SpareRoom.co.uk

I applied for quite a few rents for rooms. Never had a single reply then there was one really good one which I had to pay £11.99 to message. Then I auto message came back saying they wasn't not interested anymore in renting. So just a total con. Please save your money

Spareroom used to be a great place for landlords to find tenants and for tenants to find somewhere to live but over the past year the website is littered by fake adverts from letting agents. As a landlord I used to get lots of replies to my advert (which cost £24.99 for 28 days) but now there are so many agents adverts on there that your advert very quickly (within a couple of hours) slides down the list and off the first several pages so that it is very unlikely that your advert will be seen after those first couple of hours. Renewing your advert only places your advert to the top of the bold list for the DAY that you placed your advert - so if you placed your advert 7 days ago then you will always have 7 days worth of adverts above yours as well as other adverts on your advert's day which have been renewed since yours was. Tenants have told me most of the letting agents adverts are fake (e.g. Great location, lovely property, low rent) and are just used to get you to call the agent who will say that property you phoned about is no longer available but will persuade you to go and view their other "amazing" properties which tend to be in not such a great location, are not so nice and nowhere near as good value as their advertised property. Spareroom are of course a business and make good money out of the agents adverts but this has resulted in the website becoming pretty useless for landlords and tenants.

I have been using spareroom since 2011 to rent out my spare room and occasionally to find a room. I was always very pleased with the service provided and efficiency of this website.
Initially, it was so efficient that you could put a free ad and still manage to get people to contact you. Later on, putting a paid/featured ad became a common practice if I wanted to rent out the room quickly because more and more people started placing ads on the website. I was still very satisfied as it was efficient and a real value for money.

I have not used the website for few months and last week I posted a paid ad on spareroom and was very very very disappointed!
I placed the ad at 2pm and at 8pm the same day I could not find my ad anywhere. I called customer support team and was advised that my ad dropped to 100+ place due to high volume of ads for this area and I need to keep pressing renew button to push it up. However, this "renew" option does not work as my ad still stays on the same place or even drops further. I then was advised to search for people who are looking to rent in the same area and contact them, which I find not an efficient way at all, and it increases spamming, it is not and should not become a dating website or a friend making/meeting website.

Tanya

Tenants should be able to give reviews to landlords and rate them. Otherwise SpareRoom.co.uk is an extremely unfair and obsolete concept.

Let's get something out of the way... SpareRoom are NOT here to help you find a room. They are here to rent rooms advertised by paying customers. Now with that, lets move forward.
SpareRoom isn't a bad site, it's a site where YOU need to be careful. Remember, these people are trying to get your signature on a lease. May adverts have dated pictures or pictures of rooms that are not the one for rent. If the pictures look too good to be true, then they were probably taken right after a remodel and don't reflect the actual condition of the room now. ALWAYS go and look in person. Never send money. Only hand the money (or bank transfer) to the landlord or agent, in person, after signing the lease.
The search feature lacks a few things. For example, when you save a search, it won't store the sort order of your search. They want to feed you rooms from their regular paying customers. Also, you can't exclude postcodes. For example, there is an area near me that is ALL student housing. If you're not a student and you don't want to be kept awake all night, then you'll want to avoid this area. It mainly falls within a certain postcode.(first three digits). Now, you can search that postcode by itself, but you can't exclude it from broader searches. I find it a waste of my time as this post code comprises most of the search results. Even when you exclude student housing, you'll still get the majority of your results from this area and also because the dishonest agents or landlords refuse to identify the house as a student house.
The mobile app is even worse, because you can't specify "bills included" or "furnished" in your search. I hate finding a really nice place only to discover bills are an extra £200 a month and it's completely unfurnished.
The site isn't all bad. You can at least look to see what is available. I recommend ringing them on the phone rather than sending a message. At least if a person answers, the advert is probably real and not a scam.
Most of all, just use common sense. If an advert sounds too good to be true, then it probably isn't.

Edit: Since my first review spareroom has become worse. Now they don't even answer emails where there is a complaint or problem. If they do, all you get is a word salad that often doesn't even relate to your complaint. Now they seem to support breaking the law. In their adverts they allow sexual discrimination and age discrimination. They allow landlords to post a gender preference and an age range, both of which are illegal, according to the equality act of 2010. Both gender and age are protected attributes. Does that not make them an accomplice or assisting in the commission of a crime? I put that as a question, because I'm not making accusations. I am only showing you what they are doing. You can decide for yourself. I've added a little screen clip below that shows the age discrimination. I didn't grab the entire screen as it might be illegal to show the alleged offender.

Dear Sir/Madam

I wish to make a formal complaint about SpareRoom and their landlord advertisers who placed ads on their website for single/double rooms. I also noticed how they all 'preferred female' to be of a certain age to meet their criteria which I find disgustingly sexist, ageism and clearly unfair to their male counterparts.

I joined SpareRoom in the hope of finding a room. But instead, I experienced a nightmare of rejections from all sides that nearly result in me being thrown out on the streets. I wasted five months of my hard earned money upgrading my membership trying to find somewhere to live and was never successful getting an appointment with anyone.

No one even had the courtesy to respond to any of my emails, never mind returning my calls. I was in a desperate situation, and all I get in return was a few landlords with an attitude problem asking me foolish questions like my age and telling me the rooms are only available for women.

I can fully understand if an advert is placed on SpareRoom for an all-ladies household, then by all means, a lady is required. But what really annoys me most, is when a room is advertised in a mixed household, the landlords still 'preferred female' and they have to be of a certain age too which is fact is illegal anyway.

The most ironic thing about this whole sorry episode, is that I have seen the same sexist adverts posted on four or five different websites from the same advertisers, spouting the same rubbish just to attract 'preferred females' to their lair.

SpareRoom need to get their house in order and start reviewing their policies and informed their advertisers (or landlords) to read the government's Equality Act 2010 and age discrimination laws | Age UK. It fully states that landlords cannot discriminate a person whether of age, gender, race, sexual orientation etc.

For a person searching for an accommodation, it should be fair for everyone across the board and not for landlords to choose the weaker sex just to satisfy their lust and their curiosity. All those who request such things in an advertisement are literally breaking the law and as a result, your company could face a messy lawsuit.

After the bad experience I had with SpareRoom, I will not use them ever again. Because they simply don't care about anyone but themselves. Moreover, their advertisers (or landlords) are just as bad, they are rude, callous and discriminate towards men and people's age.

(Name withheld in disgust)