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SpareRoom has a rating of 1.6 stars from 49 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally dissatisfied with their purchases. SpareRoom ranks 8th among Roommate sites.
I have used this site for 2 years and found it very well organized, the search is easy and fast and it has a lot of people from all over the world, so your choice is great. It is a little bit expensive but considering I was able to find good roommates within a week, I really can't complain. As i have stayed without because of Covid 19, I'm not sure what I'll find this year (2021) in terms of choices. But yes, you can trust this service.
I'd posted and been paying the weekly fee for almost two months posting the room for rent. I got nothing but a few scam tenants responding asking for my account info so they can cashapp the deposit for me to hold the room, due to being out of town. I refused and block the scammers. The many other tenants messages me regarding the room, but never ever responds when I respond back. Totally a waste of my money and time. About to cancel this crap.
I have been contacted by 3 people non of which I believed. The first had photoshopped pics and was never available to meet in person. The second was asking a fake question the third suggested he was a Dr who showed me a utility bill that was 9 months old then a bank statement with over £11k in it... plenty of money to get a hotel room and meet in person rather than have to move in straight away. I think the profiles are click bait and scammers. Feels like a very dodgy site. Beware
Read the ad very carefully before the landlord responds to your ad. You be ready to ask questions about whose going to be living in the home. You are the one that's going to be spending your hard earned money. Remember your in control and the landlord is counting on you to help pay down their mortgage. If you need to sign a lease, you aren't happy with your house, you aren't obligated to stay another day if it causes you any problems.
Tip for consumers:
Don’t worry about it
Hi Marie,
It looks like you've placed your comments on a review site versus a forum on tips for renting online. We also don't sell physical goods so these don't apply to us. If you use SpareRoom and have a review about that service, you're welcome to post about that. If you have an account with us and need any further help, please do get in touch directly.
Best wishes,
The SpareRoom Team
Sorry but you're getting too much
Sorry but is not right your strictness with Agent & Agencies you're getting too much...
I am an agent who joined recently the industry and due to COVID19 broke indeed, keen to build a transparent business but apparently a tiny hard to understand 4 you... Millionaire company...
You have the right and I am with you on protecting your customers as everyone should but you can't kill new agents or people who's willing to build something but obviously, need time hence may has not all the money you have...
This is completely unfair...
You might be great with a part of your customers but remember that us agent are one of your the CORE of your business... not only Tenants are your customers...
Without us posting you would have none seeking... remember that...
UK Only
Hi Carl,
Thanks for your review. Our security team will ask all advertisers to provide further security details if required for the safety of our users and quality of listings and do check all accounts regardless of advertiser type.
If you have any further queries or concerns, please do contact us at site.moderator@spareroom.co.uk or on 0161 768 1162.
Best wishes
The SpareRoom Team
They charge excessive fees to list a property
There is no guarantee of any return on investment, despite this being the "number 1" place to rent a room
The LL has to do all the chasing, wrong imo as i've got a room for rent, but am not the one who needs a room.
The site admin team are down right rude and disrespectful
Never again - use roomgo, idealflatmate and other sites now, awful company never recommended by me
Products used:
awful company
UK ONLY
Hi David,
We're sorry to hear you didn't find the service as expected and we'd like to look into your comments further.
We do allow everyone to use the site completely free of charge and provide some optional paid features to enhance your advert. While these are not a guarantee of letting a room, they can significantly help to promote your room advert in the listings.
We know in today's rental market, more landlords have been proactive and used the option to reach out to room seekers, with the paid features also opening up more contact opportunities.
We'd like to make sure you're getting the best from your account and rectify the contact experience you mentioned you had with our team. Please do contact us at customerservices@spareroom.co.uk or on 0161 768 1162 and we'll be happy to help.
Best wishes,
The SpareRoom Team
Besides the fact that the platform doesn't make it very easy for renter to find a place the platform is NOT to be trusted.
I got scammed in paying deposit and 1 month worth of rent by a so called estate agency which had a website and everything.
Spareroom should make sure they check all the accounts and listings properly as they weren't even able to detect the scam after it happened. I don't understand why they ask people to pay for premium when they can't even detect fraudsters on their own platform, shame on you!
Be very careful and try to avoid if you can!
UK ONLY
Hi Andreea,
We're sorry that you've had a negative experience with a letting agency that you found on SpareRoom.co.uk. While we are an advertising platform and don't own or manage the properties listed on our site, we do offer as much advice and support as we can when we receive any reports.
