How much do the leeches charge potential occupants for reference checking these days?

Not much help to OP
But when my parents were selling they had one party interested but the Estate Agent kept telling the third party my parent were away, too busy to give second viewing etc..etc…
All because the estate agent wanted the property for themselves for rental, scum bags 👿

My current role involves me carrying out inspections to rental properties on behalf of letting/Estate agents, so have seen it from both sides.

One scam that I know of by Letting agents is too charge a upfront fee to each prospective tenant(i.e.For Credit checks etc)but they pocket the money and tell the prospective tenant they have failed the checks, move along.
They do this several times before finally letting a property out hence banking several hundred pounds extra for themselves.

Pretty much illegal as well as immoral but it happens.

There are some really good agents out there but some shockers too including some big name national agents.

Thanks for the tip about House Network, seem pretty good and online reviews favourable. Any issues with them that have been reported online (there aren’t many, you have to look hard) are ones I would expect to get with an EA anyway so not a worry for me!

I would much prefer to show someone round my own house, I could market it a lot better than an estate agent could while I was in the house with them.

OP here – thanks for the words of caution re. the chap who offered to pay 6 months rent up front. He seemed perfectly nice on the phone but, regardless, I have rented to another couple. Not for that reason in particular, they just seem like lovely people. I have a reference from their current landlord and will be requesting employment references before we sign the contract.

I told the EA to ‘do one’ via email. Well, slightly more formally than that. They have waived the £50 termination fee as a gesture of goodwill.

I’ve not got much to add except a warning for anyone in Scotland not to use McEwan Fraser under any circumstances. I paid them a lot of money to not really bother their arses to sell my flat and they ended up being one of the most lazy and dishonest (in my opinion of course) companies I’ve ever experienced.

When it came to renting out the flat instead I did it myself and it was reasonably straightforward. It wouldn’t be an option if I didn’t live pretty close to the flat though.