An agent is threatening to sue review site Allagents and has issued preliminary legal proceedings for defamation.
Acquire Estate Agents, of Greenland Quay, London, is seeking compensation of £14,950 together with the immediate removal of all references to it from the Allagents site.
The firm says it has made ‘repeated attempts’ to notify Allagents of a defamatory statement on its website which is factually untrue, and says it wishes to sue for defamation and loss of earnings ‘as a direct result of the defamation’ dating back to last September 19.
In its legal action notice, Acquire says that the review on Allagents is defamatory to Mr Aaron Nguyen Lu – owner of Acquire.
It alleges: “This has caused loss of income and business to Acquire Estate Agents … The publication is untrue and cannot be verified.”
It continues: “We have already requested these statements to be removed with immediate effect but you have not replied.”
The firm says in its legal notice that it will provide an affidavit from witnesses – it names two – who can testify as to the loss of business as a direct result of what appeared on Allagents.
Mr Lu said yesterday that Acquire Estate Agents employs solicitors in its legal and international department.
It is understood that while a number of agents have been unhappy with entries made on the ‘rate and slate’ Allagents website, this is the first time legal action has been initiated.
EAT has tried to contact Allagents for a response but so far without success.
Comments
If all you muppits that support All Agents made half the effort with a similar mainstream tool tied to a large search engine you would actually see it directly benefit your business in terms of leads.
I am not going to tell you how suffice to say that All Agents add no true value to your business. No SEO (in fact if you cave into their Transparent Agent scheme they are getting the benefit not you) and certainly very few leads. I think you will find that if you looked at their web analytics you would find more agents on their site than consumers.
My company manages some 900 properties, i have had some 3 bad comments which i have investigagted, and found to be untrue, example: report of trying to keep a deposit, well since 2007, i do not hold deposits, and therefore can not be guilty of such. its sad to say, but tenants will write what they like, i have found that the avaerage person can see through this, but the agent has a right to respond on the site to the comments, what i have done is learnt from it, each and every tenant now, when doing an out muster prior to leaving the property, fills in a simple form, scoring the proformance of the company, then signs it. since doing this we have found that the tenant has had his say, good bad or in different, and walks away, no more bad reveues, evidance that the person is content, and real time info on any issues the company needs to act on for the future.
its just about managing the tenants expectations in a simple format. i will say that its not only tenants that write bad reveues, agents v agents have been known to. thats really sad!
What you pay for is what you get on 2013-01-12 14:00:18
"The service we receive is excellent. If there are any errors or issues with reviews on our profile page, then they are resolved promptly."
Bully for you. Look at the post immediately before yours, where someone else can't even get AA to talk to them.....
What you pay for is what you get on 2013-01-12 14:00:18 - " It amuses me to read about agents complaining or demanding a service from a business that they have not even paid for."
Soooo.... they add my name to their website, without my permission, tag me as a non-transparent agent, with the implication that because I don't embrace their scheme, that I'm somehow worse than those that do..... and because I don't PAY them, I'm not allowed to protest?
lts set up a portal to REVIEW Allagents! could be interesting
@ you get what you pay for. Agreed to a certain extent but i have never signed up for their service or asked to be on the website, i was added without being consulted.
It amuses me to read about agents complaining or demanding a service from a business that they have not even paid for.
There is no viable business out there that could possibly offer over 15000 customers support free of charge.
As a firm believer in the website, we opted to upgrade our listing to their premium support package and have never looked back.
The service we receive is excellent. If there are any errors or issues with reviews on our profile page, then they are resolved promptly. The ability to access our inactivated reviews alone covers the costs of our support and means we no longer have to spend time pestering good clients to see if they have written their review yet.
