- Original Poster
- #1
Basically a lot of students this year have been treated unfairly (myself included) by Southampton university. I am hoping you can help us out. Thanks
Basically a lot of students this year have been treated unfairly (myself included) by Southampton university. I am hoping you can help us out. Thanks
The first line from the main Southampton accommodation website :
With 20 Halls of Residence, a guarantee of a single room in a Hall in your first year and top-class facilities, it's no wonder that our accommodation is popular
This was actually one of my reasons for choosing the university as I wanted to live my first year in halls.
Anyway. A few days ago students received this email:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Accommodation for 2008/2009
You will shortly be receiving your offer of accommodation from the University of Southampton.
Due to the popularity of our Halls of Residence this year it has been necessary to twin some students in the most popular Halls complexes for a short period of time. This is where students share a single study room for a temporary period before being found single accommodation.
We understand that you may have been expecting to receive an offer for a single room and in most years this would have been the case. This year demand from students who are guaranteed a place in Halls has been higher than expected. To ensure that everyone is accommodated at the beginning of the academic year it has been necessary to twin more students than usual.
You may be twinned for a period of up to 12 weeks although we will endeavour to ensure all twinned students have single accommodation as soon as possible. Most people will be de-twinned within a 6 week period, and often sooner. Twinned rooms are offered at a reduced rent to take account of the fact that you are sharing facilities.
Attached are a number of FAQs about the twinning process. These are also available on the Accommodation Services website at
If you have any further queries please contact the Accommodation Service on +44 (0)23 8059 5959 or
Yours sincerely,
Accommodation Service
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please note there is no apology at all.
So Im thinking uh oh!
A few hours later my thought are confirmed. I look on the online accommodation service to find I have been put in a twin room. The problem being:
A)I didnt ask for a twinned room
B)Its not even a twin room its a single room between two people.
So after much anger on my part I decide to see if its just me. Phoned a friend, same has happened to him. Checked the facebook group and found that it has happened to lots of us.
So I decide to phone up and see whats going on. On the phone I received no real apology or reason why this had happened. I asked about the rooms, I am told that we will have to share a single room, between two people. There will be another single bed put in but we will be sharing a desk and cubboard, and not to bring too much stuff as space will be tight for the first few weeks (some peoples comments on the boards are that they live 300 miles away and cant afford to keep going back a fourth when they need more stuff!). The cost of the room will be £471 for the 6 weeks period (the period starts as this and can be extended), after some quick maths I found that the normal cost of my specific shared room is £690 for this period. So I will be getting half a room (although not even half really) for 68% of the price.
I was also told that with will happen to 400-500 people, although this number seemed sketchy and others online have said that there are 1000 people without rooms (that have to share, therfor 2000 people sharing) . I was told that rooms would free up quickly as people will leave and not turn up, thats how they will get us all in. I am told 6000 people applied for 5000 rooms, so, in order to room us all in single rooms like we asked for and were GUARANTEED one sixth of the university would have to not turn up or drop out.
According to an article found via google (can't post link here as board won't allow me)
Southampton had a drop out rate between 03 and 04 of 8.8%. That is over the whole year. This year double that figure must drop out in the first 12 weeks for people to all get rooms.
However the wait could be up to 12 weeks, which in university terms is a third of a year.
Here are the main points of distress:
1.At 68% of the cost they will actually profit from this mistake. Is this really fair?
2.When I was put through to the head of the accommodation office I asked them to take the website guarantee down as it was clearly not being met, to which they replied well when we put that up there we didnt know how many students would apply. To which I said maybe you should check with your English department the definition of guarantee (admittedly loosing my cool here which was unnecessary). She replied she would prefer me not to speak like that and asked me to write a complaint instead.
3.The lack of apology
4.When speaking about a single desk between two I was told you wont be doing much work in the first few weeks anyway (the first few weeks could end up being a third of the year!!!)
5.The lack of any communication, were supposed to be going to the uni in 22 days! And not everyone has received their accommodation. Let alone what were supposed to do when we get there!
6.The fact I chose the uni partly on the GUARANTEE of accommodation
7.The fact this GUARANTEE is not being met at all.
8.The fact they would like us to share a single room between two. The rooms are 2.9m by 3.7m, if you share this between two you get a personal space (for possibly 12 weeks) of 2.8m by 1.85m, this is actually smaller than the average us prison cell. And you have to pay for the privilidge!
9.I did not discuss this on the phone, but if you get a whole corridor of sharers surely this means twice as many people will be using the bathroom facilities in that corridor, how is this going to work?
