Readers with festive memories will recall the spoof property which EYE featured just before Christmas.
It lit up our lives!
Listed on both Rightmove and Zoopla, this was (apparently) a pretty little place, enjoying a peaceful and secluded location for 11 months of the year, with open fireplaces for training purposes and reindeer stabling.
Who could resist? Apart from the fact, it didn’t begin to look real.
Christmas Cottage managed to get on to the portals despite having no address, no EPC, no sales particulars and no floor plans – but a lot of snow.
The agent simply sent it in with its own real postcode address, thus bypassing the portals’ systems.
Apparently the listing was not long for this world on Rightmove which had it swiftly removed, whereas it stayed up until 12th night on Zoopla before being withdrawn by the agent, Andrew Milsom, in Marlow, Buckinghamshire.
And that was that, Milsom thought.
Until a few days ago, when he received a touting letter from Connells which had somehow managed to trace the entirely fictitious Christmas Cottage not to Lapland but to Milsom’s own high street address.
The touting letter asks the home owner whether the property received the viewing levels expected, and whether it was marketed as hoped.
If not, Connells will be only too happy to arrange a meeting.
Now do you believe in Father Christmas?
Comments (26)
This has got Zoopla written all over it.
This stinks. Quite clearly there must be an association to the web portal and the “canvasser”, unless of course EVERY address in the street was targeted by Connells which I doubt (IMHO) seriously. Ros, would you be so kind as to pass on my mobile number to this business owner? It would be interesting to know whether his neighbours in the same postal code received this letter also. If not, and with the “pin drop” quite clearly only targeting the “centre” of a post code and not external photograph to tie into a physical address, one can only assume that an agents data has been compromised and passed to a third party by either the web portal or their software provider. Could you connect us please Ros. This is most disconcerting.
Follow up letter 2 already on its way.
Blimey I can’t believe what I am hearing, are only now some you you realising that RM & Z cross sell you data to your competitors. This is a classic example of how data being passed on is exposed and many of us have been telling you this for years!
Does RM & Z pass on data to you …… answer on a postage stamp. No wonder “you know who” is preferred by many agents, as they don’t do it. Protect your business or roll over and let them stab you in the back, with as it happens many other knives, and your paying them!
Touting letters generally get a frosty reception at the best of times but to send one to an old man during a very emotional time is snow joke. There is a serious date protection issue here not to mention the elf and safety ramifications. This sort of thing is the polar opposite of what the public expects from good agents and i expect Connells are firmly on the naughty list, making their presnts known in this manner must have made the vendor feel extremely claustrophobic.
I really should get back to work now.
My concern/question would be, can they substantiate the claim that their High Wycombe branch had ‘a record number of sales’.
On a serious note…what I find of particular concern is that the property address was not taken from ‘for sale’ board analysis, but clearly one of the portals is allowing their clients/competitors to mail letters to each others listings.
I do not think I would be happy sending my data to the portals to then have the property details given to one of my competitors to send this type of mail.
Gari Holden, oooh, Gari Holden, It’s sounds like a song!
So Connells send out letters on behalf of their branch manager? Did Gari know they have just publicly embarrassed him(her?)
Working for large corporate types is all well and good if they treat their staff with respect and don’t send out silly letters in their name.
Perhaps Xmas will come early for Geri with a new job, with a normal independent agent or maybe he likes the corporate way?
The “Connells Clause” that staff must sign up to.
That is a little too automated to be an innocent mistake, it is indicative of 3rd party data sharing.
Andrew Milsom would do well to investigate the 3rd party data sharing clauses of his service suppliers and he could also ask Connells for an ICO subject access request to find out whether data has been sold on to Connells (and by whom) or if one of the Connells admin staff are so thick they didn’t realise that was a Christmas card picture and not an actual photograph.
It might seem innocent enough but it very possibly the loose thread that unravels a complicated Fairisle sweater of BIG DATA.
Dear (insert favoured deity) please let there be follow up letters offering to switch utility suppliers, install central heating, provide âne noir mortgage quotes or a part X on nice mock neo classical new build town house (with feature quoins and a plastic portico)
How very interesting Robert. I went on an RM webinar for prospecting. It appears to me that they are prepared to now sell other agents client info to include listing dates and property address numbers for prospecting purposes. When I suggested that this may have data protection issues if the agent had omitted the number from their adverts my link to the webinar Q&A went down very quickly. Very odd that RM’s ‘free’ real time data feed has to have the full sellers address to include the number! Time to wake up to what is happening ladies and gentlemen. RM never, ever, give something away for ‘free’!
All dead file comparable data belongs to the listing agent and the listing agent only. All income derived from that data is due the the listing agent, all income opportunities derived from the data belong to the listing agent. All SEO benefit of data should work in the interest of the listing agent not against them.
Not one of you leaves the front door of your office open and the key to the dead filing cabinets in the lock, why take a cavalier attitude to a digital facsimile of the data just because it has been temporarily on-line?
Is there a withdrawal Claus in the contract I wonder?
… and I wonder if Santa – nder would sort the mortgage!
Or perhaps a sanity clause…?
This is brilliant what an utter load of nonsense the amount of vendors that complain about the volume of stuff they have to bin and now it’s the fictional vendors as well! Good entertainment thanks Connells!
I hope Milsom makes a formal request to Connells to find out exactly how they got hold of his address. I think we would all like to know.
A subject access request to Connells will tell Andrew Milsom where Connells got the data from. From there SAR all the way back to the source. My money is on it being Andrew Milsom having not read service agreements and being ultimately culpable for a breach of DPR (the service suppliers cleverly have warrant clauses that let them off the hook)
I just SAR’d an offer on a new build box from Taylor Wimpey to an email address only ever given to 8 people and not authorised for sharing. Most of you will be surprised who is sharing what with who.
“I am pleased to say that 2015 went really well for our High Wycombe branch, with a record low of free valuations and even less listings. We now find ourselves victims of our Area Managers wrath , with a shortage of stock, we simply won’t hit our targets this Quarter, thus us not meeting our needs to hit our bonuses and commissions, or the waiting anticipation of our Area Manager.
I have noticed your property has been on for a while now and wondered if you wanted us to come round so we can sign you up for 26 sole agency agreement that would be tougher to get out of than a Russian Gulag Prison
… etc etc
Absolutely brilliant. I get sick to death of the relentless generic letters sent to our clients from the corporate organisations. I could build a paper mountain. This letter demonstrates how it is a computerised, automatic letter, generated from a system that trawls the portals for data. No human interaction. Just a machine. Needless to say we find recommendation works best which is why we have market share in our area 🙂
You can post on other topics and not just Christmas ones, Noel.
Ahem…sorry to burst your bubble Noel, but it has to be said that automated prospecting processes WORK because they are generally more efficient than humans – with the odd exception as above. Most agents receive referral business via people who know them – but what about the vast majority who do not yet know them? How do you attract those? All I know is that agents that proactively prospect tend to do very well out of it and those who do not often seem to take pride in cutting off their nose to spite their face in the name of “ungentlemanly behaviour”! Forgive me but I have to say “Get over it!”
This is what you get by listing on Zoopla… your client addresses passed onto the competition.
Quality Mr Watkin.
Tell your vendors that once they come on the market they will probably get loads of canvassing letters. These canvassing letters are proof of your extensive marketing and sales skills because you are making sure everyone who could possibly know about their house is being made aware of it.
Unfortunately there are a few cynical estate agents out there who try to persuade the more gullible homeowners that they are better. But we always ignore them.