I had absolutely no idea of any problems within the company until May 2010. Had you contacted me before this date you would have heard what I thought i.e. all is OK.

When payments to Landlords started bouncing I had a lot of angry customers on my door wondering why they hadn’t received rents between £1k and £45k. I then had two weeks of chaos trying to prove to clients that I hadn’t spent their money. If you had tried to contact me during this period I doubt you would have got through; I was glued to a PC screen with my mobile switched off trying to work out what the hell had gone wrong.

I spent the next few weeks contacting all tenants who owed any money. If students then paid up the company could have continued trading as if nothing had ever happened. It seemed likely that this would be the case and any contact during this time would have been met with the “all is OK” response.

Sadly, Ken Harris (the UWSU Welfare Officer) plastered a notice all over the union website stating that the company had gone bust and students shouldn’t pay rent under any circumstances, despite numerous Landlords asking him not to do this. This wasn’t actually true but it put the company to bed, as we effectively became insolvent overnight and had to cease trading. From this date you wouldn’t have been able to contact me as all lines of communication were cut off.

If you think you were mislead, you are mistaken. As far as I was concerned the company had a realistic chance of survival until Ken ‘backhander’ Harris stuck his beak in.

If you think I didn’t care, you are also mistaken. The whole reason behind the company was to make life easier for students renting accommodation and Smarter Housing certainly did that until such time that I took my eye off the ball. Even though you’re posting anonymously I’m fairly sure I know you were renting a three bedroom apartment on the way out to Warwick – the kind of accommodation that simply wouldn’t have been available to students a few years ago. This should also tell you just how few tenants had paid their rent if I can identify a property based on the deposit amount.

Finally, it wasn’t “lucky” the landlord paid up as I had forewarned clients that they would need to repay deposits for the few groups who were up to date on their rent.

My question was specifically; why did we not receive any help from you *at the time (2010)* or failing that even an open and honest admission of the problems. We rang and spoke to you personally on enough occasions…

While I accept if the money was stolen by your employees then it’s stolen and you are as mich a victim as everyone else was. And I also accept some students dishonestly took the company for a ride (although would you hand over money to a rumoured soon to be bankrupt firm?) You did little to portray yourself as being interested in helping those of us who had been honest. If you’d just said “the money was stolen. You’ll have to claim it from the landlord” that would’ve been far better then disregarding our concerns.

In any case, what help do you expect to get from a company that no longer exists? For someone who is presumably a Warwick graduate that part of your question seems rather stupid.

The company was investigated by a firm of accountants, The Secretary of State’s fraud people and then the Insolvency Service.

I’ll take it as a back handed compliment that you think I could put £200,000 past all of the above.

For the record, of all the students who were approached re their rent shortfall, all bar 5 paid up after some chasing. Of those who had CCJs submitted, one paid up pre-trial; two are yet to attend trial; one lost in court and another escaped trial as paperwork wasn’t filed on time.

Feel free to prove otherwise, but I think you’ll find you are the one talking absolute codswallop.