Purplebricks has been reported again to the Advertising Standards Authority.
This time, the complaint centred around a claim on the Purplebricks home page that properties were “advertised on all major property portals”.
The complainant believed this was misleading.
The complaint was informally resolved after the ASA said it received an assurance from Purplebricks that it would amend the claim.
Purplebricks, which does not list properties at OnTheMarket, yesterday stated on its website that properties are “advertised on all leading property portals”.
Comments (23)
at some point the dot com happy go lucky, more money than sense investors, who are looking for that big pay out on the shares are gonna realise that hype is a great tool for selling shares but reality is a different price.
PB are looking at the end of their journey from latest market trend to one of the many others who almost made it. Just my opinion but it does look like this to me.
Now who is sounding that little bit smug….. upper end eh!? So you sit yourself with likes of Savills, Strutt and Parker etc?? What did Strutts say the other day about their return to Zoopla……. absolutely delighted and the exposure offered.
I am a surveyor so work with a number of estate agents and the feedback I get is Zoopla is the one that provides best value (better proposition than RM), RM being the one that usually provides a few more leads but the one they hate but need to have and then 2/3 are on OTM, there to hopefully earn back on the share investment but offer generally nothing!
From my personal opinion, it’s an agents duty to give the maximum exposure for their CLIENTS PROPERTY; as best as they can afford to. OTM up here is not known with the important people and their 48hr exclusivity only serves to the detriment of the house seller.
So will say again, PB (who I have no association with) are right in their claim!
They’ll be some back slapping at On The Market Towers this morning, someone thinks they’re a ‘leading portal’ granted no one that matters but still always nice to have a positive.
I’ll say it again… During June and July we had more enquiries from OTM than rightmove. FACT.
I don’t care if other people don’t believe me, I’ve been called a liar on this forum before, OTM is working well for my business and generally the leads are of much better quality than RM. (Aside from the few occasional student let enquiries etc)
I will never use Zooplankton again. Reps are smug and familiar and it really is a monthly payment for nothing.
‘Please bear in mind I handle the upper end of the residential market, and this seems to be where OTM is really performing well.
I’m no PB fan but until the public know who OTM are then surely there is nothing wrong with PB’s claim. How many buyers start their property search at OTM over RM or Z?
There will be 100’s if not 1000’s of agents saying the same and not using OTM.
Obviously Sheepman is not an OTM fan. If Joe Public doesn’t know about OTM how come we get as many leads from OTM as we do from Zoopla? Maybe he should wake up, smell the coffee and join up!
Businesses use stats etc all the time and make claims to be the leading company in their industry; why is this any different.
Purplebricks are on the leading portals that Joe Public actually go on to; not a portal where there are a collection of agents paying/ not paying/ full of legal challenges etc and where the most important person is ignored….. the homebuyer/seller!
Exactly what does the ASA do? Seems everything is informally resolved when pb are in the frame, what’s the link between the two?
Not listed as “informally resolved” on the ASA website https://www.asa.org.uk/codes-and-rulings/rulings.html#informally-resolved
Can anybody explain that? Perhaps it wasn’t actually what the ASA refer to as informally resolved?
I wonder how many other Estate Agent websites say they list on the major portals but don’t include OnTheMarket. I imagine quite a few.
Any information on whether it was a member of the public or a rival which reported PurpleBricks.
No idea, but does it matter? If someone is doing something wrong, misleading etc then surely that should be reported? I am sure there are many smaller estate agents advertising things that are incorrect. But i am sure that most if not all of them, once contacted, not only remove said infraction, but dont then create more misleading statements because they know that no serious punishment is coming
Publebricks were fined by the Australian bods, shame our lots dont really give a damn.
Arthur, do you not think other Agents would be in the same boat if they were under as much scrutiny from rivals?
Some cases against small agents don’t even get reported as an “informal decision” which I think may be the situation here. It’s not even serious enough to be classed as an “informal decision” by the ASA. Could be wrong, we’ll see whether it appears in the list https://www.asa.org.uk/codes-and-rulings/rulings.html#informally-resolved
>”But i am sure that most if not all of them, once contacted, not only remove said infraction, but dont then create more misleading statements”
And thinking about it, there is one Estate Agent I can think of who repeatedly misleads and has claimed they will not remove the said infraction from an ASA decision. Perhaps there’s a relationship between how much is written. Most Agents say very little.
