An OnTheMarket sales rep - who now no longer works for the company - wrote a critical review of an independent estate agency which declined to sign up to the portal after being cold called.
Russell Moxley, who runs County Estate Agents in Whitstable, says his firm received “lots and lots and lots” of cold calls from OnTheMarket reps in recent weeks as the portal seeks to build its inventory and advertisers.
Moxley claims this in itself may be contrary to the recently introduced GDPR legislation but his chief complaint was about a Google review of his agency left by an individual who had previously been one of the cold callers to the branch on behalf of OTM.
A spokesperson for OnTheMarket said yesterday evening: “The publication of the Google review is an incident involving a single member of temporary staff who no longer works for the company. The negative review has been deleted and we have written to County Estate Agents with our sincere apologies."
The original review left by the rep stated:
“The receptionist here is very rude and belittling. I would not recommend this company as it makes me wonder what the other staff are like.”
Moxley disputes the allegation that the person answering the telephone on behalf of the company was rude, but also contends that it was unethical for a rep to leave a review about a company’s performance when that rep made contact only to persuade the company to sign up.
Over the weekend Moxley - who contacted OnTheMarket and Google to get the hostile review removed, and who contacted Estate Agent Today to pass on the story - himself answered the Google review with this statement:
“As you work for On The Market and have made an unsolicited sales call to our office which breached data protection laws and as the call was not welcomed by us, your review does not give as true and accurate account of our service. We are now in the process of taking this matter up with your office and note you have also carried out a similar negative review on what would appear to be another agent’s site who also does not appear to have time for cold callers!”
You can see a redacted version of the review and response below:
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Excellent article highlighting the adverse effects of unfair and negative reviews. It is high time there were fines for intentional inaccurate and misleading reviews of companies who work extremely hard to offer great service and train staff. Wholly not acceptable. Businesses are also constrained by the fact that they are often unable to post the whole story and facts due to data protection, which is essentially fighting with one hand behind their backsi, giving the receivers post more credit than it should get!
Google reviews make my blood boil. We've had a few bad ones only from rental tenants who have caused damages and can't understand why a carpet with damage in a prominenet position must be replaced, at their expense. You cannot rent out a one bedroom flat in Central London for £850pw. with a damaged carpet. Or broken slide and tilt full length windows need an estimate for repairs with a call out charge of £70. They always blame the letting agent but we don't make any money out of it, we are just looking after our landlords interests.
Cold calling Trolls should be hung, drawn, quartered and shot at dawn. Nuff Said...
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