Allagents has come under fire for selling agents products whereby they can manipulate reviews – their own and, it is alleged, those of their competitors.
Mark Dealtry, of Referenceline, said that said that being able to doctor reviews runs counter to how review sites should work in the interests of consumers.
He said that Allagents makes it possible for agents to use the site to manipulate their own favourable reviews, and also the unfavourable ones of their competitors.
Martin McKenzie, of Allagents, hit back.
He said that agents are simply learning how to use his website, and that the ability to spotlight certain reviews has become its second most requested feature. He said there is no evidence that agents are in fact using it to rubbish their competitors.
And he said he was surprised that Referenceline, a competitor, should choose to pick holes in Allagents’ business model.
Allagents has a ‘featured reviews’ facility whereby agents can pay £150 to have up to five reviews ‘sponsored’.
With the Sponsored Review Manager, agents can change the reviews and manage the order in which they appear.
The pricings appear when you follow the instructions on one of the pages of an agent.
Dealtry alleges: “The worse the review, the greater the incentive that AllAgents are offering for you to do the dirt on your competition.
“The greater your fear of attack, the more likely you are to lay out £750 pa to ‘protect your reputation’.”
Dealtry also says that under Allagents terms and conditions, “anyone with a PayPal account, credit or debit card can feature a review and are always done anonymously Customers Agents Public”. (sic)
We put the criticisms to McKenzie, who runs Allagents, which covers the UK market, from the Scottish highlands. He said: “In fact, this has become our second most requested product.
“As we predicted, agents are learning that our website is being used by an ever-increasing number of prospective vendors and landlords, and therefore, more and more agents are recognising and realising the true power of having some control over what is readily available to read about them.”
He went on: “Our sponsored reviews section has not only appealed to highly regarded firms. Some of the poorer-rated agents that are committed to rebuilding their online reputation have come on board too. They use the feature to help them to boost their image during this transitional period.
“There are two disadvantages for the agent in using the front-end sponsored reviews feaure. Firstly, the reviews cannot be amended, and secondly, firms with more than one branch cannot feature more than five for the full company.
“However, the great news is that we have introduced a more advanced ‘featured review’ control panel. This is only available to agents that have signed up to our ‘premium support plus’ package, which gives agents full control of reviews for all branches. This means that each branch can have five featured reviews and all of the selected reviews can be rotated as and when required.
“With regards to agents sponsoring negative reviews of competitors, we have not seen any evidence of this at all.
“We are rather surprised that another, so-called, review website wants to pick holes in our business models. But we are happy to answer their critiques.”
He added: “We would be interested in learning how Referenceline intends to explain to consumers why they should be trusted if they only list fee-paying agents.
“Credible customer review sites should be independent and there is a very strong argument that fee-based websites are not independent, and therefore could mislead consumers into believing that they are impartial.”
The war of words comes as latest research suggests that one in seven reviews on such sites – not just estate agency ones – are fake.
In today’s blog, Mark Dealtry talks about Allagents and his own site, Referenceline.
It is, he says, time for the industry to choose carefully.
Comments
Im glad i found this blog, i own a small protfolio of properties and my managing agent asked me to write a review for them.
I was suprised to see so many negative reviews about my managing agent, they have managed my portfolio for the best part of 8 year now
I have been trying to write a review now for the past 3 weeks it never shows on the allagents website very suspicious organisation
Vendors, buyers, landlords tenants dont take no notice of allagents, there website demorolises other agents for no reason
Would not reccomend
Dear all,
1. Pay theseguys enough money and i can guarantee you they will make up good reviews for you so you go to the top of the que
2. I have taken out premium support plus recently other agents make false aquisations about us they still do not look into it and remove reviews im paying these lot £120 a month for nothing
3. Pay these guys enough money they wil demorolise another company
Complete and utter joke im tied in for a year with these clowns
I would strongly recommend no one use All agents we are independent agent based over in south west London.
