Review site Allagents is threatening to put the word ‘Cheat’ on the page of any agent found to be writing reviews about themselves or any other agent.
Allagents’ Martin McKenzie told EAT: “We cannot be absolutely, 100% certain that all reviews are from bona fide customers and we don’t hide this. However, what we have are experienced moderators and a technical support team checking the source of reviews, email addresses and suspicious activity trends, along with a number of other techniques that we cannot divulge.
“We also carry out regular random checks and make contact with sample groups of reviewers and agents to obtain further clarification. n some cases, we ask for hard copy evidence to confirm or deny the validity of submitted testimonials.
“We make it very clear that any agents we do catch do risk being exposed as cheats.
“We can confirm that there are a small number of firms, large and small, that have been warned and placed on our watch list, which means they are open to tougher scrutiny.”
The site has emphasised the threat of exposure as it runs its current round of awards, the Estate & Lettings Agents Customer Experience Awards.
Closing date is August 31 so if you are keen on this sort of thing, there is still time for you to organise your clients into reviewing you.
The award categories include sales, lettings, combined sales and lettings, large chain, small chain, franchise firms and branches, providing regional and national winners as well as online agents.
The awards are free to enter, and all agents listed on the site are automatically entered.
“All the reviews used to calculate all the winners are available in the public domain, so there is full transparency,” says McKenzie.
“Agents can help customers to place feedback on their profile page by emailing them their direct ‘write a review’ page link.
“They can do this simply by going to their own review profile page, clicking on the ‘write a review’ button and copying the URL address of that page and pasting it into their clients’ emails. This one-click link will ensure that their customers are directed straight to the review page and will maximise the number of customer reviews.”
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Comments
'Cornwall Cooper'
Why do you say you like the league tables? The story itself is testament to their worthlessness, is it not?
They will only get credibility if they enforce their rules and start name the cheats. However I agree that I can never see this happening. having said that, I really do like their league tables. This is something different.
'IHS' - with respect, the review is what the author types and ticks, and therefore the host cannot be blamed.
That being said - the whole thing is one huge farce as I have maintained from Day 1.
And as far as the site labelling their 'members' as cheats - yeah, right.
Show me the first - there'll not be a second.
They have a review on their front page from someone called Karen which is shown as a thumbs down but when you click on it, it is a five star review. If they can't get their own rating right what use is the site.
Why do some agents use this mess of a website?? We had reviews that were obviously setup to make us pay. We have been trialling estate agent.me and will be subscribing 100%, we get agency feedback and property feedback at the same time.
I agree with @aceofspades,
reviews should be writing independently by the customer s with no pressure on what they write .
We are big fan of the site, not just for the business that it brings us but to help identify areas where we need to improve on.
I was initially unsure about the staff profiles, however to my suprise this has become an excellent recognition and motivational tool for our team. Every month we award a £50 voucher to the person that receives the most reviews.
It has become an integral part of our business and we find it is very straight forward getting feedback on the site.Just like anything else, its all down to how much effort you put into it
2 of our competitors have been using this site for a while now, we tried using another site but have been pushed into using this one as it was making us not look too good
We have got over 30 written testimimials in our office and 5 online reviews from another site. Allagents refused to allow us to put them on the site. We were told that we would need to contact the customers direct.
I really don't understand them, you would think being a review site that they would want to get as many on there as possible.
@ aceofspades
We also had a load of positive reviews removed our site because people were doing these from our office. They were removed because someone complained they were faulse
Asking those same people and others since to do it when they get home doesn't work either. People just can't be bothered
We now even work with helphound, who will email all our tenants directly requesting a review of our service that will go live in our site and Allagents. Even with the incentive of a £10 amazon yet stilllll people just cannot be bothered/forget
It's why I don't like the site - they can't make it even and balanced.
People who are unhappy will find somewhere to vent their frustration. However the people who are happy, will just forget/get on with their lives/ can't be bothered - other than just the odd one or two
Any agent that that fakes their own reviews deserve to have their name tarnished. One of the agencys that have been banned from the site area actually an alright firm. Its probably just been a few rogue members of staff that have let them down. Still cheating is cheating
@local agent - same thing here, large chain of agents suddenly stopped being listed in our area.
This thing about labelling agents as cheats publicly is old news. It is something alagents openly stated on their website (a couple of years ago or so) they would do with any agent found cheating. No threats, no warnings, no removing the agent's listing from the site. Simply the word "cheat" plastered across the review page.
I am not aware of a single case where they have done this and it seems that, as ever, all agents make it up as they go along.
Still, maybe a way has finaly been found for those agents wishing to remove their listing from this dubious review site
@ local agent that would certain explain why a large agent in our areas can suddenly not be found on it anymore.
absolute rubbish. They would be sued if they tried exposing an agent as cheat. I know of one high ranking firm that was caught blatantly cheating and a deal was done to simply remove them from the site.
Retro - i don't like allagents but they were correct in your case. I don't think your customers can give a 100% honest review if they are forced to do it in your office.
Why couldn't they just do it at home? If you receive fantastic service, you will go out of your way to rate it.
We got contacted by their abuse team claiming we wrote fake reviews. It wasnt, all we were doing was asking tenants to write the review before they left the office.
They then removed them and told us that the customers would have to resubmit them. We have now lost all those reviews!
the site is just a waste of time
So this is how the site is trying to claw back some credibility and yet still manages fail completely.
Show me one example where this has happened.