Allagents, a controversial website where the public rate and slate estate agents, has launched a ‘best practice’ scheme called the Transparent Agent Kitemark.
The site, which has over 10,800 reviews on it, says the aim of the kitemark is to show which agents encourage customer feedback, whether good or bad.
Any agent can apply for the kitemark. To use it, the agent must display approved banners on the front page of their own website, linking back to their profile page and reviews on the allagents site.
While this is a voluntary kitemark, allagents says that if an agent cares about customer service and has nothing to hide, then they will discover very quickly how being a transparent agent becomes the best marketing tool they ever had for free.
The site allows the public to write reviews on agents and award them between one and five stars.
A number of agents have earned full stars, led by CJ Hole with 120 reviews.
The worst-rated agents are Solitaire Property Manager (139 reviews), Foxtons (85), Bairstow Eves (80) and Countrywide Residential Lettings (71).
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Comments
A site that is so obviously run and set up by an agent who wants to promote themselves. The reviews are written by their own staff.
Unless you can plug in a lie detector to the computer (allagents take note) before a review is submitted, then I am afraid we have to rely on the integrity of the reviewer to be telling us the truth. There is an agents response button clearly under each review so I can only imagine that it's upsetting the rogue agents out there who can't Hide or buy their way out of it now.
Indeed it's Interesting to compare the reviews against the awards that they have been apparently winning. I think questions now have to be asked as to the authenticity of these awards and if indeed consumers have Been getting mislead by agents that appear to be able to buy ther customer satisfaction awards with a big brown envelope.
WONDER what would happen if agents requested to be removed from the site?
try it and see....
The people who now runs this website are low life hypocritical scumbags - who's modus operandi is to try and bribe companies to take up their "transparency scheme" by listing any negative reviews about them ahead of positive ones regardless of the date they are posted and then offering to put all the positive ones first if you buy into their scam. Many listings are clearly from competitor agents and not genuine customers. I concur with the posted suggestion to ask for proof that any defamatory posting is from a genuine customer and when it isn't forthcoming get a solicitor onthe case. Although to be frank no one other than agents go to the poxy site anyway and as long as we all stick together and tell him to stick his "kitemark" where the sun doesn't shine then he'll crawl back under his stone!
Lassie,
Let's say you bought a £3.25 cd of ebay. You can ONLY leave feedback against this seller IF YOU physically made the purchase. Outcome = excellent.
The danger here is that any tom, dick or harry can leave 'feedback' on allagents.
Is that not ridiculous in comparion? Only one person can leave feedback on the CD, yet anyone can leave feedback on a alleged £200k house purchase.
As I said, this is more of a Rightmove project which they should eventually introduce, where only actual customers can comment.
The idea is very good -but has been executed pretty badly.
They have ignored the key rule of ensuring only genuine customers can post, in return for higher numbers of posts. While doing so, they have lost all credibility from agents.
The irony of all this is that Everyone is writing anonymously about a review site that allows people do slate their agency anonymously! What's the old saying"don't do as I do, do as I say"
The difference between Allagents and say a tripadvisor, is trip advisor is actually very informative website.
A friend of my who owns an agency has had one review against him, and its a negative one.
Two years ago, he was trying to sell a place for a chap, it just wouldn't sell, so he suggested to him to let it out for a year. The vendor agreed and said he wanted £1200, agent said £1100, went on the market for £1200 and in the end he got £1100.
The new landlord had a bit of moan that he didn't get what he wanted, the agent said to him that he doesn't have to let it if he feels that strongly about it.
Two weeks later, review pops up on allagents, slating my friends company, don't use them, their terrible, they couldn't sell my home and then couldn't get me my market rent etc, and they slandered his name.
Shocking, but this is the extent of the sort of people you get reviewing on there.
If you check the site you will see that multi-branch agents get the same review listed under each of their branches despite it not actually relating to that branch (whether it's a good or a bad review).
For example Connells have 61 reviews for each branch but they are all exactly the same reviews!
I have just had a look at this site and think it's great!
I rely on trip advisor all the time and would certainly have no issues with my customer reviews. Everyone here is voicing their opinion publically about Allagents so whats the issue with customers voicing their opinion about you???
Allagents also has a response button so if your not happy with what's being said then you can place your comments on. Obvisiously if the consumer is correct, then there really isn't much you can say. But then this is just my opinion :)
TPOS did ours and I have to say I found it to be very good, No anon reviews and proof a transaction took place.
Much more reliable information straight from your vendors and purchasers.
