Connells has apologised after one of its Sequence firms sent a touting letter to a landlord, wrongly suggesting that their agent was on OnTheMarket.
The letter was sent by a lettings manager at William H Brown to a landlord client of Carnegie & Associates in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire. The firm is not on OTM and saw the letter when the landlord brought it into them.
Stuart Carnegie, head of the firm, said he was extremely annoyed about the letter “for trying to put the wind up our landlord”.
The letter is headed: “Why letting your home could become more difficult!”
It goes on: “I can see your property is on the market with Carnegie & Associates, Handside Lane letting agents.
“Have they spoken to you about the new property portal ‘onthemarket.com’ and how it will affect the advertisement of your property?
“Estate agents and letting agents advertising on the new property portal will only be allowed to advertise your property with ‘onthemarket.com’ and one other portal.
“This means your agent has chosen to stop advertising properties (including yours) on either Zoopla or Rightmove.”
Carnegie yesterday confirmed to Eye that his firm is a member of both Rightmove and Zoopla.
A spokesperson for William H Brown said: “William H Brown does not condone the production of marketing material which includes misleading information, and apologises for any miscommunication.
“The company is currently looking into the matter to ensure this is an isolated incident of human error.
“The individual concerned will again be fully briefed on estate agency best practice.”
Comments (35)
livingproperty is actually Esther Rantzen.
‘LivingProperty’ I cant say id like to spend much time in your company, do you drive at 28mph and never swear?
Majority of larger agents do send out touting letters, same as them sending flyers. The thing that is wrong with this one is that they DIDN’T do their research, which is damn stupid.
But, I would like to add something else that EVERYONE has overlooked here… Did you know opening letters that aren’t addressed to you is illegal? Naughty Carnegie & Associates! This was not addressed to them, so they have acted illegally by opening the owners post, especially as it says ‘Private & Confidential’. It could have been a legal document. Unless the owner has given the agent permission to open his post, Carnegie & Associates have acted illegally – I wonder if the owner of the property knows that this agent is opening his post?
or maybe the landlord gave it to them?
I’m pretty sure no estate agent would be silly enough to publicise the fact they’ve opened the landlords post.
They could have, granted, but if you were a landlord, would you give things like this to your agent, or throw them in the bin? I, personally, would do the latter.
Unfortunately I’ve seen many agents do it, and not just independents – I would NEVER touch another persons post, ever, but I’ve been around so many that do in my career. Their reasoning? “I know it’s a marketing letter from another agent. The owner will never know and won’t miss it”. It’s disgusting.
We get many Landlords bringing touting letter into us, hense I knew about the Zoopla letter (comment above). Just because your landlords/vendors don’t, and in that case read and probably believe what they say, does not mean that other agents aren’t valued by the Landlords enough for them to let the agent know what is happening. I don’t think you are right for accusing and assuming that Carnegie & Associates have opened someone elses mail as you do not know the circumstances in which they came to find out.
Think this is all On the market’s fault, would they not put absurd anti competitive rules, people would not be so inclined to behave this way. On the market you bring out the worst in us.
Are you saying that the less professional agents amongst us didn’t send out rubbish like this before OTM?
OTM cant be blamed for this!!!
If they didn’t have that clause no one would use them as Z and RM have the exposure. Not one company in the world would invest any time or money in a NEW third portal with no exclusivity policy.
OTM have not cuased this by any means, shape or form. Every agent will tout for business whether other agents like it or not. Its a competitive business at the end of the day and all agents are inevitebly going to try and steal business from other agents. Granted, this letter is a poor attempt but it won’t gain the business so other agents shouldn’t being going crazy about it. If Zoopla are doing it then they are pulling business away from loads of other agents who have chosen to try and support OTM and that is wrong, but an agent doing it, name one agent that doesn’t!
“Every agent will tout for business whether other agents like it or not. …name one agent that doesn’t!”
Mine.
… and here once again, looking at the ad to the right of the touting letter, is the reason why we as an industry must despatch Zoopla & Rightmove as they demonstrate that neither have full UK coverage… if UK Estate Agents get behind OnTheMarket now and mid/long term we can deliver a UK Estate Agency focussed property portal that serves 100% of the high street estate agency members and their clients. Back on Topic… Touters?… they shouldn’t get air to breathe!
Th trouble is OTM is not much cheaper than RM and is 3 times the price we pay for ZPG. If it came down to a sensible price (say £100 per month) it would be more appealing. Unless something changes I struggle to see it succeeding. Don’t get me wrong I would love to see a low cost portal succeed, but this is not looking likely. We all should have embraced a free to list site like Globrix yrs ago and promoted that. RM just charge through the teeth any way they can like feature property, logos, agent valuation leads, etc etc.
Naysayer – “Th trouble is OTM is not much cheaper than RM and is 3 times the price we pay for ZPG.”
Can you actually quantify the amount of business you have received as a direct result of Z? Is it more than the cost? Paying for something is one thing – getting a return for the spend is another.
“RM just charge through the teeth any way they can like feature property, logos, agent valuation leads, etc etc.”
Only if you subscribe to them – otherwise there’s no charge to moan about – and you can’t moan if you’ve agreed to them – it’s YOUR decision.
This isn’t a case of anything other than whether you will lose, gain, or stand still by changing – is it not?
