Rentguard Referencing Avis 

This is a really untrustworthy service. I provided a lot of personal information and I could clearly afford the rent but the feedback said I was I was medium risk for not earning enough despite earning 3 times more than the rent per month. There is something very dodgy with this and it it is not as transparent as it is makes out. Avoid any landlords who use this service. It looks and feels discriminatory.

They asked me for a work contract and faild me because i didnt sent payslips when noane asked for them. They a joke, rude and not replying to emails.

Contacted my references within a few hours and had me cleared within 24 hours. Excellent service - those who are complaining are probably just terrible tenants.

I am amazed at how quickly my referencing checks were processed. I called the company with a query and the customer service reps I dealt with over the phone and by email were extremely helpful and exceptionally quick to respond. Thanks so much for your help and for a truly positive experience from start to finish.

Rentguard performed the referencing check for my upcoming tenancy.

They attempted to call my existing landlord for a reference once. When he answered, they hung up. He then phoned them back multiple times but they don't answer the phone.

Without consulting me, they then immediately failed my check and sent this to my prospective landlord. This has caused a loss of trust to my new landlord and may result in me being homeless if I am not able to move in to my new flat.

They do not respond to phone calls or emails. The level of carelessness and unprofessionalism is astounding for something so important. I have raised a complaint with the property Ombudsman and I seriously hope this company get banned from working in this sector.

Tenant experience - genuinely terrible and uncoordinated service. Would advise everyone against using it.

I have spent all day on email and phone to different Rentguard staff advisors. A simple request - to end a landlord insurance policy early (only a couple of weeks before its renewal date) - was met with misunderstanding, obfuscation, unhelpfulness, unnecessary barriers, someone putting their phone down ... even with my request in writing several times, the advisors didn't seem to have a clue what I was asking for. Meantime I have been contacting Simply Business for landlord insurance quotes and have found them helpful, polite, and actually sensible. Avoid Rentguard at all costs

Really poor experience. Myself and my partner have just went through what can only be described as an extremely stressful few days because of this company. Thankfully our landlord has still decided to proceed, but I had to send a full copy of my Experian Credit Report to prove that most of what was showing up on RentGuards referencing was false for myself. My partners reference also failed but with no explanation as to why. Just to be transparent, we both work full time and earn good salaries for the North East. We’ve lived together for four years and never missed a rent payment. I contacted rentguard which they state on their email to do if any info is incorrect, clearly nobody could be bothered to answer the phone but I got an instant reply when I sent an email - however the reply was as useless as a chocolate fireguard as they state they just get their info from Equifax so I need to go to them.
Our landlord thankfully trusting us and having seen my Experian Report which is at a score of 911 has agreed to go ahead but this has left us stressed and nearly without a new home in a lockdown which we are perfectly suitable for. OpenRent as a service was great up until RentGuard got involved - steer clear at any given chance!

This so-called service takes your money and fails decent *tenants* and checks are not done so other words take the money and do nothing leaving good tenants without a propertys what a joke!.

Very irresponsible referencing done, they don't contact the employer to check if the payslip etc is authentic. Passed a tenant who was fraud!

Would 1000% not recommend due to the referencing company of Rentguard. Open rent was easy enough to use at the start; Allowed the landlord to contact us and arrange a viewing which was fab! That’s when it all went downhill from this moment.
Rentguard are unproductive, unprofessional and unreliable.
They have access to your bank, your credit score, your work details. They failed us for the speedy check and then told the landlord to pay for the comprehensive just to fail us for the same thing. We spent most of our time chasing them with no response. Finally they called up my work and gave personal details to another colleague when they were trying to get through to my manager. They wanted us to have a guarantor but after reading all the other reviews and how they dealt with our references we gave it a hard pass! Luckily we got the one that we wanted anyway but it could have been so so different and lost us the property!
So invasive for nothing! Don’t forget to disconnect them from having access to your bank after the searches as they were still connected to mine.
I wish open rent would use a different company to reference because the site has such good potential and it is easy and useful for landlords. I had rented before with ‘easyproperty’ and although you the tenant have to foot the bill for the referencing which is a minor amount (think it was £49.99 when I used) it was quicker faster, less intrusive and so much more reliable!
BEWARE!

