A firm selling a database of estate agents’ and letting agents’ contact information has been told to withdraw its ‘money back’ offer in its marketing.
A complaint was made to the Advertising Standards Authority about the database, said to consist of over 21,000 estate agent and letting agency records, plus 27,000 email addresses.
The database offered a money back guarantee if any record was duplicated.
The complainant said offering to guarantee a refund if the database contained duplicate records was misleading.
Emails Etc told the advertising watchdog that the refund offer was genuine, because the software had a database so configured as not to allow any duplicates. The firm believed the complainant may have accidentally amended raw data, resulting in duplicates.
The ASA said it had not looked at the firm’s software, but did see spreadsheets provided by the complainant which included some duplication. It therefore concluded that Emails Etc should have refunded the complainant. Because they had not, the ASA said the advertised guarantee was misleading.
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Comments
The ASA said:
"one of the listings for the company in both the spreadsheet provided by Emails Etc and the spreadsheet provided by the complainant was duplicated, and, furthermore, one e-mail address appeared twice."
Not bad for a database of 27,000! The article should have read:
'Oustanding Estate agents database praised by ASA for having 99.99% accuracy'
Trick: RM do. And they charge fortunes.
Actually it said that the database had a couple of records, in 27,000 whose company name and address were almost the same. Estate Agent Today, are you struggling for news today?
How much do RM charge to email their database of agents?
Rightmove misses trick, they could do this!