A few months ago automatically our reviews stop coming through and after 2 months of noticing this we contacting allagents who said tough luck we need to pay £1000 12 month agreement to get this rectified
All agents is a complete joke very unprofessional, Vincent actually had the nerve to turn around to me and say if im in South west london than paying £1000 should not be a problem
Advice to fello agents people buy people you will be succefully in this industy if you want to be you dont need Bad rip of merchants in life
Been using all agents for a few months for sales. we have 27 positive reviews. Now the reviews are not showing and allagents have told us we have to cough up £1400 for the whole year to get this rectified, they are the worst review compan out there. Dont have a landline number only a mobile which a guy called vincent answers and even than does not care just wants to sell there products
ESTATE AGENTS DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY THEY WILL GIVE YOU A FREE SERVICE UNTILL THEY THEY WANT TO MESS UP YOUR REVIEWS THAN THE ONLY WAY AROUND THIS IS TO PAY THEM £1400 FOR THE ANNUAL PAYMENT PREMIUM PLUS SERVICE
CON ARTIST SITTING IN THE HIGHLANDS IN SCOTLAND RIPPING ESTATE AGENTS OFF
Thank you Gary, at www.estateagent.me we review every feedback and every agent has their own account manager with email and phone number, we offer a very professional service for estate agent reviews.
We use www.estateagent.me, its briliant, it looks good and it gets us leads!
I have heard that the guy that started up allagents owns 2 letting agents in Glasgow prior to all agents his main letting agency were receiving negative reviews constantly, the main issues being that he was with holding tenant deposits and not allowing landlords to cancel their contracts.
Thats funny. I didnt know Hamilton was in the highlands!
McKenzie, if you are so "transparent" yourself why don't you even put your own companies proper address on your own website!
Outrageous and morally corrupt website that is trying to blackmail an entire industry
... with @letting agents in reading, when he says check an agent's history... BUT, just make sure that you check the agent's history via reliable sources, like word of mouth, or VERIFIABLE reviews!
HOWEVER, @letting agents in reading, feel free to describing yourself as a "greedy" agent, but please don't presume that we are all greedy. With remarks like that, you risk other readers of your post suspecting strongly that this is in fact another fake posting from allagents.
There are many kind of agents. some are less greedy and some are more greedy. I want to sat to all costumer that when you go to any agent for letting house etc... just check agents history. I think it will help.
from: letting agents in reading.
If Allagents are as you suggest whiter than the snow falling fom heaven how come an agent has seen fit to instruct solicitos?
How come it is so difficult to get offending reviews removed?
Good news Mr Mulholland, tomorrow is Wednesday and this story should drop off the EAT home page.
Or so they seem to say in response to a negative review posted about them here:
http://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.allagents.co.uk
This is what they said:
Allagents.co.uk has no reason to be biased against estate agents. About 50% of all reviews are actually positive. I can assure you that we check every single review and make sure defamatory content is never published. Only about a half of submitted reviews get through our screening process and are published on the website.
Obviously anyone can post a review even on this website - that's the nature of the Internet. We are working hard to detect reviews which are not genuine and I believe we are quite successful in it.
WRONG! I haven't got a single review on Allagents positive or negative.
I simply do not like organisations, individuals or companies that are not working in the best interest of the industry. Alongside TPO, Allagents are working to undermine or profit unfairly from the fact that Agents by definition act in a professional capacity for a paying customer. The almost always unrepresented party dealing with Agents are by and large ignorant of the role of a letting or Estate Agent and that ignorance leads to complaint.
Fuelled by the compo culture, nanny state mentality cultivated by 13 years of Messers (sic) Blair and Brown some people seem to think Torts resulting form their own ignorance or stupidity has to be someone's fault other than their own. Having a pseudo official organisation or spiv ear to "take their issues seriously" is just want these whingers want.
If the general public want a property ombudsman to represent them, let the general public pay for a professional to represent their interests. If Allagents want to profit from false reviews let them but let them also face the penalties associated with Blackmail and Extortion because at the moment is could fairly be argued that is the basis of the scheme.
There is clearly one agent on this forum that's not happy with his customers reviews.....
Googled for reviews on allagents and found the following on this website:
"http://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.allagents.co.uk"
I recently went to look up the telephone number of my agent online and when I typed their name allagents came up with a load of negative reviews about my agent.
It was not my experience with my agent at all, so I did a good review on allagents website. Allagents did NOT post it. I tried again and allgents did NOT post it. I have since emailed allagents 3 times and they have not replied to any of the emails.
I am shocked that they can get away with writing such unfair reviews about agents and not post my good one. I have since been reading other online forums about the way allagents treat the agents that try to contact them. Allagents are utterly unprofessional.
The great thing is that the Acquire story will not go away now and nor will this story "Allagents under fire for manipulating reviews"
The big trick is to make sure that one posts something good honest but negaitive as the last post on this story, so that the casual reader whether member of the public or Agent can be informed about their poor business ethics and the legitimacy of their reviews.
