A publicity claim that a property was one of over 70 to have achieved ‘sale agreed’ status last month when it in fact sold in August has been put down to human error.
Purplebricks in Lincoln used pictures of various properties in a flyer which it tweeted out, saying: “Another great sales month with over 70 sales agreed stc for Purplebricks Lincoln team in September. Book your free valuation now.”
However, EYE was told that one of the properties pictured actually went on the market in April, with Land Registry records showing it had sold in August.
The Rightmove archive confirms the property in question was added on April 5.
A spokesperson for Purplebricks told us: “We can confirm that the Purplebricks Lincoln team agreed 71 sales in September, making them by far the number one agent in the region for the month.
“The local team created a social media post, which referenced the 71 transactions.
“While all of the properties shown on the flyer were sold within seven days, not all of these were properties sold in September.
“This was a human error and was not intended to mislead as their track record speaks for itself.”
Comments (43)
AN OPEN MESSAGE TO CYBERDUCK46
(This was originally sent last night to the email address you used in registering with EYE. We addressed you by name but have redacted it from this public posting. Since you have ignored the email or did not use a genuine email address we are taking the most unusual step of publishing the message. Certain other users should also take note)
We have noted a number of comments that you have recently posted on EYE and other online media and we conclude from the statements they contain that you are deliberately and repeatedly attempting to discredit our publication and our journalism.
The statements you have made in the examples below go far beyond reasonable comment and are defamatory. You are abusing the trust we put in our users and are making allegations that cannot be substantiated. The comments will be removed from our site.
If you have an issue with our journalism then you may address the matter with me but we will not tolerate your continued public assertions that Property Industry Eye is, among other things, ‘unreliable’ and ‘misleading. The consequences of making defamatory statements can be very serious and we will not hesitate to protect our reputation. You should remove your comments as shown below from the LSE site.
You may continue to post on EYE so long as you do not repeat these allegations or anything similar in respect of our publication.
For the record, whatever you may think, our editorial position in respect of Purplebricks is neutral.
Nick Salmon
Managing Director, Property Industry Eye Ltd
The source of your comment is propertindustryeye.com not PurpleBricks. In future before wasting my time check the actual source and point it out to me. PropertyIndustryEye is unreliable.
This really does put a big questionmark over the general accuracy of reporting on propertyindustryeye.com.
The information you find on here is just summarised and often misleading and occasionally even misrepresented as was the case with the original article above before I posted about the mistake and the article was updated.
http://www.lse.co.uk/
WELL SAID, Mr Salmon!
About time too. cc somebody else who we all know.
Who disliked the MD’s statement I wonder?
One thing’s for certain…
…THEY will know!
#LincolnGate
Hear, hear Mr Salmon
Is this a case of duck quacks don’t echo?
Please could I appeal for Cyberduck’s posts to be reinstated complete with his accusations? In deleting them you have given him a digital martyrdom he doesn’t deserve. You have let him off the hook and saved him and those he was brown beaking from himself/him
Ros Renshaw’s standing, fairness and integrity wasn’t being dented scratched or even scuffed by what Cyberduck was reckoning, so while it was infuriating and frustrating I think most people reading Eye whether pro or anti Messers Bruce Woodford and co saw Cyberduck for what he was; a schmoozing sycophant who has a very limited understanding of the contractual obligations and fiduciary duties of estate agency. He was and will no doubt continue to do harm to Purblebicks so I would like him to be allowed to continue.
Cyberduck steadfastly refused to comment on the Jo Buckley case; the negative equity vendor who was given in my opinion negligent advice by a Local Property Expert who was not really qualified enough to offer even basic advice on value and marketing. Failing to understand the difficulties and complexities of selling shared ownership flats, failing to understand the stresses and demands of negative equity sales meant Jo Buckley did not in my opinion receive the duty of care and skill expected of an expert estate agent.
Jo Buckley has agreed to share her story with Eye and it’s readership, that will be an opportunity for the whole industry to focus on the wrongness of pay to list agency. It is a chance for those agents who are unaware of the case law duties of agency to be made awre and understand estate agents have obligations to their principals beyond whacking a listing on the internet.
I hope that case is still reviewed openly in the way Cyberduck was demanding though I guess now it might have to be Mr Bruce who has to defend the practice of taking money from vendors who are given false hope by ‘agents’ that do not meet the expected level of competency to be regarded as an expert.
Oh, dear – looks like #LincolnGate has put dom-boy off his swing after all…
;o)
and to think, his original retweet of the PB Lincoln message started this whole thing off only 2 days ago ! #awkward
I wonder what Donald Trump & Purplebricks have in common?
A further point on this story (sorry, I’ve got the bit between my teeth now)
The PB lincoln twitter account now appears to have been deleted in totality. This is an (allegedly) independent firm. So, the question has to be asked, was the pulling of the twitter account done by the Lincoln PB rep or was it after a call from PB PLC head office or the offices of Wright Hassall (PB PLCs’ current litigation solicitors of choice)?
Which then begs the supplementary question; what else was in that feed that might have been ‘inconvenient’ if challenged or re-published?