I have had many issues with AllAgents - their 'Property Portal' does not work and their response time to agents is shocking - I sent email, message from their website, rang and texted their only contact number which was a mobile, tweeted them and it took weeks to get a response just ti find out how ti even get fully signed up to their 'Transparent agents' status. very very poor indeed - when I did get a response from them they suggested if the properties I manually uploaded to their site did not display then perhaps I should take out their £50+VAT per month agent support service as they dont provide this otherwise - avoid guys - I worked fro another company before setting up by myself - they were member of the Guild and the guild god bless em were pushing this as a godsend to their member agents - I am quite happy for an open and transparent review site for agents - I lve feedback - I just wish it would actually do what it says on the tin and be a review & portal that's free to list - I did have three reviews from customers on there who has not yet sold but were actual clients - AllAgents removed the reviews - I uploaded a few homes in order to get the Transparent agent status - they never appeared in the search listings within their portal section - waste of time. avoid
There is obviously a market for this kind of thing.
Desperate agents who think think they can buy themselves a cheap, quick fix, usp and who don't think further down the line about the consequences.
They deserve each other.
So let's have a look at an Acquire response to a tenant complaint on the site
"The tenant is a foreign high maintenance tenant. Acquire used a professional cleaning company who cleaned the flat twice, made lots of repairs and did this within 24h. The tenant has been asked to leave but has decided to stay. The law does not require agents or landlord to clean properties, this is done as a matter of common practice. Please ignore above comment, as the tenant is ignorant of the law governing landlords and tenants as well as being very high maintenance."
Now you might think that Acquire are trailblazers, taking on the nasty all agents site on behalf of good agents everywhere. I happen to think that the above quote, nasty and spiteful and xenophobic as it is, tells us all we need to know about them. Their action will fail but if the media picks it up, it's a spectacular own goal all round.
all agents site looks awful. the neon-lit box for their transparency scheme undermines any hope they have of showing integrity, they might as well say "we only recommend agents who pay us". and the fact that they don't respond to complaints or apparently audit their own data speaks volumes about their incompetence.
but the quote above suggests that the last people we ought to want stepping into the ring on our behalf is Acquire...
"People buy people first" yes that is why there are lot of crooked tradesmen and service providers out there.
Beware the smiling assassin
Crooks hate facts
I and the other poster have suggested a better alternative.
Heres another one the INEA, ARLA and NFOPP should set up ther own standard rating and review system
Poorly performing members should be investigated and an improvement action put in place or be forced to cease trading by having their licence revoked thats what other real regulating bodies do.
It will never happen though they are more interested in your subsciption than improving standards and consumer protection
What a load of old rubbish that all agents ratings are an instruction winner. You can blind vendors with as many reports and bits of paper you like. rightmove plus report here, zoopla pro report there, it all rubbish.
People buy people first and for most. IF you have that mastered, selling your service and fee etc should be easy
If the stas can be requested or viewed on line there is no need for go to all the agents in the area.In fact this way online agents and traditional can easily be compared.
@happy chappy - the whole point of reviews is for customers to read before they buy.
I agree with transparency and providing your performance stats on request, but that means the client must go to every local agent to get a good overview.
Reviews are there to help choose which agents to approach - if you were booking a hotel, you wouldn't approach each hotel individually but you would shortlist a few based on reviews before making a decision on cost/gut.
As for Allagents itself, based on the experiences of many of my peers I know that they are easily manipulated, do not seem to have any understanding of the industry and have focused all their attention on marketing to agents and getting agents to send traffic their way.
The point of all of this - reviews are here to stay, what we need is a better alternative.
IO - I agree with you... IF.
As i have said IF the industry was trasparent ALLagents would not exist and this would not have happened.
I'll take that as no none of you currently want to or do present that performation FACT to your clients (upon request)
Which only goes to highlight why your industry is viewed in the same way you view Allagents (bullies, scammers, liars) Don't misunderstand me I know there are fantastic agents out there......so if the good among you want to stand out from the bad......be more transparent. .
In fact if legislation demanded I think that would be a positive step.
Then if you are honest (transparent) and good you will win more buiness and be able to command a higher fee
If you are transparent and not as good you can compete on price (while trying to improve)
If you are less than transparent and poor, you better hope all of your competetion is as well, otherwise you will soon go out of business which is good news for your clients, the competition and the industry as a whole.
@Jimmy
Don't be a twit. I'll put it down to end of a long week for you, but I have checked and I said IF both times I posted.
IF what is said in the article is correct, then how can anyone defend Allagents?
