Target Group Reviews 268

Awful, couldn't set up direct debit, took 2 years! When applying for redemption claimed hadn't had attachments when they were on the email. Ridiculous company, awful service. Government should be ashamed of awarding this contract!

Absolutely awful. Don’t respond to emails. Takes at least 30 minutes to answer the phone. If I could give them less than one star, I would. Target should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.

Awful customer experience and take such a long time to answer the phone. Massive call queues if they are real.
They send out far too many letters with confusing information...hardly a sustainable approach in this age.

Useless....avoid if possible.

Help to Buy should be called Help us get Rich. I had to pay £300 for an independent house evaluation which evaluated my house to be 10k less than the agreed price I am selling my house for. I then had to pay Help to Buy a £200 administration fee for them to send me a letter basically saying the independent evaluation is redundant because it’s less money that what you are selling your house for and therefore we will go with the higher money value. :) :) - all in all they have made an additional 8k profit from my house. I would NOT recommend .. if you are unfortunately in a position where you need to use government assistance then try and remortgage your house to pay back the equity loan before selling your house.

Target were absolutely first class in helping me remortgaging in purchasing the outstanding 30% of my flat.
It was completed a couple of days ago, so I now have 100% ownership of the property.

Unless you can guarantee your property will go up in value do not use the help to buy equity loan. After a year of trying to sell which at times felt like an impossible task given the cladding crisis and finally finding a cash buyer (although at slightly under what we paid for it), Homes England are now refusing to give a timeline to when we will receive our redemption letter, putting our flat sale in jeopardy. However I have been told over the phone that if we had sold above the price we paid, it would have gone through straight away. Target customer services team have been trained very well to come across helpful without actually doing anything. We've put numerous chases on the account, all of which have been ignored to the point where we missed our initial completion date. The process they have in place does not work and causes so much stress for all parties involved. Not to mention the huge fee we paid to get the property valued. Do not have a policy where you only have to pay back the % of the property value whether it goes up or down if you aren't going to stick by it. We are prepared to pay the difference we just want our flat sale to go through. Whatever you do, do not use Help to buy because they will not help you to sell.

I wish, I could give less than 1 Star.

Not enough staff to pickup up the call. Home's of England doesn't care any chasers or emails from Target HCA.

They don't even know what is timeline when the case is with Home's England.

Absolutely Horrific experience.

Not enough staff to answer calls. Emailed documents but they never confirm receipt.
What am I paying a £200 administration fee for if they don't have the staff?

Non-responsive to email queries.
Tried to call several times and gave up after waiting over an hour each time.
Not helpful at all, especially when dealing with such important things and high amounts of money.

Just dreadful. The staff are friendly enough, but repaying the loan is long, painful and frustrating process. They did not take the charge off at the land registry due to an admin error on their behalf so we couldn’t remortgage our property. Took many, many phone calls to sort out. Just avoid HtB - more hassle than it is worth

Couldn’t recommend this company enough they have been nothing but efficient. They are easy to get in contact with, and extremely helpful! Due to my solicitors failings we only received the RICS report the day before the property sale was due to complete, I emailed this and my letter of undertaking from the solicitors straight to target hca who managed to authorise completion of sale the same day whilst I was on the phone to them. This ensured my property completion was not delayed, and I can’t thank them enough!

This is a terrible government agency. Incompetent, disorganised and highly unreliable. There are no guidelines on response time via email, the phone lines are constantly busy, waiting times more than an hour and staff cannot address the query. Sale times are delayed for months without any real reasons. They have asked 5-6 times the same documents, notwithstanding having sent them all previous emails with the same query and response attached. This agency is not accountable to anyone and anything. Regrettably, they are causing distress and value destruction by playing with taxpayer moneys. It is disgraceful that in our time there can exist such reality in a public entity. Amazing that the press has not picked this up.

Shocking beyond belief and I’m not really sure if this is Target’s fault. The staff in general are very helpful. However, I feel Homes England are hiding behind Target. Homes England’s timescales (which they don’t tell you ever) are outrageous and surely cause many deals to fall through.

We sent them our documents months in advance on exchanging to a new property. Called them a couple of days before exchange and they said they couldn't open our links in the original email so they didn't process anything.
No one thought to reach out to us to let us know there was an issue, they just deleted our email and moved on as if it wasn't important. It absolutely baffles me how incompetent they are at Target. Just no common sense at all.

AVOID. AVOID. AVOID. Completely incompetent staffing & procedures. You will be stuck with your home forever if you use them!!!!

The worst organisation I’ve EVER had to deal with… I continue to spend months dealing with the processing of a simple staircasing / partial redemption. They have all the information they’ve asked for but continue to delay and divert with ad hoc obstacles and miscommunications - they rarely commit to promises made and allow my case to go in loops regularly. Know one knows what they are doing and there is no interest to take ownership to move the process along. The delays have led to lost money on my side and, quite frankly, the admin fee I paid should really be a payment to me for explaining their processes on a daily basis - they have no clue or interest. It’s literally shocking that this company is entrusted to manage/administer this sort of work.

… and my existing complaints which haven’t been resolved in over 2.5 months have now had to go to the financial ombudsman to try get some accountability / resolution.

AVOID THE PAIN AND STRESS THIS COMPANY HAPPILY CAUSES. DO NOT GO NEAR THEM IF YOU CAN HELP IT.

I know various people who work there. They are extending there probation periods to let them go when new contract starts with The Bank of Ireland in aprox 2 months and taking on new staff who get priority on all jobs relating to new contract. Avoid them!...... Proper micky mouse outfit

If there was a zero star that would be more appropriate for Target! Trying to redeem my loan since 2 years, Target keep blaming Home England for the delay! The government is utterly ignoring innocent people stuck in their property's due to incompetent companies like Target. DO NOT USE TAREGT, YOU WILL BE TRAPPED FOREVER!

Absolutely useless. The most incompetent group of people I've ever had to deal with.

And what's worse is that it costs ME hundreds because of their inability to do their jobs properly.

There's ALWAYS a different story on what's needed every time I call up. I absolutely hate this company and hope it gets completely overhauled at some point, so that other people like myself will never run into the constant anger and frustration I've been through.

Same story as everyone else. I have been trying to redeem my loan since December but it's impossible to make progress with Target. Like many others, my property fell in value, and they continually tell me it's being "reviewed" by Homes England. The next call reveals it hasn't even gone to Homes England because of some error or another - usually something they want me to pay to rectify. I feel like I'll be stuck with a property I can't sell or rent forever, and no one in government or Homes England seems to realise the scale of the problem they've created. It's literally ruining people's lives. Please don't use Help to Buy if you are considering it, you will regret it.