A single office firm says that Rightmove is trying to hike its rate by over three times after applying a ‘geographical advertising’ (GA) pricing model.
The agent says that Rightmove has decided that the local high street firm now has two additional ‘virtual’ offices, and will therefore charge for three branches all told.
‘Geographical’ charging is used for online agents but also for other agents assessed over three months to have 50% of their stock outside their immediate territory, measured as a total of 100,000 chimney pots.
As a result, Rightmove’s current charge to the agent of £1,745.50 plus VAT for its single office would go up to £2,945.50 plus VAT, equivalent to a rise of 68%.
The agent, which has asked not to be identified on the basis that it is considering legal action against Rightmove, said: “We signed up to Rightmove’s Optimiser package earlier this year and were sold it on the basis that there will be no price increases during the term of our one-year contract.
“However, we then received a letter from Rightmove that our agency now falls within a GA model and that we will be charged for two additional virtual offices and that we have 30 days to review our listings.
“We then emailed our account manager as our stock levels have not increased and we have not changed our model to advertise in different areas.
“As far as we are concerned we are advertising the same amount of stock and this goes against the contract that we signed with Rightmove.
“Our account manager did not reply to our email and subsequently Rightmove decided to debit our account without providing any further clarification regarding the letter or our query.
“The charge was equivalent to a 68% increase in our fee.
“This resulted in our company missing other financial commitments in that particular month.”
The agent then decided to stop its direct debit the following month until the issue was resolved.
Rightmove appointed a new account manager to review the case.
The agent said: “After the meeting we were hoping that our account manager would come back to us with more information on the GA model as we felt that the measure that they use of 100,000 chimney pots is not a clear and transparent measure for an agent to comprehend.
“We asked for websites/radius of where our properties can be listed and why this model was imposed on our agency considering we are not an online agent, and as far as we are aware our stock levels have not increased outside our radius since March.”
The agent says that the new account manager was unable to answer any of its queries, and that Rightmove has since made its branch invisible.
The agent said he understood that the previous pricing structure which applied to online agents was deemed unfair, and that the new “geographical” pricing structure came in during the term of its contract.
“However, we have signed a one-year contract which does not expire until next March. Therefore we do not understand why these new rules would apply to our account.”
The agent has now set up a twitter page at https://twitter.com/Wrongmove11
Rightmove declined to comment on individual arrangements with agents.
However, yesterday evening a spokesperson said of the ‘chimneypots’ rule: “Geographical advertising is used to ensure members are charged more consistently and fairly for the exposure they receive on Rightmove.
“The stock numbers used in geographical advertising only relate to properties that are marked as available.
“A virtual branch is based on a property radius of 100,000, to reflect the average size of the area where an agent’s instructions are located.
“Agents are charged using geographical advertising if they have more than 50% of their properties outside of the 100,000 properties radius.”
The agent said it could not have been expected to count every chimney pot where it is listing properties, adding: “Rightmove does not seem to understand this, and are not willing to help us out, and yet had no hesitation in increasing our fees.”
Agent claims Rightmove has reduced ‘geographic’ pricing area by 60%
Comments (53)
It does appear to be massive leap of faith which requires bravery. The groundswell of opinion against RM is growing. I believe the tipping point has been reached for many. Independent agents should all move to OTM. Who cares if they put their prices up eventually, they’ll still be cheaper than RM. Leave the corporates to RM who would end up paying more to subsidise the exodus. Win/win. Do it.
Agents get together and bring the RM beast down.
DECEMBER 2018
NO PROPERTY .. NO RIGHTMOVE.
“We signed up to Rightmove’s Optimiser package earlier this year and were sold it on the basis that there will be no price increases during the term of our one-year contract” – you sign up and pay for individual branches. So, it hasn’t increased. Instead, you’ve spread far and wide and because YOU want to have your wider radius of properties on site you’re salty because you have to pay for that? Do me a favour.
If you don’t like it, pull those properties from the site and advertise them somewhere else. Or, invest in the marketing and sell them for a profit.
Shock horror, someones charging me for a service.
Rumours in our town is that haart and Acorn are coming off too!!
This trickle looks like a flood if the big boys are coming off…….
****** disgusting, how can they justify £6k a month??? Maybe they have some ulterior motive to shut down agencies so they can do it themselves online as they will certainly put many out of business with these exasperating overheads!