We'd like to assure you that we follow up on all reports made and do our best to assist where we can.
We've not been able to locate any previous correspondence from you, based on the limited information available to us here. Can we ask that you contact our Site Moderation Team directly at site.moderator@spareroom.co.uk or call on 0161 768 1162 as they'd like to make sure they've assisted you as fully as possible.
Best wishes,
The SpareRoom Team
Spare room banned my advertising claiming I was not allowing full access to the kitchen. However, when I myself was looking for rooms, I had found many many instances where landlords did not offer full access to the kitchen. In any case, I did change my ad given that I decided to travel for work for a few days and that I now I could allow full access to the kitchen. However, still they denied my ad. I complained stating that their policies are double standards. I even showed them proof of advertisings that did not even mention kitchen use, and they still do not change their mind. I am looking to complaint outside of spare room. Please do you guys know is the next Ombudsman or Financial Conduct Authority? I honeslty do not think Spareroom is safe. Please stay away!
UK ONLY
Hi Venera,
Thanks for your review. We can see you've been in contact with our moderation team regarding your account which was under review. We can also see your latest email was only submitted yesterday evening and the team do endeavour to reply to all queries within a 24 hour time frame. Our team will be in touch again today where they will be able to discuss your account and advert with you.
Please note if an account or advert is flagged to us for any reason and by any means, we'll look into each case and attempt to come to a resolution as quickly as possible. If there is any evidence or direct account holder contact to us confirming something about an advert that doesn't comply with UK legislation, we may need to suspend an account while we investigate.
As mentioned, a member of the moderation team will be in touch again, however, you can also contact them on 0161 768 1162 and they will be pleased to help.
Best wishes,
The SpareRoom Team
I am going to file with the bbb and attorney general to get my payment back. They say to email and they will get back to you- they didn't. I called waited in hold for 15 mi utes and I was printed to leave my phone number and someone would call me back soon- they didn't.
Hi Cassie, we checked our records and we can see we replied on the same day of your first contact and also again on 9/28/18 but did not receive a reply back on both occasions. Our replies may have gone to your spam folder so it's worth checking there and we'll also be happy to re-send the time-stamped replies through to you so you can see we replied. If you need any further help, please get in contact directly and our team will be pleased to assist.
Have been using this site for quite a while and it is utter rubbish. It is impossible to rent anything via this web, landlords don't reply despite reading messages, listings are inundated with adverts of horrible overpriced con ads or properties already rented. Also lots of people try to scam you and just get your info without offering actual viewing etc.
Made many reports to the site, but they are incompetent enough not to care. They wanted me to play police and submit proofs so that adverts can continue to up as they are ' only advertisement platform' and cannot control what is being posted, according to them. My question is what are the moderators for if they cannot do anything and scammers can do what they want.
Also, most of the adverts that are worth something are not free and want to to pay ridiculous amount to try to contact the landlord that will most likely not reply anyway.
I will soon report it to authorities as they do not realize that responsibility for all the content lies on themselves.
AVOID!
First of all they are WAY OVERPRICED! Better use other websites you will save money and time. Arrogant company in general and after I've been a user and paid hundreds and hundreds of pounds they suddenly decided to suspend my account.
UK only
Hello,
Our moderation team have confirmed with you directly that your account was removed for breaching our terms and conditions. If you need further clarification, please do not hesitate to contact them on 0161 768 1162 and they will be pleased to assist.
Best wishes
SpareRoom team
After paid hundreds pounds for rent a room they closed the account with a silly reason stay away. Give all the evidence and still close you account waste of time
UK ONLY
Hi Sergio,
We can see you've been in contact with our moderation team and unfortunately do not have permission to advertise the property you tried to place on the site and your account has also been used free of charge to do this. If you still have any queries please contact our moderation team directly at site.moderation@spareroom.co.uk / 0161 768 1162 and they'll be happy to help.
Best wishes,
The SpareRoom Team.
So far its been a pleasant experience. Was able to rent to a nice young college student. His work experience checks out. Met with other roommates and home pets.
Hi Darmailya,
Thanks for your comments that's great and we're really glad to hear the service was helpful in finding a roommate and we look forward to you advertising with us again in the future should you ever be looking for another roommate! In the meantime, if you do need any further help at all, please let us know.