In my opinion (not saying it is factually correct) no i dont think other agents would be in the same boat. In my opinion some companies know how far they can bend the rules without fear of punishment. This isnt just restricted to PB, for example TUI have recently had 2 informal warnings for breaches.
Do i think PB get a lot more scrutiny from the industry that other agents….yes of course they do, but they have built their business based on slagging off proper estate agency, claiming to be cheaper and better. When they have made the decision to put smaller agents livelihood at risk, then they are going to be more closely monitored.
Purple perspective noted Ducky
Time to get into your
Purple pants & socks
Purple shirt & tie
Purple suit
Pop on your Purple shoes, making sure to tie them properly
Hold on Ducky, that’s amazing!
When you bend over a ray of Purple light shines from your Purple portal!
Wow! You’re Purplelicious every morning!
Good for you
Just adding a bit of perspective George.
Read the other day that Estate Agents are less trusted than bankers and the weatherman. Some poll or other. All this bitterness doesn’t really help the image.
With about 1 million transactions each year not a large percentage of the public that can be asked will have a contractual experience of estate agents. Using land registry data of about 22 million transactions since 1995, less than 1/3 of the population have employed an agent. (96% of vendors use an estate agent)
Agents are employed to get the best deal for their client which is essentially getting more money out of purchasers than they would like to pay…. for every one that is happy with agents there is someone with a reason to be unhappy with agents.
Typically there are 50 prospective purchasers for any one property that’s correctly priced. There can only be 1 successful purchaser… 49 are disappointed and have reason to be resentful; they didn’t get to buy.
Of the 50, 10 will be in a position to be considered as a realistic purchasers by the vendor’s agent. 9 of the top 10 will be really disappointed the agent did their job.
Of the 10, 2 will compete for a new home; someone is going to be disappointed.
Agents can’t logically win in any veracity index, even the person who buys a property is made to do something they resent and all the other potential purchasers missed out.
Asking the public about estate agents needs to be qualified by, have you ever employed one or are you just repeating a stereotype understanding of a service you’ve never used?
Even vendors can be irrational; who was it did not employ the best estate agent in his area because the agent owned a nice house and big car ( because they are successful and good at what they do)? The motivation was to save money, that’s reasonable and understandable but its embarrassing when the saving turned into a loss of £27,000 off the figure the local agent predicted he would achieve
Don’t regurgitate garbage to score points it undermines your intelligence.
Intelligence?
He isn’t stupid, he is either being paid to be vexatious or he has a real problem; no normal person spends their retirement persistently trolling estate agents as a way of passing the time.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he is connected in some way directly to Purplebricks or to a territory owner or one of the listing reps. When I hook up with one of the agents on the Wirral I’ll probably get the back story. I won’t make it public but I need to understand what has made him as he is.
For now I just have to endure what he throws my way.
Maybe his Mum ran off with an Estate Agent when he was a child or one stood on his favourite toy whilst measuring his bedroom…Whatever the case it just doesn’t seem quite normal…..
We can guess. Certainly the envy of his local agent isn’t the sort of thing anyone at the retirement end of their career should be expressing. We all get one shot at this life, if we stuff it up our disatisfaction with how it all turned out is down to us. It’s not our place to resent what others have achieved.
Oh for the Like button georgeorwell.
“Any information on whether it was a member of the public or a rival which reported PurpleBricks.”
Probably reported the issue themselves – there’s nowt like a bit of free publicity…
Typical. Purplebricks trying to “gloss over” reality. Isn’t that their business plan?!
I feel sorry for all those mugs who work for them. Jobmisery
Assurances…..like similar assurances the ASA has received before about rectifying misleading claims, then often little or nothing was done about it. Purplebricks are too big for the ASA to handle. The ASA dont have teeth, bottle or the legislative power to tackle a company with a shiny brand of lawyers to fight their corner
Pretty sure if a small independent had their wrist slapped half a dozen times by the ASA, they would have had a fine or more hefty by now.