Property ombudsman Katrine Sporle is to lead a Rightmove-hosted webinar tomorrow on the subject of redress.
She is encouraging agents to respond to the current Government consultation, Strengthening Consumer Redress in the Housing Market.
The Government has proposed several options, including that there should be just one ombudsman for the entire housing sector, covering both social and private housing as well as new homes.
Sporle herself has said she believes that there should be a single redress scheme in the private sector, which TPO would be well placed to run.
The consultation concludes on April 16.
Tomorrow’s webinar runs between 2.30pm and 3.15pm.
Comments (2)
After 38 years in estate agency I have just suffered at the hand of TPO for the first time. Naive (100% of all consumers are without guile, malice and not spiteful), biased, technically without knowledge and actually only prepared to see compliance as pure ‘black & white’.
They actively discourage defending yourself – probably because they don’t actually read your first defence submission – so why would they bother reading anything further. They give themselves up to 90 days to reach a decision but when they have you’ve got 14 to respond. They know it will make it easier for the ‘accused’ just to pay their award rather than stand your ground.
As far as I’m personally concerned Consumer Redress needs no strengthening. What does is agent defence! I am not just using this platform to have a ‘pop’ – I completed their ‘feedback form’ and said it all there – needless to say they probably need 90 days to consider it. God help us if TPO are the only redress scheme. If anyone can be bothered to complain to them then they’ll arrange for you to pay out – regardless!
A local solicitor imparted to me that if they get a complaint referred to the Law Society then they immediately offer the complainant £250 to make it go away as it’s cheaper than going through the process of defending themselves! With hindsight that’s probably good advice.
Hi David,
Sounds dreadful but that is my experience with them in the past as well.
I use to run a region for a large corporate. If the complainant did not accept our first apology and said they would be going to ombudsman we would also offer £250 as full and final settlement as a gesture of good will. For the same reason as above.