Unfortunately, we used their referencing service because of Openrent. Communication was terrible, they did not even ask the docs they should have asked from us and failed us. The report they initially prepared was full of errors and no single true information. They could not even tell us what sort of docs they were accepting or asking. So incompetent and so horrible service! We sent the docs after our research and countless hours spent without them asking from us. Even after sending all docs that we believed helpful, they were still so incompetent, they failed us again, I am speechless. After days of efforts from both us and our landlord, they finally got the correct report saying we were eligible for renting, but in future, I would not work with anyone using them in any way including Openrent.

I've never heard of the website and didn't know how does it work.
The landlord asked me to go through this credit check with The Rentguard, and I did so.
I let them access my current bank account, and honestly, I was quite stressed because it was quite a risky operation on my account.
I allowed Lloyds Bank to share my credentials with them via Open Banking procedure.
I was impressed because everything took maybe 6-7 hours from supplying my passport to getting a response, and I received positive feedback!
The quickest credit check I've ever experienced!
Please don't worry about all the bad comments. Nothing is perfect; however, if you do everything exactly the way they ask you to do, it's a quick and easy credit check.
This is my personal experience. I don't have any complicated financial situation. I'm full time employed, and I've got one, permanent job.
I bet it might have been more complicated in different circumstances.
I highly recommend using OpenBanking and The RentGuard service as they're super quick.

I used their service through openrent. They passed one of my tenant even without taking a personal identification document check. Among the 2 applicants, referencing report they produced were completely different. One tenant had details included on the salary payment with dates for last 6 months but other tenants didn't had this information. I am finding it difficult whether they conducted a proper check to confirm the gross salary. Why is the variation in the practice? They are not reliable. If i had not gone through the detail of the report i would not have known if the tenant's right to rent status was verified. I don't recommend this company.

If I could rate this company any lower I would. I am currently filing a report to the Financial Ombudsman Service as that is exactly how bad they are!

My partner and I are working professionals and filed an application for a flat via OpenRent. We didn't realise OpenRent use an external agency for their referencing (RentGuard). The landlord accepted our application and when we went through the reference checks we had a horrible time as RentGuard messed up a number of things for my partner (RG just about passed me, which was frustrating but at least it was a pass):

1) RentGuard tried to contact my partner's estate agent twice but couldn't get a hold of them (which is a separate problem in itself for which the estate agent will receive a bad review from him), and instead of contacting my partner directly, automatically placed his application as "DENIED".

2) When explaining the situation over the phone to rectify this mistake (which you can never get a hold of anyone as apparently, "they are too busy" during the pandemic to answer the phones), they made my partner go around in circles and jump through hoops to prove he lived at his current address.

4) Despite providing RG with sufficient evidence including bank statements, tenancy agreements, etc, that he had lived at the property for 3 YEARS, they refused to accept this. I don't think they even looked at the documents until we begged them multiple times to do so!

5) RentGuard relies heavily on credit checks to rule whether a candidate is suitable or not and this has to do with the insurance they provide as part of their selling package to landlords. So they're looking for minimal risk to the insurance... not to the landlord!! My partner has a thin credit file but has direct debits from utility bills assigned to his name at every property has lived in for the last 7 yrs+ of living in London. Relying solely on credit checks is highly dangerous as some people choose not to use credit and is not an indication that a candidate is unreliable. When it came to me, my credit score is excellent on Experian close to the perfect 710 but yet RG marked me as a "medium risk", what a joke!

6) My partner earns a high monthly salary that easily covers the monthly rent 3.5 times over and yet RentGuard ruled him a bad candidate and recommended to the landlord we get a UK guarantor!!!

