The Competition & Markets Authority has launched a call for information into online review sites – an area of potentially great interest to agents.
It says that such sites are playing a growing role in helping consumers make decision, but that reviews and endorsements are also important to businesses.
The CMA said it is important that consumers can trust what they are reading, and that reviews should be genuine, not mislead consumers or distort their decision making.
The CMA said it is “aware of a number of potential concerns about the trustworthiness or impartiality of some of the information in reviews and endorsements”.
Its fact-finding exercise will look at a range of online review sites that specialise in presenting customers’ reviews and comments.
It will also look at reviews and comments on businesses’ own websites, and ‘blogging’ sites that include endorsements or reviews.
The CMA’s initiative does not take in TV, radio or print advertising, and will purely look at online sites. It will also not include review sites that use independent verifiable product testing methods, or price comparison sites unless they have webpages with customer reviews.
The CMA will be particularly, but not exclusively, looking at three areas – home repairs; hotels and holidays; beauty products.
However, the CMA emphasises that its call for information “is not limited to these three areas and we are interested in receiving information about other products, services and traders too”.
It is a controversial area for many agents, but one of growing importance in the industry.
Just days ago, market leader allAgents sent out its latest flyer, with the wording reproduced here: “Ratings & Customer review are arguably now the most powerful and influential decision making tool for consumers.
“Just about type of industry you can think of now encourages reviews and ratings to be posted as a means of independently ‘blowing their own trumpet’.
“It’s hard enough asking customers to post a review on one site, let alone multiple ones, so it’s important that you use the correct platform.
“With allagents now recognised as the industries very own ‘trip advisor’, we ARE that platform for estate agents & letting agents.
“Unlike the 2 large portals (who are predominantly for prospective (tenants & buyers), our site is utilised by prospective vendors & landlords at key decision making time.”
The CMA’s move follows various enforcement actions taken by other countries against fake reviews, misleading review site practice and hidden advertisements over the past five years.
Its call for action may lead to a market study, enforcement action or legislative change.
Responses must be made by 5pm on March 25, with a report due to be published in the summer.
The consultation is here
Comments (18)
As it happens I have re-discovered this thread while beta testing my own bit of kit and with this thread also too now in the archive think I am safe to post.
Agents already have a very powerful review tool; their sold boards and if an agent is smart their satisfied customers. To provide anything more either serves to reinforce or confuse. The problem with review sites is that although everyone wants to trust them poor experience and review manipulation leaves them mis-trusted. I spent a few £ on a 5* review 5 * holiday only to find a hybrid timeshare resort with quite literally a swimming pool terrace full of owners bigging the place up simply to sell on their miserable, in perpetuity holiday fortnights.
You say you are in Beta Mal, what UX feedback did you get?
Mr RatnerAgent
“…no matter how hard it is, any review site worth its salt needs to be seen to be completely unbiased.”
Unfortunately, there is currently NO review site “worth its salt”.
“We set up… to stand for trust and transparency…”
Who can “trust” a website that states “Displaying top 25 highest rated branchess” (yes – complete with spelling error…) and then lists what appear to be 25 RANDOM ratings – 1 per branch in most cases? How can an Agent with ONLY ONE RATING possibly be one of the “highest rated”?
How many actual reviews have you had?
Where are they all?
You state that you are “…the UK’s most trustworthy dedicated estate and letting agent review site.” Erm… that is according to YOU, it seems – no-one else. Hardly unbiased – therefore the stated argument above sunk without trace.
“…we check all our reviews to avoid fakes…
…any site taking this seriously has to have a zero-tolerance approach to fake reviews, no matter from whom they emanate. We do.”
How many “fakes” have you so far found and deleted? What have you done about those that tried to fiddle the system?
I’m looking forward to the response…
I so want to post on this thread but to do so would appear like opportunist commercial impetigo! There is a strong correlation with the posts over the weekend so much so people will start to think Ros Renshaw is my moll, lining up stories like a duck shoot at the fair.
It seems, Robert, that either a) I don’t warrant a response or b) the response is proving to present a challenge.
‘Eamonn’ was fortunate to be responded to – and considering his post opened with “jog on Mal” I would have thought that mine would have been seen as less confrontational – at least until you got into the second sentence, that is…
Hi PeeBee, genuine thanks for the feedback. Let’s keep it above name-calling though, eh?!
We already have review sites in our industry. Across the UK, US and Canada a survey in the middle of last year (http://searchengineland.com/88-consumers-trust-online-reviews-much-personal-recommendations-195803) showed 88% of people use them. Peter Knight’s Property Academy in December 2014 (http://propertyacademy.co.uk/home-moving-trends-survey) reported 42% of UK sellers and landlords spend at least a month researching agents on the internet before even picking up the phone. Your future customers are +already using+ these sites. And you may be able to try and argue that this one has this attribute and that one another, but the tens of thousands of people that genuinely want to know what your business is like – just as they want to know whether a toaster cord is too short or a holiday is a million miles from the beach – are not even asking your opinion before they form their own.
So either we build one that is trusted, that does its absolute best to check and double-check each review before it goes live, or we let the status quo reign and cross our fingers that somehow those sites that appear less than transparent clean up their act.