OTM are staying quiet because they know they will have to operate pretty much as RM do because they have investors. Your prices will go up so don’t think they won’t. If they did as they originally promised then they would have been the next alternative, however the way they have treated those who signed up initially I don’t thing they deserve our loyalty and certainly not our money. Don’t lock yourself into a deal with them as they shafted us once before and will do it again as they have to make a profit first for their investors/shareholders and it will be by digging deeper in to our pockets.
You are all restricting yourselves to the 3 worst providers in terms of cost (and in terms of customer service too from ours and the experience of others on here). There are loads more options out there that are by far better, some free, some for a small fee. Just start opening up your options and trying new things.
If you do as you have always done, you will continue to get the same results. Instead of bashing against the same brick wall, walk around it and find a better future that is good for you and your vendors because after all it costs them a lot more too. Someone suggested on another post that we should increase our fees. If you want to lose more customers to online models then put your fees up as that is what will happen. Why should we continue to be dictated to by these portals. Who do they think they are!
Just as Facebook is on a downward spiral because it put its customers, their data, their loyalty last, so are RM, Z and OTM. They have all got away with fleecing us for what is effectively a page on their website.
Sorry but I am getting so pissed off with this as nearly every other news article of late is about us agencies being shafted once again by RM, OTM or Z.
The following might have only been a dream in the past, however some dreams become reality
* NEWSFLASH * (Attention of Mr Miles Shipside – Rightmove PLC)
Responding to the continuing impact of Rightmove’s relentless increases in their monthly charges to estate agents advertising on their portal, an estate agent commented –
”There is a groundswell of opinion that Rightmove’s unjustified annual increases are now causing a serious negative effect on estate agents and their clients.
For reasons best known to Rightmove they have chosen to disregard the feedback from their estate agency subscribers.
A Rightmove Free Day is now planned to clearly signal to the Rightmove and Homebuyers the negative effect that Rightmove’s overzealous charging policy is having.
A substantial number of UK estate agents have now embraced the New OnTheMarket Property Portal which provides a cost effective way of Online Property Advertising whilst the clarity of the New Portal has been welcomed by HomeSellers & Buyers who are fed up of being bombarded with the distractions of 3rd Party Advertising on Rightmove’s Portal.
Estate Agents are in discussion about which day will be promoted as a Rightmove Free Day.
OPTION 1 – A Rightmove Free Day
or
OPTION 2 – A Rightmove Free Day
For goodness sake, just cancel and come off Rightmove. What is wrong with you all!! It seems the only reason you don’t is that it won’t give you anything to moan about every morning. Stop hitting yourself on the head with a hammer, complaining it hurts and then promptly doing it again, and again, and again. Grow a pair and just cancel or stop going on about it.
Rightmove have no strategy on pricing. Everyone is charged different prices, we’ve been given multiple different quotes…
It seems the only consistency in their pricing is they charge as much as possible
I’ve been given three different quotes
Unless you have a high turnover of available lettings, I’m suprised you even look at RM, due to the fee they charge.
Supporting Onthemarket would appear to be in our best interest as agents. They are increasingly approaching a tipping point where a mass exodus from RM would no longer require a leap of faith.
Moaners; stop moaning and join up. We can then reach this moment sooner, allowing our businesses to breath and more easily cope with the forthcoming challenges we face.
12 months ago your comment would have tipped the 100 mark in replies, for suggesting such a thing. How times have changed and people are starting to wake up.
Welcome to Rightmove
IMHO, it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility that there is some manner/form of collusion between RM and its larger/national agent clients to adjust pricing to the detriment of smaller, independent agent competitors. Clearly, should Rightmove be operating a fair, transparent, unbias pricing structure (interestingly, fees being something that we agents are required to make publicly available); RM would not continue to refuse to discuss ”individual arrangements”…
One of the above comments regarding ”un-natural selection” may be close to representing a process that RM is gently pushing, on behalf of certain stakeholders…?
However, I suspect that through a tactical misjudgement by RM’s commercial strategy dept. a ‘critical mass’ of ill-will by some of its clients may be reached sooner than anticipated…
If agents woke up to reality that has been going on for years and left RM, it wouldn’t take long to see who you are talking about and they would be the ones in a minority, on the other foot and all the consequences that comes with it!
