintenance and cleaning were super fast and efficient. Kudos to the maintenance team! 5) Facilities such as Library, Open spaces to work from home, sauna, cinema room and a terrace to chill with friends. 6) Close proximity to bus stops and all major train lines in London. 7) Good gym facilities. Negative things that I did not like: 1) Every week there would be an issue in the building (No hot water, lifts broken, wifi issues, fire alarm going on at random times and ringing forever! And many more!) 2) Summer is an absolute nightmare as it gets really hot in the rooms and there is NO AIR-CONDITIONING + Windows don't open that much. 3) The credit control teams takes FOREVER to respond to emails. Good luck getting an urgent response from them! They took almost a month to reply to me concerning my deposit! On top of that, the credit control team is managed by one person ONLY! They also invent so many excuses such as: "Systems were down", "Credit Control Team is overloaded", etc. Yet they don't invest to get more people in that team. 4) The parties they organise feel like they are on a budget. Many people don't show up at all. 5) The laundry has some broken machines which take your money but don't wash your clothes! People have been reporting this to the building and Circuit Laundry for a year now and still nothing was done! 6) There is an abominable amount of noise throughout the day and at night from cars honking, trains passing by, construction and the nearby dump. Found it so hard to sleep at night! 7) The rooms are ridiculously small! So much so that it forces you to go outside and socialise. Same can be said for the kitchen. 8) Lack of security control where at some point, weird people started entering the building. People who did not even live in the building. At one time, the card scanner at the front door was broken too, so any one could enter and take the lifts. 9) Some receptionists can be moody when talking to you. Feels like you are annoying them. 10) There is literally nothing in the surroundings other than an overpriced convenience store and a polluted river. 11) Storage under the beds require you to do lots of efforts to open. It is not practical at all and is a huge pain to remove something from there! Could have made use of a spring to suspend the opening of the storage. 12) Rent felt extremely overpriced for such poor facilities. I did not feel that I obtained value for money. 13) When temperatures were dropping for the winter, they did not want to turn on the heaters. They wanted to wait a little more weeks to turn the heaters on. 14) No proper management of the building at all as it feels that people's feedback were not really taken onboard and they go about trying to save as much costs as possible by regulating a few stuff. 15) So many people were leaving the building and trying to find replacement tenants throughout the year because of the aforementioned issues. Heard of so many more problems with this accommodation, but cannot testify if true as I have not personally experienced them. 16) So much dust and air pollution from cars and constructions nearby. These end up in your room regardless if windows are opened or not. There is an air vent in the room which also appears to blow dust slowly in the rooms. Seems to not have been cleaned at all.