We’re building a site that will have the interests of fairness, honesty and trust at its heart. That may not be cool and it may be ripe to have the mick taken on comments threads like this, but we’re deadly serious because the alternative is an array of sites that may put commercials above honesty – and they will be the ones that your future customers will end up finding and judging you on regardless. Without you even knowing.
Let’s continue this conversation separately, I’m genuinely interested in your views. Email me at mal@rateragent.co.uk – I can’t continue to monitor all threads but truly want to engage about all of this. As I say, it may not be cool – but it’s really, really important. The ‘review culture’ is not going away, it’s growing in all areas of our lives. raterAgent has been created to help.
PS – We launched in ‘beta’ 6 weeks ago for testing and bug-fixing. As I’m certain you know, every new business on the planet has started with zero customers and grown from there. We are doing that too!
Thank you for what is a carefully measured response.
Name-calling? If you are referring to my Freudian slippette – well, the gentleman in question was and still is an EXTREMELY successful businessman (albeit he’s had his ‘moments’ – he even has them named after him!) so maybe you should instead aspire to be in a few years where he is now.
RIGHT – here we go – not that I’m taking this very far – you haven’t addresses a single point I’ve raised so I’m not wasting much time on this… YET.
You state “We already have review sites in our industry. Across the UK, US and Canada a survey in the middle of last year… showed 88% of people use them.”
I strongly suggest you look again at your evidentiary material. It CLEARLY states ” In May-June, we sent a questionnaire to our local consumer panel and received 2,104 completed survey responses. All respondents are from the USA (90%) and Canada (10%).” So, Sir, out of a total population of 354.44 MILLION, just over 2000 of them – or 0.00059% to be precise – and ALL 2104 of them from ANOTHER CONTINENT constitutes your raison d’ etre. Sound foundations, then…
I’m not even going to start on the rest – and you really don’t want me to.
“Let’s continue this conversation separately, I’m genuinely interested in your views.”
No – I’m reviewing you HERE. There’s no taking me into the back office for a quiet chat away from other customers – why should YOU expect to be granted that luxury when what you and your competitors are peddling does exactly the opposite.
Here’s a good place and I ain’t moving.
Now – care to answer any of my questions which are still bubbling away on the hob since Monday?
I would urge any agent reading this to check your company profile as I’m sure it will have wrong information (opening times etc)…..When you phone to ask how to change them , a rude and arrogant man will explain that you need to pay him if you want any advice about how to change these details……before putting the phone down on you, in my opinion based on personal experience.
I’m referring to all agents site
I would also advise any agent lucky enough not to be on it do not put yourself forward.
As with all review sites they only draw negative feedback, the only positive feedback is from agents posting themselves.
Time was if you so much as mentioned the word “allagents” you’d probably have in excess of 100 comments pretty quickly. They were going to be a “game-changer” as well. Most people can’t be bothered any more. Now why could that be?
That’s great. But actually trying to use the AllAgents site is terrible and no one gets back to you if you lodge a query or complaint. I’ve been trying to change the map view of where my agency is, but no one gets back to you. It’s been in the wrong place since May last year!
I think if AllAgents made it easier for agents to use and change information about their agency, it would be great. But with the usability being so horrendous, I don’t think many agents are that bothered about it, other than the online agents.
Search Allagents by area and type in “Leicester”. There are 96 agents listed.
Only 47 have any reviews at all. Of those 47, 43 have between one and ten reviews. 3 have between eleven and twenty reviews.
One has 180 reviews and five stars.
Just saying . . . .
“One has 180 reviews and five stars.
Just saying . . . .”
Not as of tonight they haven’t, SteveFromLeicester… ;o)
This is an important step. People are using and trusting review sites for everything now and, no matter how hard it is, any review site worth its salt needs to be seen to be completely unbiased. We set up raterAgent (www.rateragent.co.uk) to stand for trust and transparency – we check all our reviews to avoid fakes and you can do the core things free of charge on site, including invite, read and respond to reviews. It would be fascinating to see what happens to the headline numbers of reviews on other sites were unchecked ones forced to be removed.
It doesn’t just need to be “seen” to be unbiased it needs to ACTUALLY be unbiased! The moment a site charges for anything, it stops being that. The reason Allagents lost its credibility is that it was widely perceived you could buy advantage.
That’s why any site taking this seriously has to have a zero-tolerance approach to fake reviews, no matter from whom they emanate. We do. If you think of the newspaper industry, the separation of commercial and editorial, that’s worked for hundreds of years – even the recent Telegraph/HSBC situation is the exception that proves the rule. Adverts can go in – paid for – but they cannot influence editorial policy. So an agent can pay for an upgrade on raterAgent but that gives very clear benefits – brand visibility, links to their site and social media, window stickers, leaflets, etc – but will never compromise the fact that their reviews are what they stand or fall on. And we check them for authenticity like no other site.
jog on Mal.
Estate agents don’t need a 3rd party review site. But feel free to waste your breathe telling them they do.
And it can be easily manipulated so please please please don’t preach that It cant. We are not fools
It’s not agents that ‘need’ it, Eamonn, it’s consumers. They’re already voting with their feet and going and seeking information about you. So let’s create something that does the best job it can of stopping manipulation – that’s not foolhardy, it’s the best answer to the issue that’s already out there.