Obviously IF it is incorrect then they can
I really think people are getting their knickers in a twist.
Knight Frank have a rating lower than Foxtons. So do Savills who rating is lower than Felicity J Lord. They all seem to do OK.
The fact is NO ONE CARES and few people read them
There are 34,000 reviews over 4 years for 11,000 agents.
That's less than 1 each. Its the small agents who use it as an instruction tool as their customer service USP and who manipulate it. Some seem to have more reviews than they have deals!
@Industry Observer.
How can you even ask that question?
You hear the plaintiff and that's it? They may be correct in their statement that the posting is factually incorrect, but you have no knowledge of that. Surely you need to review the evidence of fact, not base your opinion on statement of claim.
I see AllAgents as a tool to win instructions - if you get some bad reviews and some good reviews but score well overall, I think that most people will look on that as an honest appraisal of your business.
So the task at hand is to make sure that you get your branch listed and get in touch with all your happy clients and get them to say nice things.
If you are a good agent you will still annoy someone because their own expectations are out of whack, but even then, if you have got the right kind of reviews elsewhere, you will end up looking real, rather than 5 star fake.
I use reviews on Amazon to inform my purchases all the time.
When I do, I look at the total number of reviews and read several from each level (5*, 4*, 3*, etc).
Often the 1* and 2* ones are not even about the product, but often from people who bought the wrong thing (their fault) or it got lost in the post or something.
If I find that useful for buying a new wireless router (for example) why wouldn't a property owner choosing an agent?
As long as you don't skew the results by removing the bad reviews... You must let people make up their own minds otherwise they will have no faith in the process.
@Happy Chappy
No-one has responded to my earlier posting either.
If this comment in the article
"The firm says it has made ‘repeated attempts’ to notify Allagents of a defamatory statement on its website which is factually untrue, and says it wishes to sue for defamation and loss of earnings ‘as a direct result of the defamation’ dating back to last September 19."
and this one
"The firm says in its legal notice that it will provide an affidavit from witnesses – it names two – who can testify as to the loss of business as a direct result of what appeared on Allagents."
then how does anyone justify in this thread defending Allagents?
Those of you who think Acquire are some sort of agency champions are very wrong.
This is not the first action by agents - there are others - but they are sensible enough to draw everyone's attention to their bad reviews.
Acquire are just milking it for headlines as they are just a small below average company.
Thanks for the post Liya - interesting.
One statement you made really hit home "OUR REPUTATION MATTERS TOO" - that is actually quite profound and a concept totally alien to those idiots at AllAgents.
Things happen that are outside our remit but lets be honest, it's not about whether it's our fault but how we handle it. A review's based on personal experience and if we make it as painless as possible then hopefully we channel any complaint to it's rightful owner.
Our issue is with how this particular site is being run. It's poor self regulation smacks of a hidden agenda, lack of integrity and out right unprofessionalism. They want our cash and hide behind 'customer' reviews until they get it. Wasn't that long ago these things were being said about us but I digress...
Whether buying a CD, TV or holiday we all read the reviews. They're useful, influential and commonplace so lets not throw the baby out with the bath water. Sure they can contain fakes but if an agent can prove it's a fake then it should be removed. Lets be clear, a bad review is just that but a fake one is a different matter altogether.
Good luck to Acquire and hopefully they will at the very least establish Allagents accountability!
I agree - meetmyagent is good - but you have to pay for the service.
Allagents is free but rubbish
There is point here somewhere!!!
You get what you pay for
MeetMyAgent is an excellent model of how you can use reviews properly and have them properly verified. What I particularly like is the fact that if the site 'doesn't do what it says on the tin' - you can opt out.
There have been a lot of suggestions on here, but Liya and her crew have already got most of them in place.
Not one agent on here has responded to the point about EA's having to keep complaint, completion, or performance stats......Come guys and girls, do any of you do it? I know one agent in my area that does.
I’m one of the directors of MeetMyAgent, and always find these debates really useful. I think that people realise that reviews/online reputation management platforms are here to stay, but it seems like many are looking for a credible alternative.
