The consumer organisation Which has set up a new forum which allows the public to review the performance of businesses they use - including estate agencies.
Which Local currently has over 137,000 reviews of 77,000 businesses in 400 different categories. Which members - they have to pay at least £1 to join - are encouraged to post reviews, good or bad, on the site.
Which moderators verify the authenticity of the reviews before the posted comments are made public, and the organisation emphasises that businesses cannot ask or pay to be listed on the website - they must first receive a Which member recommendation.
Earlier this month Letting Agent Today revealed a new site, RentalRaters, which allows tenants to give their views of landlords and letting agencies they dealt with. The new Which service encourages comments about sales agents as well as the lettings sector.
Comments
Which would do good if they add the review of Managing companies of the leasehold properties, because the majority of landlords are not really landlords, but long leaseholders, who experience huge squeeze by the freeholders and appointed by them managing companies: egzagerated insurance premiums, huge sinking funds and outrageous fees put pressure on the rental market. Its time somebody reminded the government, that buy-to-let is 18 years old and there is no legislation to regulate it properly. Councils, Freeholders and their Managing companies rip off the leaseholders and some cost go down to tenants. Leaseholders are tenants as well, sandwiched in between the freeholder and short-term tenants. This is a major issue addressed by no one properly.
The forum is a good idea as reviews are available but they don't give vendors, landlords, tenants or buyers a chance to ask further questions etc. Would this forum be open to review landlords as well like RentalRaters I'm a tad skeptical as to how they review the authenticity of posts as it would be deprecating to agencies if competitors were to create aliases and post fake bad reviews.
The only problem is that one bad review can sometimes be more harmful than ten good ones. A perfectly good and respectable estate agent could be disparaged by one disgruntled client who had a bad experience with that estate agent for whatever reason. Will estate agents get the right to respond, as they do on something like TripAdvisor How exactly will the moderators verify the authenticity of the reviews before they go live Id be a bit worried that various people, hiding behind the anonymity of an internet profile, will use this site as an excuse to have indiscriminate pops at estate agents.