* NEWSFLASH *
“Rightmove Shareprice predicted to dive as Estate Agents start leaving portal en-masse”
Industry expert comments “Rightmove simply kept squeezing estate agents to breaking point so the mass exodus is no surprise”
Estate Agent comments “We have supported Rightmove from inception however they made the fundamental error of believing that they were the UK Estate Agency Industry and that agents couldn’t survive without Rightmove. Instead we witness that Rightmove can’t exist without estate agents listing their properties on their portal.”
Rightmove comments “We just thought we would keep increasing our annual costs to estate agents because we could. However, we accept that estate agents would eventually wake up one day and our profit party would be over.”
Summary – Every Dog has its Day!
I’m actually looking forward to my next review with my RM rep. Despite the market delivering a pretty lousy year, I shall be pleased to offer him the same rate as I paid last year. I shall express the hope that his wages have kept pace with their price hikes and be terribly disappointed to tell him that he shall lose the account (money pit) for our branches (c. £100k p.a) if this cannot be agreed.
Its a funny old world but, for those with your financial heads screwed on the right way, this seems entirely reasonable.
Try asking how many have gone before them and point in the right direction! Does anyone know the turn over of RM reps?
Surely this would allow for the agent in question to cancel the contract as this sounds like a significant change in terms and conditions. I’m not 100% sure how it applies in commercial law but certainly in consumer law you are able to leave a contract if the supplier decides to enforce a price increase above a certain percentage, and this certainly seems a significant price increase!
Hi Dom_P they allow you to cancel the contract with glee… that’s the point, they say… if you don’t like it leave, we are not forcing you to be on RM.
I am not sure the contracts are 12 months lock in, just 12 months pricing. If however they were 12 month lock ins, I would agree you have grounds to leave, but sure they don’t, the power that is… RM.
This is yet another example that clearly demonstrates that this company is no longer a cost effective supplier to independent agents.. They are clearly deluded and believe we can’t operate without them. Give them notice and leave. We did in March and will never go back.
We did in July 2017 and will never go back.
RM attitude is making agents leave the site.
If you haven’t, give in your notice. You won’t miss much.
Be brave and believe in yourself.
It’s about time agents stood up to Rightmove a mind walked. The quality and quantity of leads has reduced in previous years. It’s lile the old bully the more they get away with it the more they do it!
And how much media advertising does RM provide agents? Our research suggests that web site loyalty is not all that it is cracked up to be, with customers preferring smart searches today. It doesn’t matter that much which web site you are on. The customer market has moved on, time agents moved with the times and not stuck in a service industry that is outdated. Think about it, competitors to RM wouldn’t be in the market if people only searched on RM.
My LPE told me that everybody pretty much uses RM in our part of the country. He said people used Zoopla down South. This was born out by the stats. Something like 90% of my views came via RM.
Before reading the articles on this site, if you’d asked me to name an alternative to RM or Zoopla I wouldn’t have been able to come up with an answer.
Yes you would Purple Bricks.
The system is completely unfair for 2 to 5 office companies who cover a relatively small area. We cover 4 post codes which are roughly (as the crow flies 4.1 miles East to West and 8 miles North to South
Mine would increase x’s 4, they have told me.
I do not believe the 2 or 3 single office agents who cover a similar area to me will be paying my x’s 4 rate.
RM argue to me, we have more overall stock because we have more RM accounts – Yeh… that will be it, only yesterday a potential vendor said… Want to use an agent with their own office RM account… coz buyers search for property via Agency Branch location! WTF RM… get a grip.
They then said, If I choose to have 4 offices I should pay for 4 accounts! It is my choice to have 4 offices, they do not force me to! WTF again… Surely this is a form of discrimination… I cannot understand how me having an office means they WILL increase my membership “just because”, If you close 3 of your offices it might be different was the line. WTF again RM.
Enough is enough.
So if I only have ten houses for sale and 6 of them are large country piles miles and miles apart where does that leave me?
Where does it leave Carter Jonas and Knight Frank Country House division?
Is there a minimum stick level? What happens when the market collapses and stocks shoot up too?
My fees were increased 25% 3 months ago and yesterday my latest invoice had increased it by another 50% but showed a members discount taking me back to £20 more than I was paying last month. I am now on notice that being a small letting agent they are proposing to charge me £750/mth when they choose to remove my discount.
Move to Zoopla or OTM, plenty of leads and far, far cheaper.
Got to agree with Woodentop.
Since cancelling our RM advertising and moving back to Z, we have received more leads at around 1/7th of the cost we were paying to RM.