Strange how they are not posting on here today!
Decent Estate Agents run a mile from Allagents
Agents shun Allagents
Allagents given a taste of their own medicine by internet savvy Agents.
If they were worth bothering with I would spend more time working on their SEO.
Has anybody checked out their trading history at companies house? Probably come back as one to avoid.
Now I don't know whether it was the boss who did all the pro Allagent posts or whether it was a minion, whichever the quality of effort shows that neither really have a clue about marketing.
We encourage reviews to our google places/google search result link, not all agents. We don't want to have their logo on our website more prominently than our own, that's what they wanted! Google is free to both, you can contact posters if there's a problem and can manage your listing.
Won't touch them with a bargepole!
See what you mean. Just googled "allagent reviews misleading" and the very first one I looked at had this post by Acquire Estate Agents, from January 2013:
"Our legal department has been investigating so called customer review websites such as http://www.allagents.co.uk to assess their integrity. They purport to champion the consumer, the voice of the many, but how reliable or honest are they? We did a quick search and investigation into http://www.allagents.co.uk (an estate and lettings agent review website). Allagents limited, a Scotish registered company, a company that has no actual address (we do not consider their accountants’ office address as a trading address – which is the only address given on their website), no telephone number (we do not consider a mobile number as a valid telephone number), no emails, no point of contact, no-one accountable for its comments, its publications, its member or indeed anything that can be considered in business to be normal or real. It seems to be a faceless ‘one man in his bedroom’ business that is pretending to champion its customers and members. Would you trust a faceless business that is probably run by one person who has no-idea about properties, estate agents or the industry as a whole? A business that is not accountable or transparent? The website itself is very convoluted, full of unnecessary adverts and has redundant functions, a poorly designed and executed website with little real clarity. Would you trust and be confident in its content?
We then looked at comments made on the website, a lot seem engineered, is there any truth in what has been written? Some good agents have little or no comment, whereas some small dodgy at best agencies have hundreds of reviews, all predominately good? Does this make sense? We put the website to the test, and sought to resolve a review that had no actual grounds or truth. The comment was simply made up and intended to be defamatory. We simply requested it to be removed or the details of the statement to be clarified (publicly or privately). After numerous emails and phone calls, no response. With no real address, phone number or email address, its pretty hard to find someone accountable for its defamatory publications. We have now issued a Notice to take legal action against this faceless business and will keep you informed of our intention to clean up and make accountable comments that can mislead and damage the reputation of others. Register with our website or our blog to follow our case against AllAgents Limited."
Issues with Allagents
Allagent reviews can not be trusted
Allagent reviews misleading
Allagent reports misleading
Problem with AllAgent
Allagent not impartial
Allagent not independant.
Stick that in your google ranking seo along with the other negative stuff and see how long you last!
We can play your game too and as you well know negative posts are the thing that you should fear most.
You could send Ros Renshaw £50 and ask her to remove this post!
I wasted £7000 on a holiday booked on the strength of Tripadvisor reviews. TripAdvisor are Kings compared to Allagents but if a strict policy of policing reviews can't ensure reliable reviews what chance is their when a review site actively trade of spurious and ficticious posts?
All honest agents have two choices, it seems.
1) Stump up the cash to AA to ensure that any negative reviews you receive can be deleted – not for me!
2) Embrace all the feedback, good and bad, learn from it and accept that some negative reviews could be written by a competitor and when you do get a negative review it will be “liked” many times by a competitor.
Am I an AA supporter? No – I’d prefer a site where people leave their details and I can get back to them.
Are they damaging the industry? Jury’s out.
Are they allowing less honest EAs to manipulate the system by allowg them to pay extra to have their negative reives docotored or even deleted? Probably – but the only people who suffer here are your customers.
Customers are not stupid – any EA that has nothing other than 5 star reveiws is posbily too good to be true. Sadly, we work in an indsutry where even when achieve for our customers they have the potential to be unhappy with the result.
I don’t like the model, but while they are here, I will continue to comment on all the posts made – I will thank the people who have spent time to give positive feedback and aks any negative reviews to contact me direclty, if they are still around in 12 months time I’ll just have to suck it up and get on with it.
