A Lancashire-based estate agent has slammed GetAgent.co.uk for refusing to pass on what he sees as his valuation leads and handing them to his competitors instead.
With low stock levels and high demand creating fierce competition among agents for properties, Neil Robinson says he is “disgusted” that the estate agent comparison site is, in his view, using his agency to help generate leads and then refusing to pass them on.
Robinson, the owner of Neil Robinson Estate Agents in Skelmersdale, told EYE that he spoke with a GetAgent representative yesterday who made him aware that his firm had in recent weeks received 12 leads from homeowners looking for a valuation, but he was unable to receive them as he was not signed up to the GetAgent platform.
The main issue Robinson has with GetAgent is that his firm, like many other well-established agents, is listed as an agent on the comparison website, without his consent, with details shown to potential vendors, giving them the impression that his company will, according to Robinson, “call them back if they request a valuation”.
He said: “Vendors put their details into the website and select the agents they want to hear from. The vendor then supposedly sits back and waits for the agent to get in touch.
“Only here’s the burn. If you don’t have a [paid up] relationship with GetAgent, then that lead does not come to you. So, the vendor puts their details into the GetAgent platform in good faith, only to then not hear from the agent they selected.
“Apparently, we had 12 people select us for a call back in the last month, and obviously because those leads did not make their way over to us, those vendors will now most likely think we can’t be bothered to get in touch.
“The other concern, of course, is that those people will almost certainly hear from one of our competitors, when they may have specifically signed up via the GetAgent platform, possibly via Google, to hear from us.”
He added: “What an absolutely disgusting way to do business. Not only do GetAgent, as highlighted in the press last week, encourage people to batter independent agents down on fees, but they also knowingly farm vendor data by purporting to offer the whole of the market, only to withhold those leads and hand them out to the few agents who pay them.
“In other words, they’re giving my leads to other agents.”
“An absolutely dodgy outfit, in my opinion. This practice is abhorrent, and needs to be stopped immediately.”
The founder and CEO of GetAgent.co.uk, Colby Short, has defended his firm, describing Robinson’s accusations as “a touch misleading, to say the least”.
He commented: “Unfortunately Mr Robinson hasn’t quite provided an accurate picture of our interaction with him or our vendors and so his accusations are a touch misleading, to say the least.
“As one of the top performing agents in his area, which we commend him for, he is recommended to potential vendors and he has had a number of those vendors request a valuation from his business.
“However, Neil Robinson Estate Agents is not a GetAgent member agent and so when these valuation requests are made, we contact him personally by phone to tell him and to offer him the opportunity to purchase them – as he has alluded to.
“What he has failed to mention is that on every single occasion he has declined this offer and so naturally he wasn’t supplied with them.
“In addition, we certainly don’t leave the vendor in the dark and they are promptly emailed [see below], to let them know the agent in question isn’t currently working with GetAgent, at which point we encourage them to find a new agent.
“We have, and always will, provide our vendors with a whole of market view, but as I’m sure Mr Robinson can appreciate, as a business we can only provide leads for those agents who wish to pay their way.”
GetAgent’s letter template:
Dear (Vendor Name),
I hope you are well and thank you for using our service to find the best estate agents!
You requested a valuation with (Agent Name)
We have been speaking with the agent to request this, however, they are not able to work with GetAgent and receive your valuation request.
Please feel free to book valuations with other agents by simply re-visiting your shortlist. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch on 0203 608 6556.
When you select an agent through our site you can also use our free monitoring service, to see how your sale is progressing compared to the rest of the market. Simply revisit your shortlist when your house is on the market or ask us for more details.
Best of luck with your sale!
(Sales Associate Name)”
GetAgent says ‘sorry’ to estate agents for advising sellers to lie about fees
Comments (28)
I fail to comprehend how these companies can condiser themselves as anything other than a stain on the industry.
As I understand it, this lot wave the Agent in the face of the prospective homeseller, and if that person bites, they then contact the Agent offering them an appraisal opportunity on the basis that the Agent agrees to pay a large chunk of their fee to the company if instructed and the property sells.
If the Agent does not want to lose a substantial chunk of revenue – which in many cases could equate to the profit margin or even more on the deal – then this company tell the homeowner that their chosen Agent refuses to play ball and suggests they choose another Agent.
How can this even be allowable? If they are hawking Agents services in front of homeowners – often without that Agent’s permission or agreement, then they should not then be able to dictate the terms to the homeowner if the Agent they choose based on that information then (rightly) refuses to be held to ransom for an introduction.
Either Get-A-Gent only include those Agents “pro-active” enough (others may well suggest replacing that term with ‘weak’, ‘desperate’ or ‘dumb’…) to subscribe to the ‘services’ that Get-A-Gent profess to bring to the table in their “comparison” tables; or they accept that the vendor will make what they infer to be an informed choice based on their data and forfeit any claim to reward.