Best wishes
SpareRoom Team
1. Scammers
It's a decent mix of fake ads and scammers who who don't have ads and reach out directly asking for your contact info
2. Time wasters
You can place your own personal ad detailing who you are and what your looking for. Be prepared for folks to get in touch who don't bother to read your ad. For instance, if you have a small pet, be prepared to be overwhelmed by an array of options that don't allow small pets.
(I suppose they think that you throw your small pet in the trash?)
3. Functional issues
There are certain features that aren't, like the aforementioned, mentioned. These features don't work on the app yet work on the website.
(It's a go figure it out for yourself bonus)
4. Breach of contract
In the event that you share your dissatisfaction, in the event your experience is quite negative, eventually a "manager" of customer service comes along and insinuates a ploy of brutal British condescension. Without requesting anything whatsoever, SpareRoom will take it upon themselves to cancel the service you paid for no longer providing "early bird" access to ads.
Businesses have an opportunity to grow as a result of direct and honest feedback. This particular business doesn't inhabit or share that particular value.
I'm quite confident they hope I just go away. I'll be glad to. I'm equally confident that SpareRoom's nefarious business practices won't
Hi Jesse,
We're sorry to hear SpareRoom wasn't the service you expected or enjoyed using, As an advertising platform, we have limited jurisdiction in what we can enforce users themselves actually doing, even if we've provided lots of tools and tips along the way for them. We're adding to these continuously in order to improve the overall experience, so we're sorry to hear the current ones weren't quite right.
Our custom systems also help to detect and warn anyone of any users we believe to be non-genuine and the majority are removed before they get onto the site, however, it may be the case more sophisticated untoward behaviour is detected at a later stage, though we do immediately remove the accounts concerned and advise any user who may have been in contact with them as soon as possible.
We're bringing as many parts of the web service to the apps as we can as they have a different set up due to the nature of the platform type they are, so it can take a little longer to bring certain features to them that work on web but are not formatted for apps - yet! If you have any particular features you'd like to see on the app that are not currently there, do let us know as it may be something we're currently working on or can add to our feedback considerations for apps.
We can see your upgrade was refunded in full, just to clarify once an upgrade does come to an end, the service will revert back to the free version so there will be early bird ads in the results again, which is correct according to our terms and conditions.
We recognise SpareRoom may not be for everyone, though we hope you'll give us another chance in the future as we're always implementing new features and improving them to bring the level of service our users ask for and expect and appreciate you taking the time to let us know your thoughts.
If you do need any further help in the meantime, our team can be contacted at customerservices@spareroom.com or on 877 834 2909 and they'll be happy to help.
Best wishes,
The SpareRoom Team
In my opinion, Spareroom is a very untrustworthy website. I have been in touch with * from their site moderation team about a potentially bad agent. This agent currently seems to not be returning the deposits of tenants, engages in bad trade practices, the agent's website contains malware according to a major antivirus software, and they seem linked to another expelled agent. However, Spareroom only defends the agent with the risk of infecting the tenant's computers or of them losing money as they likely get ad revenue. Spareroom has been acting more like a spokesperson for the agent and not as a platform concerned with tenants' well-being.
**UPDATE**
Following the Spareroom representative's response, I checked my inbox and spam folders and there was no response from Spareroom about contact information for a UK authority. Even if this email did not reach my inbox, the readers of this review can make up their own mind about Spareroom's practices and advertisers based on them having to provide information to UK authorities about their own advertisers that Spareroom seem to be still willingly keeping at this point. In my perspective, the platform needs to do a much better job keeping tenants away from such agents.
*Personal information redacted by admin
UK ONLY
Hi Rosen,
Thanks for your review. Our UK team have been in contact with the relevant UK authorities as part of their investigation, which is not yet concluded as per their reply to you. As an advertising portal, we may only remove an advertiser where there is sufficient evidence that they may not operate on our site. Advertisers are removed where this is is the case once an investigation has been completed. We can see we've provided contact information for a UK authority regarding the unrelated suspicions you may have about them or their website, which as we've confirmed would need to be taken up directly with the authority as it is not something related to or occurring within our own systems. Our moderators will be happy to talk to you again about your report and can be contacted on 0161 768 1162 or at site.moderator@spareroom.co.uk.
Best wishes
The SpareRoom Team
I paid for one month upgrade via PayPal. They did not upgrade my account and they don't respond to my phone call and my emails. I am very disappointed.