Not much cheaper than RM? Seriously?
I was quoted OTM at about £650 pm, RM is about £850 pm. ZPG is £200 pm. Value for money wise, I probably get best from ZPG, but I get more leads from RM.
I personally feel that if OTM is successful, RM will bite back by allowing private listings and use of agents will then be just to provide tools for putting it on RM. Consumers do not care about estate agents. We are not looked upon fondly like your local pub and so unless agents evolve to offer what the consumer wants – quality service at a sensible price, many will slowly disappear.
Naysayer…. £650 for OTM?….. either there is a Platinum Membership or someone doesn’t like you….or you are dreaming. And “quality service at a sensible price”…. I think you’ll find that’s exactly what I and many, many, many other estate agents have been giving for decades!
Erm… this one sat unposted for two hours due to me sorting out an issue on a sale and obviously some people have now taken the wider view that it affects us all.
I can see this one hitting 100…
I’m having a quiet giggle to myself here. The article is about an Agent getting all hot under the collar being wrongly accused of being an OTM Agent.
NOWHERE is it mentioned that this letter is clearly going out to Landlords where their Agent IS an AM Member.
Surely THAT is just as important an issue here – at least for the vast majority of readers and contributors – and the one which cries out for discussion?
Would you be overly bothered if you were an otm agent and this landed on one of your sellers/landlords mat?.
No more ‘bothered’ than any other touting letter, wilko – but it is the very content of the letter which bothers me… partly because I predicted it (not that I can claim to be a reincarnation of Gypsy Rose Lee on the strength of that ‘prediction’…) but mainly because what they are saying is a humongous dilution of what should be an Estate Agent’s actual role in the actual marketing of a property.
What do you mean “…if you were an otm agent…”, wilko.
Have I bailed already?
Sorry, thought you had decided to keep the fence warm a bit longer:-)
Oh… my head is still on the fence, matey – but sometimes you’ve just gotta go with the flow! ;o)
Will agents never learn?……This touting letter is appalling. It is poorly written and says ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about how William H Brown can really make a difference to the landlord.
Paragraph 1. Mention the other agent they are already on the market with.
Paragraph 2. Mention On the market.com
Paragraph 3. Try to convey the two portal rule (I don’t believe sellers and landlords actually care or understand )
Paragraph 4. Explain how Zoopla and Rightmove do all William H Browns s work for them .
Paragraph 5. Highlight some bad press about OTM (again the landlords and sellers really don’t care!)
Paragraph 6…”Give us a call so we can tell you about online enquiries we get from Zoopla and Rightmove.”
The manager of this branch and his/her line manager clearly seem to be totally unaware that when you pitch for new business you do it by saying how GOOD your branch/company is……NOT by saying how BAD the instructed agent is and certainly not by saying that ALL you do is rely on the 2 main property portals for any leads!
Corporate Estate Agency hereinafter referred to as Corrupt Estate Agency…. usual shameful, unprofessional practice. As I’ve said before on PIE…. Touters are the lowest form imaginable in our industry… sc*m.
Disagree with you on this one GPL. Touting is part of our business like it or not.
Granted this one is misleading and as Wilko points out its a poor attempt.
We dedicate an hour a day per member to touting, be it office or out and about and and hour canvassing.
End of the day if you offer a good service you dont worry about touting, But we find a lot of vendors are listed and then forgotten about.
Zoopla are doing somehting very similar at the moment by sending letters out to all properties, rented or for sale, that have been removed from Zoopla becuase the agent has chosen to lost thier properties on OTM instead. The letter is exremely similar to that above saying that Landlords/Vendors should try using an agent who advertisies on Zoopla instead.
I have no idea how much of a difference it is making to agents who are now advertising with Rightmove and OTM only but I don’t think it is right that Zoopla are doing this. OTM is run by agents for agents and Zoopla are only jepordising agents returning to them if OTM does not work out for any reason.
Cant even offer a legible signature – Still a better effort than the silly cheap mailshots offered in the Derby/Burton area by BE. If an agent has endless hours to devote to this type of tacky marketing they clearly dont have anything else more constructive to do – Like selling houses perhaps?
Clearly this tout letter has been designed and pushed out to branches from Connells head office so it is wrong to blame the local BM as the corporates usually do. And while we ar
e about it didn’t the OFT ban agents from using their logo on stationary over a year ago?
i
When will the ASA make an example out of these corrupt corporate agents?
This is the third or forth tout letter in as many weeks from the major corporate agents.
They seem to think as long as they say sorry its okay.
Prime example of how bad a number of these staff are at corporate. They are just being lazy and not looking into who is doing what so just assume as an independent with OTM.
Sort our a couple of big fines for this misleading touting and you will find the corporates take it a lot more seriously.
For years agents have cried out for a viable alternative to the big two. So what the heck is going on now? It’s disgusting.
It’s jit disgusting .. It just business . What did you really think would happen ?
See my comment below Danny… you’re a member of that club?
This is not a surprise,nor would it shock anybody who works in the industry.
The company like this and all its associates or a nightmare and have been doing this for years. Touting other agents business. As they seem to struggle on the own merit to win business. So the come across as if they have people waiting to let or buy etc and we are market leaders in jack.
its time you stopped wasting so much paper in touting and looked more to staff training