No way we will ever do anything with allagents. They lied to us: tricked us in to being one of their "transparant" agents (the only requirement then was their link and logo on our home page) with their "no-obligation, free to use" style review site, and then after we had spent a lot of time pursuading clients to leave reviews for us allagents changed all the criteria which, in effect, meant we had to give them masses of free publicity as well as plaster them all over our website - two or three links on EVERY PAGE!
They even threatened us that unless we started paying them money (they called it "sponsoring your page") they would have our competitors advertising prominently on our page - they suggested this could be very damaging to all the hard work we had done building up our review page.
We said we needed a few days to consider all these changes, but were effectively told that we had to decide more or less immediately as they had agents ready and waiting to advertise on our page. We insisted we needed some time to consider, but, almost immediately, our transparant agent status was withdrawn. This was replaced with a warning to the public not to use non-transparnt agents.
At the time, it felt like we were dealing with a protection racket. Allagents say they want to clean up the industry. NO! They want money, nothing more, nothing less.
And it seems they don't care too much how they get it
.
Too many "never been on here before" posters supporting Allagents just a bit too keenly.
ZERO credibility. In fac,t no, negative credibility for making it obvious that you think we are chumps.
No you won't! If you really do exist the very fact you have so very little wit means it is more likely your property will be a repo and you will have no say in its sale.
The real general public talk to each other and take recommendation from people they know rather than take advice from sites that have already established a less than honest reputation.
As a home owning member of the general public I know from experience who around here is honest who is not. How agents deal with applicants when they buy their home will always be more influential than a site like All Agents.
The thing you have not realised numpty is that all stories and all posts where Allagent's reputation and integrity is called into question have a negative effect on Allagents SEO.
You boys carry on posting pseudo positive stuff and we will keep on positing our opinions which the real general public will get to read too
I have to say that its been very interesting reading posts here from disgruntled agents.
I will definatetly be shortlisting the next agent to sell my house from allagents
Posting in agreement of your previous post is even more blatently amatuerish marketing than disturbance selling.
Best you stop posting before Agents turn on Allagents like they have against the Rightmove Reps that post on here
We are listed in the top 200 on allagents. Never gained any business from them though. Could this be because we refuse to be one of their so-called "transparant agents"? They do, afterall, discourage the public from using any agent that is not one
@ Honest John
No life isn't fair, but then it doesn't have to be made more unfair.
Ray Evans is right.
Allagents, and all and any like themm for our industry or others, are only going to be credible whern reviews can be challenged DIRECT.
A few posters are referring to Trip Advisor - but you can email direct the original poster
Allagents are totally scurrilous and without credibility. Over the past year I have had queries on them from two clients who have been in the business years and are very good operators who in no way would do 1/10th of what some disgrunbtled (in bot cases) ex tenants accused them. I had one only last month where I also ended up dealing with the ex tenant who was a complete fruit cake and was wafting the Law around yet didn't have the vaguest idea what he was talking about.
Now there is a 'review' or Allagents. Call them unfounded rants and maybe Allagents then expresses more what it represents.
With the Law gradually moving towards an ability to sue the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Allagents et al for totally unfounded criticism they refuse to remove, they won't be around too long.
@spurs fan "its hard work trying to encourage them to revuew us on this site"
That is a very good point that you make and one that I hadn't thought of before.
Review websites are not like portals where you can simply upload to.
It would be disastrous for promote multiple review websites. I could see us in 5 years time complaining on EAT because we all have to employee a 'customer review manager' simply to manage these sites.
Let's all nip these other review sites now. Whether we like it or not there is only one site that matters and that's allagents
Ignore them and deny them any traction
allagents will grow and outperform any review website thats out there simply because its free and so truely impartial. the more controversial it becomes on forums like this, the more credible it gets with the public.
I have read up about these other review websites, and whilst on paper they sound great from an 'agents' prospective, in practice they will fail simply because agents know they are not credible and getting taken seriously with the public.
ONE IMPORTANT FACTOR AGENTS HAVE TO CONSIDER NEFORE THEY START LOOKING AT SMALLER REVIEW SITES
We embrace allagents and encourage customers to put feedback on it, its hard work trying to encourage them to revuew us on this site, could you imagine what it would be like if we had ask them to provide feedback on another 3 or 4 sites as well! Stick to allagents and you then only need to focus on one that counts
Define or name a rogue Agent.
It is always obvious when staff of the subject firm come on here and post the company line rather than answering the points raised to them.