And they aren’t the only ones. EYE should do a feature on this practice, getting the likes of Messrs Short and Lamdin/Wright to ‘sell’ their products to Agents and see what is chucked back at them.
They all claim the same things. To help the seller. To help the Agent. To level the market. But in reality they are simply all talking the same bo**ocks.
But in reality those are purely stated aims… marketing puffery. They are there to help themselves – and anyone else getting “help” is purely a by-product of that process.
Agents – YOU are their product. Surely now it’s time to REtake control of that.
GetAgent claiming to have ‘their vendors’, hilarious.
Just a another online chancer making false claims.
Probably not going to be the most popular opinion but I don’t really have a huge problem with Getagent. Pay them 0.25% if it completes, if it doesn’t don’t pay them a bean. I am more concerned as to why my marketing hasn’t caused the vendor to contact me directly.
Sounds like they need to be much clearer to potential vendors who will be contacting them and more importantly who wont and why not.
Does it not concern you that if you receive an instruction via your own efforts, maybe after several months since they registered with GetAgent, that a claim on commission will be made?
A bit like an agent claiming a buyer intro based on viewing their a while back board.
I had that scenario as I hadn’t contacted the vendor via the Getagent phone number or email it was clear I had already been in contact with the vendor. Getagent were fine about it and that was the last I heard of it. I can only speak of my own experience.
AgentQ73. A genuine question for which I would very much appreciate your genuine response.
When you receive Get-A-Gent enquiries, do you happily give them 0.25% of the property value from your normal fee level, or do you have a different rate for Get-A-Gent referrals?
@BigYellowBanana
Was that a bit of a slip up above, where you said…
“Maybe he wants to send over the paper work for his current sales and we’ll do that for him as well.”
Am I to presume that because you state ‘we’ll do that for him as well’ you are either working for GetAgent, this is Colby in disguise as an inflatable fruit or you have slipped on your own skin on the keyboard…?
Haha nice. No – I mean I can easily get an office admin to do some work for him 🙂
I noticed this as well and posted a reply to the bigyellowbanana’s post, but after your post.
In another display of shocking dishonesty from GetAgent they say this – “However, Neil Robinson Estate Agents is not a GetAgent member agent and so when these valuation requests are made, we contact him personally by phone to tell him and to offer him the opportunity to purchase them – as he has alluded to.”
I was told yesterday that I had 12 clicks via their website over the last month. If this was the case, then why did I not receive 12 phone calls over the last month instead of the solitary one that I got yesterday. And they only made THAT call because they wanted to verify we had a pre-existing relationship with that client.
In terms of sending an email to clients to inform them that GetAgent don’t have a relationship with any given agent, that is again the biggest load of codswallop I have ever read. Literally no-one – agent or vendor – we have spoken to has is aware of the existence of such an email, and when I entered my personal details into GetAgent yesterday as a “vendor”, and clicked on my own company, despite the assurances on the site itself, no email was forthcoming to my company email address of any kind, and the “vendor” one I provided, simply said the agent will be in touch via a masked phone number, along with assurances that the agent will not receive their real phone number and email address. Nothing else was forthcoming, and certainly not an explanation of our refusal to deal with GetAgent
Either way, this does not excuse the fact that I – and many, many other agents out there – have not consented to have my, or their, details used in this way. You have no right to use my company, and other hard working estate agents, as clickbait to farm your own data. My company should NOT be on that site if I have not entered into an agreement for it. It really is that simple.
Completely agree.
I’ve referred to these chancers and their ilk as ” Honeypots ” since their inception.
I have an idea, I’m going to set up a website with the ” bait ” being that you can stream Amazon, Disney, AppleTV, Netflix and Sky. Ooh good thinks the user, all in one place, what shall I watch?
Think I’m gonna watch that old classic Beetlejuice, click…..
htsnom.com website to the providers:
Psssst..
I have a client that would like to watch Beetlejuice, if you accept this stream you agree that htsnom.com will be entitled to 25% of the streaming fee.
Absolutely crazy.
This is quite a misleading piece of clickbait if we’re being completely fair, as we’ve only ever had a good experience with the people at GetAgent. You pay per lead and they do give a whole of market view, it’s not their fault that the likes of Mr Robinson are too cheap to pay up. Why should he benefit from marketing spend of another agency? Maybe he wants to send over the paper work for his current sales and we’ll do that for him as well.
In the meantime he’s is probably being taken to task over his desk by Rightmove, screaming ‘**** me again but at a higher price than last year’. (Yes I do not like Rightmove). If it were me, I would have taken the money I saved not paying for leads and forked out for a professional mug shot before ranting and raving for, well, no reason at all really.
How this makes a story I don’t know. There must be more important topics than what comes across as personal tit for tat.
Wow.