7) What should have been a 3 day process took close to a full week due to RG's inefficiency. No one replied emails, no one answered phone calls, and if they did, it would take them days to do so and yet the reports they apparently "fixed" would still have errors! We almost lost the flat as a result!

8) Numerous agents from RG will look at our case and every single one of them gave us different feedback and advice on how to proceed! Even their own team don't know what they're doing!! Why can't one caseworker handle a case from start to finish??

Going through this company was like pulling teeth, unnecessarily stressful during a pandemic IN WINTER and almost made us homeless as the move out date from our respective previous properties was coming up too close!

I highly encourage OpenRent to please reconsider using a different referencing agency as you can see from the hundreds of bad reviews left on Trustpilot by upset tenants. Our nightmare experiences with RG are too close to some of the ones left here by others. We got lucky, but some others were not so, all because of this useless and unethical company.

LANDLORDS, RentGuard will not protect you from bad tenants and will deny good tenants, do not use them!!

When moving to a new home, my prospective landlord used Rentguard to vet me.

Being in a position to invest a portion of my savings into my career development last year - which I wrote off against my taxable income - Rentguard (who asked to see my latest tax return) misrepresented my yearly earnings by 30% and failed me.

As well as being self employed, I'm a company director, with a steady source of income; bank statements and tax returns to prove it. As a tenant my references are strong. I save fastidiously.

Rentguard's broad brush approach won't protect landlords from bad tenants, so long as they're full time employed at the time of referencing. They made several mistakes on my report and didn't call any of my references.

Good landlords should beware.

Going through the reference process at the moment and experiencing some of the issues mentioned here already, which is really upsetting. I specified that I am a EU citizen with settled status and then got an email to request a copy of a British passport to prove my right to be in the UK, which was worrying. I uploaded a copy of my passport and it was finally accepted but my report states I didn't provide this. My report is full of errors too. My other half is self employed and the on screen questions during the check are clearly not aimed at the self employed, even when selecting that option and that obviously doesn't help if all you are asked to provide to prove your income is a payroll number and employers details. They are shambolic and still not finished with the process!

Do not use this company - I am in the process of bringing them to the attention of the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Rentguard failed my gaurantor, even though she has enough money in her pension alone to pay the rent 11 times over, plus income from a job and another property that she lets out. Rentguard wouldn't permit my partner's guarantor as he is not in the UK.

Rentguard asked me for the same details over and over again. On top of having to give them access to my bank acount through the terrifying OpenBanking service, another company entirely, I had to send three bank statements and thrice sent my passport details. They didn't believe I lived at my current address even though I sent them my signed contract and they could see multiple transations in the three bank statments I sent pertaining to paying rent, bills and spending money in the area.

Despite the fact that OpenRent says that you will pass the credit check if you can pay 7 months worth of rent, and I had more than enough to do this, they failed my credit check without explanation. My credit score is perfect; they told me that credit scores are not used in your credit check.

In the end, everything we sent to RentGuard we had to sent directly to our landlord, making the whole service pointless. In order to win her trust, because she was more swayed by RentGuard's checks than seeing with her own eyes collectively over 100k worth of money between me, my partner, and our guarantors that could be used to pay for the flat, we had to pay three months of rent in a lump sum on the day we moved in. If this hadn't happened we would have been left homeless in the middle of COVID lockdown.

The reason, of course, that their referencing checks are so bizzare and intrusive, is because they sell insurance to landlords on the basis of their own checks. You are not undergoing a conventional reference check, you are going through an insurance risk assessment without your knowledge.

This is a terrible middle-man company that sucks money out of you, OpenRent and your landlords without providing anything of value in return. I would advise against using OpenRent as long as they are partnered with these charlatans.

Very poor. Prospective tenant failed for no obvious reason with no explanation given. I liked the look of the new tenants so contacted them and Rentguard. It turned out they had failed him for not being able to show previous utility bills – when this was not possible as utilities were included in his previous rent! If I had taken their report at face value I would have lost a perfectly good tenant and a few more weeks rent.