Two agents have expressed their anger after claiming that they were told by Rightmove how to run their businesses.

Rightmove has said that its teams do make suggestions about using its products, and that is to try and help agents.

One agent has now left the portal. He says he was told by his account handler, in his office and in front of his staff, how he should be running his business.

The second agent has said that in trying to reduce marketing costs, his firm was told by Rightmove that it was making the wrong business decisions – and that Rightmove would up its charge to £3,300. The firm has a single office, which handles sales and lettings.

Both agents, whose offices are in different parts of the south, had been trying to negotiate their Rightmove costs.

The first agent was querying Rightmove’s attempt to hike his firm’s subscription.

The agent says that Rightmove told him he was not using the add-on products correctly, to gain maximum commercial advantage from them.

The agent said that the remarks made in front of staff were insulting and unhelpful, and did not begin to address his concerns about the increased costs of Rightmove to his business.

The agent left the portal a week ago.

The second single-office agent approached EYE with a similar story.

This agent also wanted to reduce their marketing costs and suggested removing some of the postcode valuation tools that proved no help to it last year. The saving the agent hoped to achieve was in the region of £300.

However, the account manager told this agent that in doing so, the business would no longer be eligible for the optimiser package, and Rightmove would be charging £3,300, including a core membership fee of £1,475 plus VAT.

This would have been more than the £1,240 the agent had previously paid for core membership, and considerably more than the agent’s current total package.

The agent says that to make matters worse, the account manager emailed to say that the business had not made best use of the leads that were provided and was not making decisions that were right for it.

The agent told EYE: “We are absolutely dumbfounded at the audacity, arrogance and sheer ignorance that has been shown to us.

“It is a thought process that will undoubtedly cost them business in future, as there are portals out there offering equal quality at a much lower cost.”

A Rightmove spokesperson said: “Our packages are intended to give agents tools and products that could help open up instruction opportunities that may otherwise be hidden to them, to put their brand and properties in front of the biggest home-moving audience, and to try and help them save time.

“Our teams suggest ways these tools and products could be used alongside an agent’s expertise in selling and letting homes to try and help them achieve their goals for the year.”