Hi Margie,
We can see your upgrade was successfully applied to your account and is currently being used. We also received an email from you a few hours ago and aim to respond to all emails within a 24 hour period where possible so do look out for a reply! If you have any further queries or need any help with your account, we'll be pleased to assist on 877-257-4944 or at customerservices@spareroom.com.
Best wishes,
The SpareRoom team
As above be really careful getting a tenant from this site you will end up being owed money, being messed around by dishonest people.
Tip for consumers:
Be careful
Products used:
rent a room
UK ONLY
Hi Virginia,
We're sorry to hear you had a negative experience while using SpareRoom. We are unable to find an account or any contact based on the details posted here, however, we'd still like to look into your comments and any account concerned, or alternatively offer any advice if it's something outside of our jurisdiction as an advertising platform.
Our team can be contacted at customerservices@spareroom.co.uk or on 0161 768 1162 and they will be happy to help.
Best wishes
The SpareRoom Team
Normally l do not write reviews, but please be aware of those properties that are rented out by beaconproperty on sparerooms or any other plateform. These people will not return your deposit and will try everything to make sure that they do not return your deposit. To their defence I did stay extra one week which I forgot to pay the rent until remainded, but was the time I was moving out.
Upon leaving and despite leaving everything in really good state, infact left the room better than it was given, they now claim that I was late on the rent and had to pay £195 pounds when the rent that was agreed was £125.
Long story short, try your level best to avoid this company as you are sure to be bullied and ripped off.
I cut my losses, because they wanted me to pay the £195 then they would return the deposit :)) ), inanycase this is for others out there, who maybe are health care professionals or who have been employed by the hospital.
All I'm saying is to be very careful, Guys and Girls.
P.S zero stars
Regards
The Doctor
Tip for consumers:
Avoid becaonproperty run by a guy called Trevor.
Products used:
Rented a property on 94 Birch Grove, wales from beaconproperty. Be Aware of these scam artists.
UK ONLY
Hi Sarfaraz,
We're sorry to hear you had a negative experience with an advertiser on SpareRoom. Your report sounds concerning so we'd like to investigate further. Please contact our moderators at site.moderator@sapreroom.co.uk or on 0161 768 1162 and they will be pleased to assist and look into this further.
Where appropriate and depending on the outcome of an investigation, an advertiser can be removed form the site completely.
Best wishes
The SpareRoom Team
Horrible App. Nobody replies and full of fake adverts. No matter how much you complain, no action is ever taken.
Hi,
We're sorry to hear you didn't always get a reply from the ads you contacted. Some areas can be incredibly competitive and we know there's currently high demand versus supply. We do recommend placing a room wanted ad, as some advertisers can show a preference to replying those with an ad first over those with little to no information about themselves.
We're always happy to help you get the best from your account and our friendly customer services team can be contacted at customerservices@spareroom.com or on 877 834 2909.
Best wishes,
The SpareRoom Team
They don't let your adverts be seen but they take a full payment and don't let you post your adverts.
UK ONLY
Hi Char G,
Thanks for your comments and we're sorry to hear you've found an issue with your account If you'd like to get in contact with us directly at customerservices@spareroom.co.uk or 0161 768 1162 a member of the team will be pleased to check your account for you and make sure everything is working as it should be.
Best Wishes
The SpareRoom Team
Useless site. Don't even bother registering they will suspend your account after you pay. I m really disappointed.
UK ONLY
Hi Ricardo,
Thank you for your feedback,
I can see that our Site Moderation Team has been in contact with you. Your account was found to be conclusively linked to an Agent that we no longer host advertising for on SpareRoom.co.uk due to their continued breaches of our website terms and conditions.
As a result, your account was closed permanently and a full refund processed on the 18th of September 2019.
If you'd like to discuss your account further please do get in touch with our team on 0161 768 1162 and ask for a Site Moderator.
Best Wishes
The SpareRoom Team
Gain trust and grow your business with customer reviews.
SpareRoom: Find Roommates and Rooms to Rent
Hi Joan,
We're sorry to hear you came across other users you were uncertain of and you can always get in touch with our moderation team directly, as they monitor the site 7 days a week and will look into every report or any concerns another user may have to keep the site safe for everyone.
Please contact them at site.moderator@spareroom.co.uk so they may look into your experience further and where they will be pleased to assist.
Best wishes
The SpareRoom Team