But if they are listing agents without their consent, or worse, ignoring agents request to be removed as with MarkRowe, it is an abhorrent business practice. You mention Neil is ‘too cheap to pay up’, but surely getagent are trying to profit off using his details without his consent, I’d suggest that is ‘too cheap’. I’m afraid this article does not feel like clickbait, rather a valid issue more than one agent is facing and PIE is the right venue for such an article.
Maybe he wants to send over the paper work for his current sales and we’ll do that for him as well.
What do you mean “we’ll” ?????
Is you name Choudhry by chance! See leelee30above
You want to know how this makes a story? Unless you work for them then agents need to know exactly how this Company works. I don’t want our details displaying on their website. The worst thing of all is that the statistics are completely incorrect. Of 8 agents in my area there are only 2 agents displaying their fees on GetAgent which tells me that the other 6 agents don’t want anything to do with them.
The number of reviews is way out, and the number of properties listed is also way out. There is one agent listing only 6 new instructions who comes out as ‘most experienced’ in terms of listings when in fact they are at the bottom. Guess what they are one of the two who choose to be on there let’s call them Agent B. The only other one on there who chooses to be on there Agent C comes out as ‘recommended’ so there you have it.
Having read the comments on here we are going to take legal advice because it would seem that when someone requests a valuation on the GetAgent website from an agent who doesn’t use GetAgent a message comes up to say that their enquiry will be passed on.
Let’s say that I am Agent A. The enquiry ISN’T passed on to Agent A (fine we don’t want them anyway) and the prospective vendor receives an email recommending the other two agents B & C. THE PROSPECTIVE VENDOR ALSO GETS ANOTHER EMAIL TO SAY ‘WE’VE ASKED AGENT A TO GET IN TOUCH WITH YOU TO ARRANGE A VALUATION’ Not only is this not true it makes it appear that we are not getting back to someone who expects us to. There is no email to say that Agent A doesn’t work with us.
I would like to thank Neil Robinson for making me try this out for myself.
Hi,
Sorry to hear you’re also having the same issue most of us are.
It may well be worth us chatting via email and any others that want to join in with this. I have spent the last two hours going back and forth with Colby as he finally replied to my LinkedIn messages, it’s not pretty and there’s mountain of things I want to share and start to build towards taking this further now alongside others that are/have experienced the same.
PIE, I’m happy for you to share my email address should any of the posters here wish to contact me.
Thanks Mark.
This has made me really angry and I’m more than happy to take it further now that I know the truth.
You’re not alone in that feeling!
I’m sure you can do a google or perhaps contact PIE directly for my email and I’ll chat through my experience and how I will be moving this forward legally on Monday.
I was silly to fall for GetAgent, they charged me for my own clients leads on two completions, “clients used Google to ring me and found the number of my company listed first” these clients had requested valuations before, however Instructed us after 6 months.
Get Agent slammed me for fees, hounded the office and the staff for months for fees and threatened the staff with Legals Court action ect.
I proved that the clients where on my records but they didn’t accept it.
“So Never Will I Use This Shameful Company Again”
I added a review online as you do naked and shamed, Choudhry I think he was called asked to be remove if or would take me to court, the review stayed on.
shameful actions out only for money!
A well trained group that bullied my staff from months
Had a situation with GetAgent where we agreed 1.25% with them (not great I know), our first val came in which was great (we thought), when we went to the val the vendor said he had agreed a fee of 0.5% with another GetAgent agent!!! that means that agent will be getting 0.25% WOW. As JonnyBanana43 said above, they will be working with Strike next.
@Propman4
Most never signed up, that’s the point. They have almost every agent listed by scraping data. Huge numbers have asked for details to be removed but they won’t remove them.
This is why it needs to be taken further.
I may be repeating myself but why do any agents use this site? They are not in business to help us and they demonstrate that repeatedly! Back yourself and remove your details from their site!
Agree with both the above comments.
It’s an interesting concept for a company, but the communications that come out of it are so tone deaf it seems doomed to fail.
If they refuse to remove details when requested, then maybe it’s time to sue?
PIE, we need you to do some more follow up and keep the pressure on here please. On a Facebook estate agency group, everyone is having a similar if not worse experiences. Colby isn’t removing information when requested, there’s fake one star reviews being posted the list goes on…
Perhaps Colby can also explain why he’s ignored countless emails from myself to his company asking to remove my details from his website, as well as the two direct emails I sent him on LinkedIn last night asking to confirm that they will be removed, both had been seen but no reply?
I’m not a paying agent of his and never will be. This service is scrapping public data (some of which is inaccurate) then using this to make out to a site visitor that all those agencies will be compared. It is simply not good enough to then say to the customer (after the fact!) that the agent is not part of getagent. This is MISLEADING, fact.
I’ll be taking this further if my details are not removed today.
When GetAgent started it was a brilliant idea.
The best independent agent in the area do well. Sadly they’ve lost the plot.
i’m afraid they lost me when they started telling vendors to lie to estate agents – They’ll be working with Strike next.