I believe that we provide that, and highlight some of the reasons why below:
VOLUNTARY PARTICIPATION
Only reviews about registered member agents are published. This ensures that:
- Agents who don’t participate aren’t unfairly represented (as consumers are more likely to leave a bad review on their own accord).
- Consumers can find customer-focused agents, not read about the bad ones.
- If our platform doesn’t work for you, you can choose to remove your review information.
REVIEWS BY SELLERS AND LANDLORDS
The site is about gaining new business, and so we only publish reviews by sellers and landlords although we pass you all buyer and tenant feedback also.
This is because it is the seller/landlord that is your client, while a buyer/tenant searches for the property in the first instance. In order for a seller/landlord to choose to instruct you, they must therefore be provided qualitative information about your service from past sellers and landlords.
DRIVING TRAFFIC TO YOU (and not the other way round)
One thing highlighted here is how agents seem to drive traffic to Allagents. Our platform is built to help you gain new business, and that means delivering you traffic from sellers and landlords searching for an agent in the areas you serve.
We provide a no-obligation free trial of two months, after which we offer a traffic guarantee of a minimum 400 search result hits per office each month (must be associated with 6+ areas or postcodes). We will extend your free listing for any office that does not receive this by the end of the free trial, ensuring that you will never pay unless we deliver.
We also have very nice Twitter-style widgets to display your latest positive reviews, helping you convert potential clients browsing your own website!
OUR REPUTATION MATTERS TOO
We are transparent about who we are and what we do: you can see information on our website (and on Google!) about our directors, and people like Mr Walker can testify that I am a living, breathing person.
We have been present at many key industry events either as invited speakers or exhibitors – for instance, I was a panel member alongside Chris Hamer, David Dalby and Mark Hayward at the PropertyDrum Conference last year.
We also received permission from TPO and NALS to display their logos on our member listings, are official supporters of the SAFE Agent initiative, and have a national press presence that no other ‘review’ site can boast of.
These are just some of the reasons I believe that we provide a credible, alternative to open source ‘name and shame’ platforms such as Allagents. We started MeetMyAgent with the vision of creating a place where good agents could demonstrate their excellence and enable landlords and sellers to meet great local professionals, and our platform is designed to do just that.
If you would like to speak to our team, please drop us a line on info[at]meetmyagent.co.uk and we will call you right back!
All agents have been dissolved once already.
ask mr henry mulholland for his opinions...hes the director
http://companycheck.co.uk/search/results?SearchCompaniesForm[name]=allagents+&yt2=SEARCH&SearchCompaniesForm[includeNI]=0
all in the public domain.
@ Raph
Having read your comments today I am of the opinion that you know very little about Human Nature. Allagents is just a 'pressure' firm a bit like some kinds of insurance salesmen - make money by whatever means..
It would seem that the discussions are mainly between agents. Why are you agents subscribing to them or even acknowledging their existence? Do you ask your enquirers (your potential clients and most important people) if they have even heard of Allagents? I wonder what the percentage would be.
Very funny, we are not even agents and are on there! Does rather make the site a joke. we got reviews and don't have customers!!!
Wrote to them recorded delivery, returned! Sent it back ordinary post not returned.
Lacks integrety.
Raph - I also know of one agent who gets every member of staff to add fake reviews from their home PC / laptop plus they sent out messages on Facebook to friends asking them to do the same.
We have discovered that most people haven't got a clue about All Agents. We send all happy customers an email with a link asking them to comment as part of our 'continuing service review'
If someone complains, we dont.
We all pay Rightmove and Zoopla a fortune to get applicants
Why are people moaning about a tool the will help you win landlords and Vendors.
After all Allagents want a very small amount for what must be a nightmare database of agents.
And don’t forget its our customers that write the reviews not allagents.
Paramount properties have over 600 reviews, no doubt they use that to gain instructions in their area - they are probably laughing their heads off.
Black Kats - run competitions within the office to see who can get the most good reviews and then they reward then negotiators accordingly.
How hard is it to ask your customers to write a review for you it’s not rocket science.
Don't think you can stop fake or mailicous reviews completely but you can certainly make it harder to do and easier to take redress. If they make people open an account and provide some verifiable details that would certainly deter some.
