"The hopless, hapless, contemptuous, Charles White"

CWL is a disgrace. I’ve suffered their incompetence, callousness and contempt for decades.

Us flat owning clients were, and still are, victims of disgusting, profiteering by CWL who charged us last year an outrageous £755 for block building insurance, a massive hike of 41% in two years, despite it incurring no corresponding increase in expenditure.

CWL is in the paid service of its clients, paid to act in their interests, but because the higher the insurance premium sourced by CWL, the greater the commission it receives, it chose to do absolutely fa, ABSOLUTELY nothing, to mitigate that increase.

Steps that could’ve been taken to reduce the premium weren’t, and when asked why they weren't I got answers that were tantamount to lies.

CWL may think the matter is over – no, it’s no’.

Because I wasn’t prepared to meekly accept being a victim of CWL’s sickening profiteering I ended up in a Sheriff court. And it looks like I’m going to be going there again in a few months.

I can give many examples of CWL’s uselessness and contempt for its clients, many, both present and in the past; however, for the sake of brevity I’ll just give one:

Around 3 or 4 years ago some tiles had come loose from the front doorstep at the entrance to our block. The repair, which took a ludicrously long time to be done, was a mess. (Only to be expected from CWL.) I believe a chimp with learning difficulties could’ve done better. The tiles were crooked, didn’t align either horizontally or vertically, so I asked to have the repair redone, but CWL told me they couldn’t find a suitable supplier who could deliver, but I did by way of a c30 second Google search, and emailed the link. Still the repair never happened. Submitted a complaint which was supposed to be processed in 28 working days, received a response after 4 months telling me they couldn’t find a suitable supplier – you couldn’t make it up!

Three years later, yes, three years on, they did effect a repair, but in a way that they’d been told not to: the tiles weren’t to be replaced with concrete slabs, but that’s what they did! Why should’ve I expected anything else from the hopeless, hapless, Charles White Ltd? If uselessness was an Olympic event, they’d do us proud.

They are refusing to correct the result of their incompetence – we’ll see about that CWL.

I could write volumes on this joke of a business, but I’ll just give one more example of the contempt and anti-client attitude they have:

I wanted very appropriate and relevant matters brought up at this year’s AGM, matters which related to repairs and procurement of services on clients’ behalves, none were allowed. These matters were blocked because CWL didn’t want them to be discussed and brought to the attention of the development as that would be to its detriment. Who the duck do they think they are?

It’s not just their incompetence and couldn’t give a monkey’s attitude, it’s the utter contempt they have for us, but they know they can get away with it because of the monopoly position they have and the resultant power imbalance it gives to them.

It’ll be a long haul, but we’ll either see CWL gone or proper guardrails put in place to protect us and our homes, from the mingin' service that CWL typically dishes out..

Trustpilot: why is the minimum rating one star? Why can’t we give negative ratings? CWL isn’t worthy of any stars.

"Awful"

This company is a complete nightmare to deal with. We paid our buildings insurance premium of £260 at the end of last year to cover 2024. Then in May 2024, they started adding it into the quarterly service charges (£65 a quarter) meaning they were trying to double charge us. After many emails back and forth, they issued a credit note for the insurance cost they added into the May invoice, but they are refusing to do it for the August invoice.

It seems they have now decided to ignore my emails on the matter. Although they have found time to send a threatening letter demanding payment of the charge.

This is the latest in a long line of issues I have had in four years of dealing with them. The worst being when they failed to carry out work involving restoration to the outside of the apartment buildings which they had issued a £500 levy for. They eventually carried out the work almost 3 years after we had paid the fee and only after I had to constantly enquire. When I first contacted them, they claimed not to know anything about it.

The “client relationship manager” changes constantly making it even harder to deal with them as the current one always uses the excuse “that was before I started working here so I don’t know anything about it”.

I have never felt the need to leave a negative review about any product or service in my life but in this case I felt compelled to. I am also extremely surprised at (and quite skeptical about) the amount of 5 star reviews on here. There are a number which use repeating catchphrases such as “above and beyond” and “extra mile”.

"Second time we had CW, second time we switched factor"

This is my second flat and this is the second time we had Charles White. This is also the second time we changed factor as they take barely any action unless we voice our dissatisfaction at AGMs.
Building insurance is way more expensive that other factor. First time we changed, our insurance went from 350£ to 250£.
I had reported many times that outside doors were degrading because of the weather and no plan was ever offered to repair.
The parking wall is falling. Because it was difficult to find out who the factor was for the building on the other side, one resident was asked to do door to door to find out. Basically, do their job.
Over 12 years we had only 3 or 4 AGM, each requested by the resident.
Even though their staff is friendly, too much talk and not enough action.

We have switched in May with a serious company and now can see the difference in professionalism.
We got monthly report of progress and quarterly call.

"Terrible factoring company"

Terrible factoring company. Over priced, staff change all the time and poor communication. Avoid

"Helped me with my Portal login"

Helped me with my Portal login, I had completely forgotten my username and password. All is now working correctly.

"Rachael Higginson"

Rachael was extremely helpful & kind in resolving my query. She is very quick to respond which enhances the reputation of the company as a whole.

"Really appreciative of Paul Sanders…"

Really appreciative of Paul Sanders quick and helpful action on a matter I had raised with him. He was friendly and I really felt he had gone above and beyond to help.

"Rachael Higginson. A very quick professional…"

Just received a very quick professional response to a query on my account from Rachael Higginson. Thank you for sorting this for me.

"Rachael Higginson was very polite"

Rachael Higginson was very polite, understanding and cooperative in facilitating agreement to a recent issue.
This was much appreciated.

"Rachel was extremely helpful and…"

Rachel was extremely helpful and efficient she sorted my issue out within minutes