A number of estate agents are listed on a portal called Estates Alliance – apparently in contravention of OnTheMarket’s rules.
However, the agents may well not be aware that their listings appear on Estates Alliance.
Among agents we found listed are Savills, Strutt & Parker and Webbers.
We asked Savills if they knew they were on the site and a spokesperson told us that they had not been aware.
“Our lawyers are now on to this,” the spokesperson said.
Agents might like to check out their own entries on this site
Comments (19)
@GPL – we successfully managed to get a couple of portals to remove our property data which they uploaded without so much as a by-your-leave BUT has anyone tried to do ditto with nethouseprices ??
Someone should invent an app. for agents to see where their property is being advertised with a button that says “remove property fron this site”. When you press the button it automatically sends a warning letter to the offending portal and follows up and informs the user when they have been removed. You could check the app say once a week to make sure they aren’t finding their way onto any rogue sites.
It was testing such a system that showed this up Wilko, it doesn’t have the letter writing function but the system is designed to identify unauthorised data use, retention and phishing.
wilko
A phonecall to the gentleman B6RKY now refers to as ‘Q’ will cost you an hour of your time – but in terms of value to your business it would be pricesless!
But you don’t have to take it from me – Paul H will no doubt back me up… as I reckon will Ric…
I agree with PeeBee!
Thank you both, I think those two posts alone say more about the power of R4p than what is actually being said. To have Paul H supporting Peebee on the subject of Robert May would have beeen unheard of 12 months ago.
marcH…. we’re working at it one at a time….. as wilko comments, an app or equivalent or coding written into our data to prevent/disrupt unauthorised use would be ideal. Dvd’s can be coded region specific, webtv coded etc so one assumes there is the possibility of parallel technology or coding…. mind you, we are talking estate agency here, not MI5.
which reminds me of the time I was valuing what could be described as a Castle for the 20th Century, and as the owner showed me into the lift for the top floor down tour he started to chat about how he was working secretly with NASA and the NSA about Advanced Alien Spacecraft!… Yes, I thought it was a wind up, cameras filming etc…. but no, he was serious, in his own mind! Who knows however I braced myself for the lift door opening and who might be standing there!
happy days being a valuer!
Our Lawyers are currently dealing with one portal which has been advertising our properties without our/or our clients permission. It’s a pain in the @ss and the portal in question is quite blaise however they will be dealt with.
Each one I have found is on at least 2 others. With the greatest respect this is a matter for the central AM team to deal with on behalf of members.
In my opinion it is an opportunity to show how AM membership benefits its agents and puts pay to those who snipe that AM is ineffective.
The use of agents data goes well beyond a few portals piggybacking instructions to drive their own advertising , revenue streams and SEO weighting. As a group with resources AM has the gravitas to be taken seriously and do something about it centrally.
‘HarryN’ – you comment above I am afraid portrays you as a rather odious individual.
Between your and Mr Mealham’s ridiculous efforts to try to persuade AM Members to ‘rat out’, you are wearing the most distasteful face of industry – not to mention that of common decency.
You drone on about “restricting competition” – yet you fail to register that AMs OOP policy actually ENCOURAGES “competition”. It is up to the individual Agents to use THEIR strengths and OTHERS’ weaknesses to their advantage – yet all you lot can do is carp on about OTM being an “illegal” this and a “restrictive” that.
All you are doing is highlighting your ire at not being invited to play. Careful – if you vent your childish anger by kicking an innocent cat you see in the street there’s a h£ll of a lot more people will rat YOU out than any you’re trying to stir up here…
Do I sound angry? I thought quite measured compared to some posters.
Interestingly the pro-OTM crowd are becoming increasingly concentrated around a small number of fevered posters who seem convinced that asking agent members to sign a contract that limits their advertising (and therefore the advertising of their client’s properties) for 5 years is pro-competitive. I think it would take a certain brand of lunacy to understand that
Savills global revenue = £1.078 billion
Maximum fine if found to be restricting competition illegally = 10% of global revenue
Potential risk = £107.8m
Shareholding received in exchange for above mentioned risk = 1/2000 of an unestablished, weak third player. They could have purchased 15% of Zoopla’s shares at their trough.
If I were one of the smaller OTM players I’d be tempted to whistle blow just to see how far this could go!
This isn’t about restrictive practice Harry, this is about Agents’ data finding its way to places it should not be and an Agent’s right over their own data.
Unless there is an existing or previous contract between the two firms Savills have every right to ask how it got there, same goes for the other two I found in under 30 seconds of looking.
Data is a valuable thing, the commission available on a luctrative utility swtich deal is about half the monthly subscription to a main portal. It isn’t right or proper that because data is entrusted to a supplier or is put in the public domain for advertising that the data becomes an open cast goldmine put there for the benefit of anyone capable od taking it, scrapping it, accessing it or analysing it.
You can cause attempt to cause as much trouble as you like Harry. Data theft might seem innocuous but the value of it far outweighs that stolen in the Hatton Gardens safety deposit. , raid. If it were not for the one other portal rule it would have been impossible to know who was advertising where, with the rule, what you are attempting to paint as restrictive practice and are fishing for a whistleblower to reveal, wouldn’t have been so clearly evident.
Some posters on this site make you think even though you disagree with them, others are so partisan that they completely lack credibility. Yours now fall into the latter HarryN.
HarryN, you really have embarrassed yourself with this one. Without even reading the article or comments properly (as usual) you are straight in with complete nonsense commenting that has nothing to do with what is being discussed. I don’t think that anyone has been able to take you seriously for a while.
I don’t think Estates Alliance is updated much, listings showing where I live that were sold over six years ago. Still, good for a bit of reminiscing though.
It might be worth a full audit, it wasn’t too difficult to find Savill’s listings on two other portals as well.
Robert – this article wouldn’t have anything to do with your rummaging on Friday, would it…?
Guilty as charged. I was testing a feature which delivers two sets of search result, a slight issue with the ‘&’ for Agents called ‘and Co’ started throwing up all these odd results.
The Estates Alliance data looks old but the sheer volume of current data that isn’t where its should be is staggering.