@rantnrave, yes but how can agents respond when they have no idea who it is that is commenting and what case it refers to?
Unless you do what haart does, "if you would like to discuss this, please call..." which is a waste of time.
Maybe if prices came down, people wouldn't complain (sarcasm)
Hoteliers were furious that sites like TripAdvisor were unfairly ruining their business. Somebody finds a spider in their hotel room and gives the hotel a 1/5 rating...
Meetings between the hotel industry and TripAdvisor then resulted in a compromise whereby hotels could reply on the site to any negative feedback that had been left. In many cases, this really does allow 'the other side of the story' to be aired.
If I want to book a hotel, I'll check the reviews on TripAdvisor. In many cases, bad reviews are balanced by polite replies from the hotel. However, I note the hotels that can't be bothered to reply to any bad comments and avoid them since they're clearly not worried about bad PR.
Could a similar scheme be developed here?
Allagents are asking property agents to sign up to their website so they can be "Transparent". However looking on their website there is no Transparency from them with regard to their coporate info.
What a hypocritical company!
i just wouldnt give it the time of day never mind promoting it.
a review website owned by another letting agent what a joke
and for that agent to be the BEST in the area HOW OPEN AND TRANSPARANT
I have a policy of ignoring allagents because its just full of anonymously posted stuff blaming agents who are in fact doing their job correctly - example being the agent who commented earlier about being blamed for a buyer knocking £10k off his offer.
Most of the letting agents complaints are about repairs not being done (almost invariably because the landlord won't pay for said repairs - why would the agent NOT want repairs to be done?), or deposit disputes which are, as we all know largely out of the agents hands.
I'd take allagents a bit more seriously if they prominently offered helpful advice about the redress open to tenants on the topics which come up over and over again (e.g. HHSRS, TDS / DPS etc) instead of allowing them to rant about the agent who is simply stuck in the middle.
Watch out other agents in my area!!
(he says whilst getting creative on allagents.co.uk)
If a bad review is posted about my company, I will demand that allagents.co.uk show proof that this person was actually a customer.
If they cannot, I will be suing for defamation of character.
There is a bad review on there from a buyer who the day before completion decided to reduce his offer by £10,000, and had already made the vendor ILL from messing around throughout the purchase. Of course the offer was refused and we are accused of being a "shady organisation" because we were acting in the vendors best interests.
Its absolute boll@cks.
(Allthough if I go up against haart or bairstow eves for a listing, I might point them in the direction of this site, lol)
There are so many ways to demonstrate and breathe excellent customer service. Seeing it on a self-interest website is not one of them, especially when 'customers' (I use that extremely loosely) have the bullet proof vest protection of anonymous posting.
If Kite actually want any credibility, offer this service only to agents that want to sign up. When they complete a transaction with a buyer, vendor, tennant or landlord, they provide them with a unique code.
These people can then use that code, if they wish, to provide feedback on the agent through this site.
If the agent does not want to have their office listed on the siteat all, that is their own choice and the public can make what they wish of them not being on there.
In fact, what would be better is if the customer was given a code by Rightmove once the transaction was complete and they could leave feedback on there.
At present, any tom, dick or harry can post, which is utterly ridiculous and makes a mockery of the whole thing.
Yes, posts need to be verified, but the only thing they are checking is that no foul or absusive language is used in a post. They have no way of verifying any statements - good or bad!
It is a numbers game to them. The more 'posters' the more scope you have for advertising revenue. We and they both know that the number of 'valid' posts are minimal.
This website has a bad review marked against our company but has been logged as some other company. I think this website should review what is actually written as currently it is damaging against our company incorrectly.
They have no phone number listed apartment from a mobile that goes to an answer machine. They have not returned any of our calls. I would urge agents to avoid at all costs.
The problem with this website and any where you can post anonymously (o' the irony of this post) is any old scum bag can write a comment and just because they can.
I have read some reviews on this site and they are just comical genius - not that the author of the comments quite realises they are providing such comedy gold to anyone else who has an IQ of 98 or above.
A couple of my favourites are the ones where the agent gets slated by the former tenant for returning the deposit three days after the Tenancy (they couldn’t believe they had to wait so long) and the other where the agent gets the blame for the noisy neighbour! Of course, it must of been the agent setting up a rave in the flat next door.
Any agent with even the slightest of common sense wouldn't subscribe to this ridiculous kitemark, unless of course they are being scummers themselves and posting anonymously wonderful reviews on their own company!
Today's "waste of ink"