Purplebricks has emphasised that negative comments on Twitter represent only a very tiny handful of customers.
PDFs of some Twitter comments are said to be circulating and EYE received copies, which we showed to Purplebricks.
A spokesperson told us: “Purplebricks is proud of the exceptional level of customer service that we offer to our customers and that is testament to the number of Trustpilot reviews we have received, which has exceeded 5,000 for the first time.
“We continue to be rated excellent, with a rating of 9.4 out of ten. We also have a net promoter score (NPS) which is as good as most global brands.
“We ask customers every time they engage with areas of our platform to score us between 0 and 10 as part of the NPS scoring matrix.
“Our score of +81 is exceptional.“
“The information that we have been shown by Property Industry Eye covers some 20 negative customer comments on social media, spanning the last month.
“With over one million visits to our website and 1,000s of customer contacts per day, this represents less than 0.0001% of the people who experience our business.
“While we will continue to work hard to drive this down further, it is reassuring to note that in the instances reported, the Purplebricks team followed up with the individuals concerned to try and resolve any issues.”
Purplebricks will be updating the City on May 11 on its trading for the year which ends tomorrow. The preliminary results for the year will be announced on June 16.
Comments (16)
PB listed a property in my area at “Offers in Excess of £170,000” which was conservatively £20,000 short of what it should be. Advert read “First viewings on 9th April”. I was away that day so rang PB head office to arrange an alternative time either before or after. A couple of days later I rang the “Local Property Expert” (who is based 20 miles away) and he confirmed I couldn’t view beforehand because the sellers were getting the property cleared so I arranged to view it on Monday 11/04, advising that I had no chain and weas ready to buy. The “LPE” advised the property might be sold before I could view as they had a lot of interest, which was not surprising given the advertised price. Sure enough I received a text on Sunday 10/04 advising a sale had been agreed. We later found out the sale price was around £197,000 and another cash buyer client of mine, who also couldn’t view on 09th and had arranged to view on Wednesday 13/04 was told it was sold as well even though he advised the “LPE” he would be willing to pay in excess of £200,000 just from looking from the outside. So to sum up, the “LPE” was only prepared to do viewings on one day before agreeing a sale despite being in full knowledge that there were at least two other parties that were able to proceed but were unable to view on the day. Any thoughts?
So as an agent have you never had too call an applicant and advise a property is now sold and no longer available?? Or do you keep properties on the market indefinitely until exchange of contracts??
If the LPE was under instruction from his vendor then I see no “story” here. The LPE has generated interest and achieved the right price (as you say)
Let’s be realistic, what PB have done on this occasion is standard within the industry.
Lets not make ourselves look like children throwing toys……
They say it takes 10000 hours of practice to become an ‘expert’ at anything. Clearly this not so local property expert had overlooked rule 9a of the TPOS code. Here’s to the next 10000 hours!
may as well leave my Purplebricks feedback here as I haven’t left it elsewhere.
Found a property (in January) through Purplebricks – everything was fine, until their “Local Property Expert” left the keys for our property in their partner’s car – as he was travelling to Coventry for the day. This was text to us 20 minutes AFTER we were meant to pickup the keys.
The “Property Expert” couldn’t do anything to help us apart from hire a locksmith to break the lock. Not the smoothest of moving days after that…
They ended up paying for the locksmith but all other complaints (to the head office) were just responded to with “they are doing their best to resolve the situation and its between you and them” basically not interested.
After the stress of this on moving day I didn’t really have the energy to follow up an official complain. I’m sure people here would be interested though.
Thanks Blockhead.If only we could get the message out there to show this kind of thing we’d be laughing. From what I can see, most of the complaints revolve around an amateur “service” which ends up with a complaint, which ends up with a “we are doing our best” response.
You should also leave that on their trustpilot review system and facebook. Its nice to see it on here but to be fair we are mostly all (proper) agents and we already know how shocking they are!
I think 11th May will be a big day for PB. Judging by yesterdays revealing link from over 2 years ago where they predicted a 25m profit by now it will be very interesting to see what actually transpires.
I have to take my hat off to them for getting their share price where it is but the wheels may start coming off once the 11th May comes. Might be a good time for the investors to cash in…..quick.
I’d heard that their Trust Pilot questionnaires are sent to their clients at the point of signing up, ie the point at which the customer mood and satisfaction levels are at their highest, and there has not been opportunity for disappointment.
AJL20 – if you look at a fair proportion of their ‘reviews’ they are published at a point very early in the proceedings.
This one is typical
“The advert… was provided for review, edited and on-line by close of play on day 3 and the ‘for sale’ sign was erected on day 5. Early days but so far excellent service.”
I especially like some of the juicy morsels hidden in the longer ‘reviews’ – such as
“From the point at which we gave Purple Bricks a 7/10 on their own internal reviewing system, I feel as though we were no longer a priority…”
“I feel I would have got a better price for my property if I had gone through a normal estate agent…”
You could go on all day…
Have they sold more than 5000 houses?
Latest review, apparently posted around 0800 this morning, by ‘Ramez’:
Purplebricks reported this review for breach of Trustpilot guidelines. We are currently assessing the review in accordance with our reporting processes.
Same results for those posted by ‘Charlotte’, ‘Matthew’ – all within the last 50 or so “reviews”.
Firm says that 5,000 Trustpilot reviews rate Purplebricks ‘excellent’
…and that by next Wednesday that figure will be 5126; and by May 24th it will be 5842.
Approximately.
;o)
Not a fan, for the obvious reasons but I think judging them on Twitter is harsh.
Social Media is a real magnet for the type who want to have a moan. Often if you click on the profile of those who have moaned and see their previous tweets 7 out of 10 tweets are a moan at some service provider. Rarely anything positive and often a relatively low number of tweets.
Also other than what you posted yourself, I would imagine not many on here could boast a huge twitter following and more so being mentioned with a 146 character glowing review!
What am I saying, the cold snowy weather must be effecting my ed!
(140 characters on twitter….. sorry)
Is it just me or did I read they scored 81 out of 10?
Would be interesting to see how their Trustpilot reviews stack against other agents. Not sure its fair to focus on a few tweets when all businesses suffer from bad situations with their customers.
That isn’t the point though EHenderson. The point is PB appear to be trying to manage their reviews. I have on my desktop a screenshot of one of the early trustpilot reviews, where they had by accident left in square brackets that were intended for a name to be inserted, only they had forgotten to do that. Twitter isn’t so easy to manage and clearly reveals more of what customers think of the “we take your money, list on the portals and hope” service they offer.