Sensible Agents will ignore the disturbance sell for what it it and by ignoring the threat of not being seen on Allagents, rateand slate et all will soon find the public don't bother with it.
TripAdvisor works because the frequency of holidays/ hotel stays etc means "Tripadvisor" gets remembered.
With vendors and tenants moving not very often All Agents is likely to be the last thing anyone outside the company will think to look up.
Spend the money on your own image, decent SEO and a good agent will never need fear anything written on a parasite web site.
The fear of the site is worse than the harm it can do, it is only the stupid and fearful agent that would ever be suckered into any form of support for such a site.
Trip Advisor subscribing resorts and hotels now employ staff to bump their ratings and watch TA 24hours a day for negative reviews. Those wages and effort would be better employed on fixing the issues customers find to complain about.
Ignore Allagents and it will go away, they can not run at a loss for ever. If the public want such a service they will stump up a subscription for it.
"Allagents has been a godsend to this industry"
Tea just came out of my nose.
Allagents has been a godsend to this industry and has provided a platform that allows every decent agency to play an active part in cleaning up our industry once and for all.
How is this possible?
If every respectable agency embraced Allagents and used it as a marketing tool, they could refer every prospective client to read feedback not just about themselves, but about every other agent in their area.
If you were actively requesting clients to review your services then you are going to naturally get great positive feedback on the site and move up their rankings.
Allagents take the integrity of their website very seriously and only accept genuine reviews from outwith agents own office. Their T&Cs make it hard for agents write their own reviews (hence the reason why rogue agents can't 'manipulate' it), so in essence your agency will naturally pick up all this business.
If you then joined their 'transparent agent' scheme, you would not only be helping yourself win new business, but you would be starving the rogue agents of new business and as so force them to either change their ways or honour of business.
This website really is a powerful tool and if you genuinely provide a good service , then your are loosing out on a fantastic stream (I will go further than that and say the BEST there is out there) of new instruction opportunities.
With regards to featuring reviews, this story will have the opposite effect in actually helping Allagents promote their product.
Having the ability to showcase your 5 best quality reviews to help influence customers get a lasting first impression is a fantastic idea! Why would I want readers to miss out on reading the 5 best ones simply because they are on page 2
@@ happy and no name, your posts are so ironic.
I have just read Marks blog.
He wants to have a debate about whats reasonable fees.
His firm ( which has about 30 agents listed in London and no one has ever heard of) wants to charge agents £20pcm to list
Allagents (which has 3000 agents in London) charge £0pcm to list!!
I think the guy has lost the plot!
Review sites should always be free. They are there for the consumers benefit, NOT the agents.
Who in their right mind would trust a review site where agents where every agent had 5 stars status because they were paying.
Change your business model Mark or change your job
yep another pointless post. An excuse to type something. Probably out of boredom.
You need a hobby Happy.
We are getting forced into looking at it as 2 of our competitors are using it.
It's a pain in the ass as we have not got time with more work but what else can you do.
So it looks like Allagents have infiltrated this site with fake "Allagents are great" comments...
Its all tosh.
Happy chappy...ANOTHER pointless post. Bore off.
Reviews on sites can be good, Ebay and Amazon are two such examples. But, for them to be good, they need to be transparent ie. you can see who the complainer is and you can see what the transaction was or you can see who is giving the praise and the transaction they are praising. That works. If someone gives a false review there is a robust mechanism in place to quickly and fairly resolve the issue (and remove unjust feedback).
Allowing anonymous complaints (or praise) about unknown transactions is wide open to abuse and therefore holds insuficient credibility.
If you complain about portals having agents by the squishy bits... don't feed this monster. It will bite you.
Watch this space. There are AA are in secret discussions with one of the portals . Can't say too much more than that ..
Sebo - you get it..... except they are not competing with the portals, you already identified one brings buyers the other brings vendors.
With a bit of investment behind them, this website could kick rightmove into touch. Rightmove come in the front door providing buyer leads for a ransom, Allagents coming in the Back door providing vendor leads for free to agents that put a bit of work into getting some feedback. The next 12 months will be very interesting to see if Allagents dominates the market or flops
I have often heard EA's say "I have lots of testomonials to show prospective clients how good I am", but I have never heard any say, I keep all my letters of complaint to calibrate that view and show what I am doing to improve
This is requirment for entry in some industries and instituitions, but sadly not in the agent industry .
So that folks is why all agents exists.