It seems to me there are too many 1 star reviews on there with no reason given, no name given, no branch or person identified. Is this really a review or just a bored teenager?
How do you stop fake reviews? No seriously how?!
For those who haven't seen this today, you could have a landlord like this one reviewing you....
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/odd/news/a450030/landlords-31-strict-house-rules-to-potential-tenant-goes-viral-pics.html
I hate to say it but I agree largely with my old mucker Steve from Leicester - Happy New Year to you Steve.
I don't think I've ever seen so many posts to an item evan allowing for Right Move and EPCs!!!
Can I just ask one simple question of all those posting in defence of Allagents and Free Speech and so on.
If we assume the comment in the article is correct and true (as opposed to perhaps the Allagents review in question) then Acquire says:-
"The firm says it has made ‘repeated attempts’ to notify Allagents of a defamatory statement on its website which is factually untrue"
If that statement is true, and the review is not, how can anyone defend Allagents?
Not quite, EW - my firm has very good reviews on Allagents, but we stopped liking them when they started bullying with their transparant agent requirements and "pay us or...." tactics.
I am a great believer that the more detailed the reviews are, the more truthful they are.
I think its more of a case of Aaron not liking to hear the truth and trying to shut everyone up that criticises him.
If they are 'factually untrue' then there is a comment there is a right to reply section for him to correct the facts....... assuming that they are untrue!!!
So no response to the idea for legislation for Land E agents to keep and present facts upon request.
Well then review sites will be the only independant indication of your performance (dont say read my companies testomonials, if you dont also publish the complaints you receive).
Stop bleating. You dont want more regulation, consumer protection or measures of performance.
Interestingly, we publicly refuse to be a member of the Property Ombudsman Scheme, yet we are the only 5 star rated agent in our area.
My old crew at Bushells rating is 4.76 from 180 reviews..
Oddly, the ranking position was removed so they didn't appear in the Top 10 which appears the preserve of those who sign up to the Transparent Agents scheme.
That said, it was a good tool to use. There is a watershed - agents with good rankings like it, agents without dont.
@Andy - Seems blackmail is not too strong a word, doesn't it.
Interesting when looking at the large London Agents:
Overall Rating:
Foxtons 2.87
John D Wood 2.33
KFH 2.28
FJ Lord 1.97
We are part of small network of agents and there are some bad comments on there for our network (no comments at all for our branch) so I thought I'd have a closer look. Almost all the bad comments are aimed at an agent that has nothing to do with our network and doesn't even have the same name, so I contacted All Agents to point this out and request that they get their data integrity sorted out. Initially my email was ignored but when they finally replied to my third email they said that I should pay them to correct their own incorrect data.
Fantastic news these sites are just bullying and allow anyone with a misplaced sense of 'injustice' against a firm to say whatever they like with impunity.
We should all launch a class action against them.
paul s, i agree with you.
And before anyone thinks "oh he must be a cowboy outfit and is just scared because he'll get found out" i have no objections to review sites, they are a good thing. I do a good job and thats reflected in the comments we get on our FB and twitter site so that will do for me thanks.
I object to the way this Micky Mouse outfit go about there business with out any consultation with the agents in question.
@ there is another way. amazing isnt it, they must be a professional bunch..........mmm.
OK here's a thought, why cant EAT start a proper review site??
There should be legislation for all Letting Agents (on-line and traditional) to be required to provide (upon request) the following FACTS.
% of deposits withheld against deposits taken
(If this is high you are either not vetting you landlords or tenants very well)
Number direct complaints received by tenants against no of properties let
Number direct complaints received by ladlords against no of properties let
Again there will be no need for ALLagents
Do you Letting Agents have any objection to this?
There should be legislation for all estate agents (on-line and traditional) to be required to provide (upon request) the following FACTS.
1. Average time to completion from instruction
2. Average achieved price % to Intial estimated value
There will be no need for ALLagents then.
Do you Estate Agents have any objection to this?