During our crossover period advertising on both, many enquirers from RM were duplicated on Z giving me the impression that truly motivated tenants and buyers probably do not stick to one property portal. I certainly do not stick to one website when I am buying anything of any value, never mind looking for the most expensive asset I am likely to purchase/rent.
So why do we obsess about being on RM ? For years the RM accounts handlers have pushed down our throats that we must be on there because our competitors are and we do not want our competitors to have any edge ! Many agents are now starting to realise that it is simply one avenue of advertising, the world is changing quickly and as RM shafts their own paying customers, many are waking up to the idea that money is probably best spent of good quality staff and advertising elsewhere !
Has anyone ever worked out how much they bring in to their business from Rightmove? Probably not…
Yes and as mentioned above, other sites do it for much less with the same applicants. No brainer who should be in control of our business’s.
On that basis the ‘geo model’ should mean that as we have several branches close together covering less than 100k houses we should only be paying for one branch?
Good point!
Theresa May is to tour the UK over the next two weeks to explain why her deal and Rightmove are good deals.
The figures that come out of Rightmove looks they have Diane Abbott working for them
Probably listed in her House of Commons “interests” as a consultant to Rightmove specialising in obfuscation.
Perhaps Rightmove should handle the Brexit negotiations
I would like to invite the agent to join me outside Waitrose tomorrow, as I protest against the increase in price on Christmas turkeys.
It is disgraceful that a shop I choose to buy my food at, should start charging more for something I neither need or like.
I’m only buying a turkey because the family insist on getting one, and although other shops sell them as well, if I don’t buy one from Waitrose then someone else will, and then they’ll have a better Christmas than me!
Waitrose? Ive heard their charging on a Geo model now for Turkeys.
The Outsider
Is there a ‘shoppers’ industry website we can go to, where you are a member, that we can comment on from an agent’s point of view. I am sure everyone on there will be interested in our points of view!
1) Set up a freeTrust Pilot account in the name of RM and invite comments……
2) Post Google reviews
It’s a valid point if Waitrose charge you 68% more for your turkey because 50% of your family are driving over to yours to eat it and they now live outside what Waitrose considers to be your homes geographic area. An area that appears to be getting geographically smaller according to some Waitrose shoppers. Alledgedly. Count your own chimney pots.
Yep, that is as bad an analogy as I have seen.
Except that in this case, you’d have ordered a bronze turkey – not the bog standard free range, but a mid-range bronze, but the producer thinks that the bronzes might have escaped over the corn fed, organic area at some point, so just to be safe, they’re charging you for the dry aged Duchy one.
As i have said before why any pays Rightmove anything beyond the basic package is beyond me. “Optimiser” package…what exactly is being optimised except for your bill?
The problem is Rightmove have now cottoned on to everyone wanting to reduce their packages to the minimum and said to us that the base package with nothing extra was now £1400 plus VAT, each time we try to knock off an extra on the package we have changes the discount on the other things you have and therefore knocking off all the extras ends up saving hardly anything so you end up staying with the package you are on with all the extras. They have people over a barrel as everyone says.
We only have the choice of 2 packages, so I can’t reduce it even if I wanted to…
Wow!!! £3,000 a month. Agents are going to get shafted by RM over the coming years.
As agents who have made a stand have started to leave RM.
So the shortfall in revenue will be made up by increasing fees to the ones which are still on RM.
RM needs to be brought down and will only be possible if agents remove the stock they advertise on RM. It’s that simple!!
Looks like they inadvertently signed up to their latest deal called…..RightmoveMagpie
A mass exodus draws ever closer.
It’s a tax on survival. Agents are having to widen their nets due to rightmove allowing pay any way purpleshits on site and reducing stock levels . This is going to get messy. Onthemarket this should be like shooting fish in a barrel…
WAKE UP!!!
Same old on here every morning zzz, agents moaning about the cost of RM and doing sod all about it.
Is RM the most searched property portal – YES – Is RM the only property portal – NO
Do you as an agent have a choice – YES
Why are you on RM? ‘Because my business will collapse and i will never list another house ever because RM is the best…oh?’ – STOP MOANING then and carry on.
LEAVE RM – give it a try, if you can professionally list a house and have a good reputation, where you list the house is irrelevant.
Many agents do not use RM, your potential vendor will instruct YOU – NOT RM – YOU are obsessed with RM, not ALL your vendors.
Make a decision, you may well be surprised as we all are whom exited RM ages ago, if not then go canvass this morning rather than moaning about RM on here- Simple’s