So much for them ‘holding their heads up high’ (a phrase they rolled out on the now deleted account). This speaks volumes. Keep going Chris.
plus 1 for Chris Wood
Here’s another link worth reading
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/did-purplebricks-just-kill-trustpilot-mal-mccallion/?utm_source=Growtion+Small+Estate+Agents&utm_campaign=98d0c1108d-Could+Purplebricks+acquire+Countrywide%3F&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6cca39e398-98d0c1108d-38925583
Actually I’m gonna work for purplebricks, I’ve decided traditional estate agency isn’t what is was in the 1980’s and I want to earn over £100K a year.
Also I like jam with peanut butter sandwiches (although it does stick to the roof of your mouth)
The point is
I am talking complete and utter nonsense….
Yet another pointless worthless article by the chris wood led agenda driven property eye.
Surely there is something more pressing to publish than a mistake on a photo on social media.
Comeon Ros Jane and Freddy this isn’t the chris wood show.
Where is Chris Wood mentioned either in the body of the article or comments other than by you?
That a PLC and its apologists believe a few good men are worthy of so much negative comment and attention by the worlds media speaks volumes of the regard and trust in which that PLC is held.
It appears that investors are also coming to the conclusion that PB shares may be a less than safe bet for their pension funds etc too. http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/prices-and-markets/stocks/summary/company-summary/GB00BYV2MV74GBGBXAMSM.html
I believe that there is a point that you are missing Dom.
Read the picture and the Twitter post again.
The text in the Twitter post says ‘over 70 sales agreed stc in September’ whilst the image refers to properties sold within 7 days.
Whether deliberate or by ‘human error’ a reader of the promo could potentially assume that all 70 sales were sold within 7 days – which of course they were not.
This is without even getting into the fact that at least one of the properties on the image used were not actually sold in September.
#LincolnGate
There is no agenda that I can see. Making an accusation that Property industry Eye is actively campaigning against Purplebrick when it appears they are reporting either valid, factual stories or PR published by the Purplebricks PR machine could backfire quite spectacularly.
At Cyberduck’s request for details of the Jo Buckley case I’ve requested she provides the detail. I am fairly certain you, Cyberduck and Purplebricks will be hoping she doesn’t air that sorry tale on Eye. It won’t embarrass her but it will highlight all that’s wrong with the governance of the industry right now.
If that story is published will you be blaming Eye, me or Cyberduck?
As much as I disagree with the whole Purpleblokes and their approach to the real estate sector, this continual baiting and sniping is getting tedious. Lets just keep our dignity and go after them through local trading standards and the asa where we can show they have mislead people with tweets, Facebook posts and leaflet drops.
You reap what you sow. PB decided straight away that they were going to promote their business through their attempts to ridicule traditional estate agency, so it is only fair that their mis-steps are highlighted to the public by the rest of us.
You’re new here aren’t you?
When it all kicked off on Tw@tter, PurpleLincs then started getting all shouty that their figures were kosher.
They produced Rightmove piecharts showing their 72 listings and 71 sales… suitably fuzzy so you couldn’t read important stuff (like dates), of course!
Interestingly, in terms of listings their 72 was out of a total of 722 (109 branches contributed to the figure); and their 71 ‘sales’ out of 585 (from 89 branches).
Of course, those figures will not take into account cancelled listings, cancelled sales – and other potential ‘anomalies’…
…such as, for instance, any potential “human error” element – as mentioned in the article above.
That little bu99er causes all sorts of 5h!tstorms to erupt, dunnit?
I’m looking forward to the flouncing feathered fella flapping in and reckoning this is another example of Eye being biased against his purple princes
Wonder if we’ll put dom-boy off his swing this morning?
See below!
You can read his latest musings here: http://www.lse.co.uk/ShareChat.asp?ShareTicker=PURP&share=purplebricks
This web site gets a regular mention.
Worth reading this blog
https://blog.pdq-estates.co.uk/2017/04/12/purplebricks-what-is-really-going-on/
Hmm in that blog he quotes
‘market share of the online sector as a whole has shrunk’
Wrong
Hmmm… see you’re back to straw-dust clinging, dom-boy…
In the blog Chris actually states
“…a property market where instruction volumes have fallen so significantly and the market share of the online sector as a whole has shrunk from a claimed (but unverified) 6% in mid 2016 to a verified 4% in March 2017.”
According to independent sources the TwentyCi states
“The shift towards using online-only estate agents is continuing resulting in a 19% increase in market share year-on-year. However, they still represent 5.4% of the market overall.”
Now I ain’t maybe as clever as you are at interpreting wooly numbers chucked at the investor market – but when I went to school and flunked my Maths ‘O’-Level, five point four was LESS THAN six.
It looked like this back then:
5.4 < 6
Not sure how you young guns would display it – but I reckon you will get the idea.
If not – look it up in a book*.
* clumsy old thing with loads of paper pages stuck in it – superseded by that Candle thing. Please note that books stand up far better to being dropped – even in water.
Further proof that the old methods are still the best.
According to Zoopla, in the last 30 days PB have added 4539 properties, of this 4407 are showing as available, meaning that they have only sold 132 in the first 30 days of marketing which is awful
According to Zoopla, Searching in the area “Lincolnshire” and including the term “Purplebricks” in the last 30 days this estate agent has added 72 properties, of which 71 remain For Sale, so just the ONE property added in the last 30 days is Sold STC.
These are the facts, nothing more, nothing less.
Another “oops we did it again, it was an honest mistake guv” retort from the call centre agent.