Going by these comments lots of us are behind Acquire, it's tweeting all over the place as well! We have also been bullied and abused by Allagents. is blackmail too strong a word?
i agree, review sites are here to stay and agents are just going to have to deal with it as part of this new 'online reputation management' trend.
if acquire lost this case then they would have permanently tarnished their reputation for ever and I am sure their competitors would have a great time highlighting this.
@Major Holdups - Have you seen their page for agents to review them? When they started that page they called it "reviews", now they call it "testimonials".
They have 36 glowing reviews, and not even 1 negative review. How could this be?
http://www.allagents.co.uk/testimonials/
All agents are a joke. its a business pure and simple, its not an independent body or impartial. We have one review and its bad, i know who posted it and why and the problem was squarely with the landlord but as others have suggested a disgruntled tenant can vent without any come back and there's nothing the agent can do about it. i've copied the complaint word for word, see below. I complained to all agents and all i got was some sales person trying to sell me the services.
"In my opinion these agents lied about the facilities available in the property. When confronted about it the blame was passed to the landlords who own the entire building of 20 or so new build apartments.
No effort was made to placate or rectify. They clearly have no other aim than to rent out property and take your money."
NOW, correct me if i'm wrong but yes, our aim is to rent property and take money? hilarious.
Surely all agents have a face book site so why don't we all jump on that and post negative feedback on them?
over and out.
@Jay - Can't see what the problem can be with your reviewer correcting their typo - here is an extract from Freeindex's help pages:
Thanks for getting in touch.
The review to which you refer does not appear to breach our terms and conditions for writing reviews. Therefore we are unable to remove it.
You can, if you wish, contact your reviewer by email and express your concerns about the review, and it's possible that they may agree to edit the review in light of this.
Best wishes,
The FreeIndex Team
IF you like the idea of review sites, but don't like the way All Agents behaves, there is a solution.
www.meetmyagent.co.uk
Its new, but we like what they are doing
Has anyone tried Freeindex? A business directory which sends leads and has a review area. Reviewers will have their email address displayed (to the agent only). The reviews can optionally also be displayed via widgets on your own website. And if you later want to remove your lsiting with Freeindex, they offer to delete your page and it's all gone.
Better than allagents. Great for your presence on the first page of google too!
We have 170 good reviews and 6 bad.
3 bad ones are fake as one related to an office which was closed in 2005 and is now a dry cleaners.
Another was because a property was let to another person despite the fact we took a holding deposit - but not through us - through Foxtons.
We just responded and focused on getting good reviews.
People seldom take notice of single posts - rather trends.
We have all been on a fab holiday and been astonished by some bad reviews on Tripadvisor.
Likewise, many clients dont care - they just want low fees.
I was always a fan of allagents and promoted comments from customers following completion of a deal. All feedback good and bad is valuable HOWEVER allagents are quickly going down in my estimations. They return calls ONLY when they can try and sell you some form of advertising or "premium Service" as they call it. I also had a very happy Tenant who accidently posted a 1 star review despite her comments being fantastic and her wanting to rate us 5 stars. She has tried to log back in several times unsuccessfully, she`s contacted allagents as have I and they want £50 PCM locked in for 12 months to correct this type of easy error..... £600 a year to correct a customers typo...... CRAZY! When asked why customers could not log back in and correct their own errors.... I was told this would be a disaster! Not quite sure how but I`ll explore that further with allagents. My thoughts at the mo - I want all my reviews taken down and dont want to be a part of allagents at all...... strikes me its all a bit of a con!
If you ever look at reviewers page, they capture loads other details like contact numbers and reviewers address.
Maybe they do verify reviews
Allagents act like black mailing gangsters. They are a disgrace.
Why some moronic agents have paid to get listed on there is beyond me. Nuts.
Raph -
Point 1, Freedom of speech is balanced by the laws relating to slander, libel and defamation of character, and rightly so. Would it be reasonable of me to damage your career / business by printing untrue allegations abou the way you conducted your business on the grounds that its a free country and I can say whatever I like? Of course it wouldn't.