My main point of this post is to find if there are any legal issues being broken here and what we can do about them. Thanks to everyone for their support.
Basically a lot of students this year have been treated unfairly (myself included) by Southampton university. I am hoping you can help us out. Thanks
The first line from the main Southampton accommodation website :
With 20 Halls of Residence, a guarantee of a single room in a Hall in your first year and top-class facilities, it's no wonder that our accommodation is popular
This was actually one of my reasons for choosing the university as I wanted to live my first year in halls.
Anyway. A few days ago students received this email:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Accommodation for 2008/2009
You will shortly be receiving your offer of accommodation from the University of Southampton.
Due to the popularity of our Halls of Residence this year it has been necessary to twin some students in the most popular Halls complexes for a short period of time. This is where students share a single study room for a temporary period before being found single accommodation.
We understand that you may have been expecting to receive an offer for a single room and in most years this would have been the case. This year demand from students who are guaranteed a place in Halls has been higher than expected. To ensure that everyone is accommodated at the beginning of the academic year it has been necessary to twin more students than usual.
You may be twinned for a period of up to 12 weeks although we will endeavour to ensure all twinned students have single accommodation as soon as possible. Most people will be de-twinned within a 6 week period, and often sooner. Twinned rooms are offered at a reduced rent to take account of the fact that you are sharing facilities.
Attached are a number of FAQs about the twinning process. These are also available on the Accommodation Services website at
If you have any further queries please contact the Accommodation Service on +44 (0)23 8059 5959 or
Yours sincerely,
Accommodation Service
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please note there is no apology at all.
So Im thinking uh oh!
A few hours later my thought are confirmed. I look on the online accommodation service to find I have been put in a twin room. The problem being:
A)I didnt ask for a twinned room
B)Its not even a twin room its a single room between two people.
So after much anger on my part I decide to see if its just me. Phoned a friend, same has happened to him. Checked the facebook group and found that it has happened to lots of us.
So I decide to phone up and see whats going on. On the phone I received no real apology or reason why this had happened. I asked about the rooms, I am told that we will have to share a single room, between two people. There will be another single bed put in but we will be sharing a desk and cubboard, and not to bring too much stuff as space will be tight for the first few weeks (some peoples comments on the boards are that they live 300 miles away and cant afford to keep going back a fourth when they need more stuff!). The cost of the room will be £471 for the 6 weeks period (the period starts as this and can be extended), after some quick maths I found that the normal cost of my specific shared room is £690 for this period. So I will be getting half a room (although not even half really) for 68% of the price.
I was also told that with will happen to 400-500 people, although this number seemed sketchy and others online have said that there are 1000 people without rooms (that have to share, therfor 2000 people sharing) . I was told that rooms would free up quickly as people will leave and not turn up, thats how they will get us all in. I am told 6000 people applied for 5000 rooms, so, in order to room us all in single rooms like we asked for and were GUARANTEED one sixth of the university would have to not turn up or drop out.
According to an article found via google (can't post link here as board won't allow me)
Southampton had a drop out rate between 03 and 04 of 8.8%. That is over the whole year. This year double that figure must drop out in the first 12 weeks for people to all get rooms.
However the wait could be up to 12 weeks, which in university terms is a third of a year.
Here are the main points of distress:
1.At 68% of the cost they will actually profit from this mistake. Is this really fair?
2.When I was put through to the head of the accommodation office I asked them to take the website guarantee down as it was clearly not being met, to which they replied well when we put that up there we didnt know how many students would apply. To which I said maybe you should check with your English department the definition of guarantee (admittedly loosing my cool here which was unnecessary). She replied she would prefer me not to speak like that and asked me to write a complaint instead.
3.The lack of apology
4.When speaking about a single desk between two I was told you wont be doing much work in the first few weeks anyway (the first few weeks could end up being a third of the year!!!)
5.The lack of any communication, were supposed to be going to the uni in 22 days! And not everyone has received their accommodation. Let alone what were supposed to do when we get there!
6.The fact I chose the uni partly on the GUARANTEE of accommodation
7.The fact this GUARANTEE is not being met at all.
8.The fact they would like us to share a single room between two. The rooms are 2.9m by 3.7m, if you share this between two you get a personal space (for possibly 12 weeks) of 2.8m by 1.85m, this is actually smaller than the average us prison cell. And you have to pay for the privilidge!
9.I did not discuss this on the phone, but if you get a whole corridor of sharers surely this means twice as many people will be using the bathroom facilities in that corridor, how is this going to work?
My main point of this post is to find if there are any legal issues being broken here and what we can do about them. Thanks to everyone for their support.
not really constructive eh lol