Commentator is right review sites are here to stay.
Well done and well wrtitten Sir! @The Commentator
You did welll to get the idiots to respond!
@MARKETING GENIUS Isn't that what Rightmove did in their business model? Only a bit successful now aren't they! And they only have a small market share (70+%!).
So guys, I want to book a hotel for a weeks holiday, I look online at Expedia, LastMinute.com etc etc and can't really seem to find what looks like the right place. Suddenly, I think "I know, let's have a look at 'Trip Advisor' and see what others think of hotels in that area"!
Voila, decision made, loads of people really like 'The Imperial Hotel' because it is conveniently location, clean, food is excellent, staff are a delight and nothing is too much trouble for them, etc.
I'm choosing this hotel because there is less of a risk of a bad decision and more of a chance of a good service BECAUSE OTHER PEOPLE HAVE EXPERIENCED IT AND GUIDED ME TO IT WITH THEIR POSITIVE REVIEWS.
Yes, there are some bad reviews too, but I see through those as some people can be just downright stupid in what they complain about and put on these review sites.
Review sites for products and services are the future guys, get used to it.
You can't tell me that you have never been influenced by customer reviews when buying items on Amazon, for instance?!
AllAgents is here to stay, embrace it. If they don't survive (as some of you here seem to think) then they will just be replaced by another.
Being able to pay a fee to highlight your top 5 most positive reviews is common sense, and a good marketing and branding win, not a big deal to get your knickers in a twist about! You pay Rightmove more to feature your juiciest instructions don't you? It's the same thing.
If you have some bad reviews on AllAgents then get them 'drowned out' by flooding the site with positive reviews from your previously satisfied clients so that then the bad reviews are in the minority!
With so little to differentiate many a High Street agent in the publics eyes, this site is a great asset to those agents with the foresight to use it.
And no, I am not an employee of AllAgents, before you ask.
Get on the site and be proud to ask your clients to review you. If it is not as favourable as you'd like then you have something to work on a learn from.
What I love about the industry is that agency is a constantly evolving business. There is always something new to learn and adapt to. Review sites is one of them.
They are here to stay. Get used to it. And most of all IMPROVE THE SERVICE YOU DELIVER.
Interesting and thought provoking - both the piece and the comments. Agents might like to have a look at our solution, which attempts to address all the negatives highlighted here (unverified reviews and credibility especially).
If you would like to see what our estate agent clients are saying have a look at the HelpHound blog - here:
http://helphoundblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/dialogue-for-estate-agents-value-for.html
You have to hand it to them. They get you all riled up with a few negative reviews, you say, "I'm not having that" and get everyone you can to post positive reviews. Then they say you are not transparent unless you display their logo on your home page, so you do and give them FREE seo and drive traffic from your home page to them. You then start promoting them and drawing attention to them, then when they know you are hooked they charge you to 'moderate' (which should be done in any case to maintain integrity) which in other words means unless you pay we won't police the site for you. The beauty of it is you do all the legwork, they do nothing in proactively promoting you to vendors, they feed off your seo and then charge you for the privelidge, without doing a thing. In those terms its a great site, you have to give them that. :)
I'm an adult with a brain. When I want to sell or rent my property I will invite a few agents and make my own mind up on the pro's and con's of each, and therefore who to use. I will not make a decision on selling or renting my property based on the opinions of other people I have never met.
Manipulation on these sites is obvious.
Pleased to hear this company is under fire...again!
Try and actually get reviews listed? "Well sir you can pay for our 'premium' service which enable us to chase up reviews that haven't made it on to the website"
What?? basically any review that gets sent in, genuine or not are held back and only posted if you pay them. Bunch of sharks. Had a few posted and suddenly it dried up, despite customers telling me they had posted. We haven't suddenly stopped delivering brilliant service, but until we pay money we aren't getting any more glowing reviews.
Bunch of sharks if you ask me, waste of time.
Our firm found out about Allagents for over 6 months . Ironically it was brought to our attention when we found 2 negative reviews on it. Allagents would not remove the reviews, however they did explain to us reasons why. It really annoyed us as we knew that we provided a good service and had plenty of satisfied customers.
We done a mailshot to customers that had bought and sold through us over the last 12 months. It wa slow but we managed to get some good feedback on the site. Some reviews were actually a delight to read.
We are now the top ranked agent in our area.
Allagents has now been integrated into our marketing litriture and we always refer to it at valuations as it really is winning us instructions.
