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Purplebricks: full text of AllAgents' announcement about suspension

Review service AllAgents has issued a statement explaining why it has suspended the Purplebricks agency.

Purplebricks puts much emphasis on public reviews, frequently quoting individual examples on social media, and more generally on television, newspaper and other marketing formats.

It usually cites Trustpilot - which last week made a statement to Estate Agent Today on how it operated with regard to reviews of the Purplebricks service by customers.

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Now AllAgents, followed what it believed to have been a number of legal approaches by Purplebricks, has suspended the agency from its review operation. Here is the full text of the AllAgents statement.

With 300,000 reviews, allAgents.co.uk is the UK’s largest independent customer review website for estate agents, letting agents and suppliers to the industry. 

Since 2006 we have been proudly helping consumers share and learn from customer experiences throughout the UK.

allAgents Ltd provided this managed profile page for PurpleBricks PLC at no cost to them. We did so in order to provide a truly independent and open platform for their customers to share their experiences without any accusation of being selective in the reviews published. 

Due to repeated threats of legal action forcing the removal of content and negative reviews from our website, we have regrettably taken the unprecedented step in suspending the PurpleBricks profile page until further notice (as of the 18th September 2017). We will continue to accept genuine customer reviews for PurpleBricks, however at this time we will not be willing to publishing them. 

Purplebricks customers will also not be eligible to list properties on our property portal. 

A further statement will be released in due course. For further updates please contact us.

  • Lee Blackman MNAEA MARLA

    Discovering All Agents last year by accident I found I had three rather harsh negative reviews which I asked to be removed having never agreed to be part of their site. One from a buyer who lost out on a property because they offered far under the asking price (which was repeated and they had never actually carried out a transaction with us) and one from a tenant who was upset that we would not arrange his direct debits with utilitiy providers and council. When I finally managed to make contact with the management team at All Agents I was told they could not remove them as it would harm the integrity of the site.

    Up until yesterday, Purple Bricks had over 100 reviews left on All Agents with a score of around 2/5 and a long, detailed list of scathing criticism and stories of wasted money. I am not anti "online agency" there is a place for it certainly and there are many succes stories but if you are a "proper estate agent" then you should expect to be subject to the same treatment, rules and regulations as everyone else in the industry. For the last few years it has almost been taboo to make criticism of any of the online firms even when the complaints relate to misleading or false advertising and it is only now that the regulators have deemed it suitable to investigate the claims and figures they publish. The flow of informally resolved complaints published of late is evidence of this.

    Clearly, money talks and if All Agents bow to these threats then they should shut the site down, exactly what PB wants as they have not been able to manage the review content in the same way as they have on Trust Pilot (prompting this weeks statement from TP) and the same reason they closed their FB comments page.

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    • 19 September 2017 10:58 AM

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  • Ian Smith

    Great comments Lee. So no one is able to write a bad review about P Bricks is that is but everyone else is fair game? All Agents should crowd fund to help fight this injustice if all UK agents chucked in a £10 note that would cover it? Any chance all agents?

    They even admit they believe 50% are false, I would think probably none are false !!!

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