Point 2 - most complaints about letting agents on Allagents relate to either poor maintenance or unreasonably withheld deposits. Both of these are usually outside the agent's control. I can understand why a disgruntled tenant wouldn't understand this BUT (and this is the crucial point) Allagents SHOULD know that an agent cannot spend the landlord's money on maintenance without his consent, cannot choose to withhold a deposit and certainly cannot benefit from a deposit being withheld, yet they make no effort whatsoever to educate their "clients" about these issues.
I'm all in favour of naming and shaming genuinely poor agents, but Allagents is just a platform for poorly-informed tenants (and occasionally landlords) to have a rant about something which is and always was beyond the agent's control.
The site does seem to be easily manipulated and no response from Allagents speaks volumes. I don’t particularly like review sites that do not verify the source of the review.
However, one of the positive reviews for Acquire looks very fishy indeed.
'Acquire estate agents are quick to respond with any request. They know the law and are very good to explain and advise. I highly recommend them.'
In a reply to a negative review they talk about 'knowing the law' I think Acquire have tried to play the review game and lost.
Sitting on the fence with this one.
Sitting on the fence with this one.
I cannot believe people actually pay these guys money to be on their site, are you mad??
Raph...So your suggesting that agents should get people to post good reviews to hide all the bad reviews.
It's a bit like allagents asking me to advertise, the agent would say....."dear landlord please post a good review, oh and p.s. it's now time to discuss letting fees!!!!
@ Ralph In the first instance you do not know a review has been written and secondly they do not identify who they are. I have a review written about me which relates to a firm with a similar name and a properrty I do not manage.
Despite requests the review has not been removed but I still get their bullying emails about the conseqences if I do not sign up with them. They are a commercial business " good news doesn't sell papers"
Why should I require to visit their web site everyday to check and at the same time increase their hit rate to quote to their advertisers?
If someone wants to review my business I have no issues with that but they must identify themselves and advise you that a review has been made.
Allagents "verified" a comment on our profile that related to a completely different estate agent based over 250 miles from our location, then took over 8 months to remove it despite 50+ phone calls & emails. They even had the cheek to offer a faster "moderation" service if we paid them despite it being entirely their mistake in the first place.
If I had three or four bad reviews I would make sure I encouraged my customers to put up good reviews.
Online reviews are here to stay there is nothing any of us can do about it.
The agents that have good reviews, use it as a marketing tool to win instructions. Simple.
It's not freedon of speech it's freedom to slander without fear of being found out if your telling the truth or not.
Acquire have just brought this to everyones attention, good luck to them sorting it out. who in their right mind though would get involved with a name/shame site anyway
It's called freedom of speech!
Many have tried to sue Trip adviser and failed.
If I were Acquire, I would not spend money on legal fees, rather I would spending it on their 'Tesco Value website' and try to make it comply with prevailing legislation.
Best to focus on getting good reviews than worrying about bad ones.
Raph....So to regulate an inductry we should use a site that is also unregulated. Their ends the discussion!
If you were to go onto Amazon and buy a razor and you don't like the razor you're quite entitled to write review.
I really can't see what the difference is.
The truth is there are an awful lot of very bad estate agents if the government are not going to regulate it then surely this is another way of sorting the good from the bad.
Raph...Any agent who wants to push people to give good reviews are just as bad as allagents.
I'm not afraid of the truth, I just want the truth not a site that can be so easily manipulated.
I can't see what all the fuss is about.
If you're good honest agents you should encourage reviews.
Why don't they get their customers to write good things about them, or maybe this agent hasn't got any customers to write good things about them.
Online reviews are here to stay.
The truth is out there
At last. A quite shocking, unregulated, unsubstantiated, wild west forum for disgruntled clients who if they dont like what an agents says or does systematically goes about damaging their business. If he wants a whip round to pay for legal fees count me in!
They say that they properly verify the comments but they do not. I do however receive weekly emails and monthly phone calls from Allagents tryint to sell advertising.
Any agent paying this company needs their heads examined!
It was only going to be a matter of time before someone took this route.
It's a scam.
The Allagents website seems to be a venting opportunity for the disgruntled above it being a common sense evaluation of service - like most slate and rate sites.
I looked our company up and they have the name wrong, address wrong, and the name wrong of the neighbouring office. Does anyone really use this site?