If like us, you really do provide a good service then Allagents is for you.
We don't use their featured review facility, however I don't see what the issue is. Rightmove allow you to feature properties so why is featuring reviews so different
Amazing. We had the rep in trying to sell their 'premium package' and my exact point was that it was unethical to sell tools to manipulate the reviews. He had no answer apart from 'I'm new to this as you can tell but will take your comments back to my director'. I have no contact details to speak to him. He didn't even have a business card.
Why do we keep engaging with Allagents? Articles in the trade press (even generally negative ones such as this) all help to give them publicity and credibility.
I've said many times that on the letting side (my core business) it is nothing more than a platform for mis-informed tenants (and occasionally mis-informed landlords) to have an anonymous rant about things that are completely beyond the control of the agent.
I welcome genuine customer feedback but when a client is unhappy it is often down to them simply misunderstanding who does what.
True story - a couple of years ago a tenant issued court proceedings against us because we "wouldn't give him his deposit back". We explained the DPS process to him (repeatedly) but he had it firmly fixed in his head that because he physically handed the money to us he shouldn't have to apply to someone else to get it back. In that case we ended up in a courtroom and it took a judge a full twenty seconds to put him right, but can you imagine the crap he'd have written about us "stealing his deposit" if he'd simply gone onto Allagents?
deSeagull
If its so great surely you would thank them by buying one of their services, you may get more instructions!!
ALL 'review' sites are just an advertising 'puff''. They are meaningless and open to abuse and will remain so until verifiable details and the names of the reviewers are included.
My firm provide what I think is a great service and our clients, vendors, buyers, landlords and tenants are happy to to add a review. Before AllAgents I would carry testimonial letters with me on appointments so AllAgents is a modern step forward. We do not pay for any extras. I have been an estate agent for over 25 years and seen many 'gimmicks' in my time but AllAgents works for us. I have won instructions from being on AllAgents. In these days of being transparent in the way we deal with people perhaps some agents are running scared as AllAgents offers a platform for customers who have legitimately not been happy with their service to say so in public. If you have 50 great reviews and one bad one, that may or may not be placed by a competitor, surely the 50 great ones will out weigh the dubious one(s).
As soon as review sites start selling products then you know your in trouble.
Give me one happy vendor that sends me a glowing review off their own back over a dozen reviews from people press-ganged into writing something by a pushy Neg all day long.
A company I previously worked for pretty much refused to hand keys over to tenants until they'd filled a review in in branch. Are those reviews then worth much? I think not.
Also, most negative reviews I've seen on there about my competitors are about issues outside the estate agents control. Ie. deposit not returned promptly, when the deposit is held by the landlord. Somewhat unfair.
Ok, so it’s irritating when negative reviews get deleted from all agents and when it’s a competitor and your negative reviews stay on, it’s infuriating sometimes.
It doesn’t seem fair, but hey life isn’t fair.
If you truly value customer feedback then good or bad can be recognised as such and learned from.
Any organisation that pays for a service that removes or doctors reviews on any review site are only being dishonest to themselves and doing their customers a disservice.
Actually, we do not agree we the above comments. We have found Allagents to be a great tool in the area that we are based in. There are over 50 agents working in the same postcode as us, and since going live on their site last June have recieved many enquiries and Valuations as a direct result of the site. It is FREE to use if you so wish, However we have found that paying a sum to them for additional banners on the different postcodes that we work with has in fact given us more business than before. There are many sites out there for reviews and we have looked into others, but found that allagents were very competitive and being a small company are willing to assist and help smaller agents like ourselves to get established in a difficult time. Martin and the team respond to all requests about adding criteria to the site to make it more user friendly and as far as we are concerned, it is moving in the right direction
Allagents is a vile and loathsome organision run by a vile and loathsome person. The only reason the authorities (ASA and trading standards) have not closed it down is because the public are largely oblivious to it. You are right it has NO future - it is currently irrelevant to most customers and were this to change it would be closed down.
Is there a worst company servicing this industry at the moment, totally untransparent even though they preach transparency.
No customer service, no business model, no future
What a sham, I cant believe agents would pay this, does anyone use estateagent.me? We use it for our chains BUT they let you add as many testimonials as you like, best thing as well its affordable. AllAgents ranked us No6 in the area, we only had 1 review, we asked to be removed but nothing has been done! Complete load of tosh.