A new ratings website which plans to go to war with allAgents is unveiled today.
Called raterAgent, it promises independence, transparency and trust, and has ambitions to become the largest and best known agency review site in the UK.
It launches – in beta form – a week today on January 15.
CEO Mal McCallion said: “We’re building an independent review website that will let every agent prove their quality of service through the verified reviews of their customers.”
McCallion helped launch PrimeLocation in 2000 and was also involved in the launch of Zoopla’s estate agency proposition in 2009.
He said of his latest venture: “We are aiming to establish raterAgent as the most trustworthy and well-used agent rating website for the public.
“Agents will not be able to game the system by giving their competitors bad ratings and reviews, or by giving themselves good ones.
“Algorithms on the site will help prevent this, and every single written review will be read and verified before it goes live.
“It will be impossible, for example, for agents suddenly to go up the rankings by 1,000 places inside a week. There will be no niggling doubts about the fundamental honesty of the site.”
The site will offer both star ratings – where agents’ customers simply click the number of stars they wish to award – and reviews written by consumers.
The star ratings will carry a lesser weight than the reviews. Written reviews – where the agent can verify via a code that the client is genuine – will count for more in establishing rankings.
Each review will be read by one of a team of moderators before going up on the site within 48 hours.
raterAgent will be completely free but agents will be able to upgrade at a cost of £30 per month per branch.
An upgrade to ‘official’ raterAgent status will include the right of reply before a review goes live. The agent would have three days on top of the initial 48 hours to engage with the client.
“The outcome might even be that the client decided to withdraw an unfavourable review,” said McCallion.
The upgrade also includes instant access to valuation requests made on the site; a marketing package; branded email and website links to their pages, all designed to encourage customers to submit ratings and reviews; and an enhanced ability to manage individual branch pages.
Another key area of raterAgent will allow agency proprietors to register individual staff, who can also be rated by the public.
These individual ratings will not be visible on the site, but will be accessible to agency bosses, who will be able to see genuine customer feedback on their staff. Using this feature will cost bosses £10 per member of staff per month.
McCallion said that next week’s soft launch will be accompanied by a targeted publicity drive to consumers, with reviews coming in from across the country.
He went on: “We will run the site in beta mode for two months. We want as much feedback as possible from agents, including suggestions and constructive criticisms, so we can make any changes before our big launch in March.”
He added: “An important ambition of ours is to promote excellence. Too often, people talk only about the price an agency charges, but we hope that our site will demonstrate that if you pay a bit more for excellent service, you will actually end up making more money from your property.
“We hope to create a space on the web which is all about agents being able to prove the quality of their service.”
You can see a video about the new service at:
Any agent with queries, or who finds that they do not have a page on the site, or who is setting up in business and wants to be included, can email agency@rateragent.co.uk
Comments (43)
this site was only registered last week (5/1/15) and owned by a Joshua Rayner??? http://whois.domaintools.com/rateragent.co.uk
Is that not the guy that gives PIE their advertising testimonials???
Where are you PeBee, seems this one is just up your street? 2015 seems to be getting off to a great start, here we are with what I can only consider to be the most hypocritical web site I have come across for a long time. You want to rate good from bad agents, yet yourself you cannot possibly give guarantees it will be correct, you cannot possibly monitor the posts that you expect to receive which to all intense and purposes is to expose that are good, indifferent or bad with adverse consequences for a business if wrong. Are you not yourself guilty of your own ethos, a zero rating out of 5 for customer confidence?
Hi, woodentop – and rather belated Happy New Whassit to you! It's not often I'm called for to post on matters these days so I'll gladly stick in my two penn'orth for what it's worth. Looking back, I've had quite a bit to say about that 'Allagents' malarkey. NONE of it has been positive or kind to them. And I stand behind EVERY WORD. So – will this new offering make me change my perception? The only answer available is "most probably no".
A quick look at what's out there about them already makes it easy for me to say that. On their Tw@tter and Facebook pages – the company claim to be "…the UK's most trustworthy, dedicated estate agent review website." THAT ONE SENTENCE alone is enough to sink it for me before it even launches.
The claim goes on "Discover the best local estate agents to you with raterAgent." Interesting one, this – as in a tweet from May 2013, Mr McCallion announced "Huge project underway to identify BEST estate agent branch in each town/village/city in UK. Care to nominate & save us a job?!" THAT was when he had a spell at Cream Club – but perhaps he won't thank me for bringing that short period of his life up… Shows, however, that the search for "The Best" isn't one that suddenly 'happens'. And more's to the point – what is "The Best" for one person certainly isn't for the next. The problem is that AA have effectively bu99ered Mr McCallion's chances of serving up an offering that Agents will greet with anything other than mistrust.
Eric Walker might know something that we all don't – and I find it strange that I'm not nodding in agreement with his posts for once – but for me these sites simply allow the wrong Agents ways to buy themselves credibility.
Oh – and sorry, Mr McCallion – but the name is a poor choice. It'll be interesting to see what the site looks like.
I DO, however, predict a humorous twist to this. I'll bet you now that one of the leading nay-sayers will be a certain Mr Shinerock… you know – he who crows day and night the virtues of AA!
Not another review website! I can see this going the same way as agents mutual with a 'one review site' policy!
Allagents is the industries 'rightmove' and we simply don't have the time to worry about monitoring another 'zoopla' let alone asking clients to post on multiple ones!
"Allagents is the industries 'rightmove'…" Oh – I REALLY don't think so!
Oh dear another good idea on paper that is fraught with abuse. Why or why do people who thinks these ideas up, not stop and think that they think is good might have a double edged sword. Impossible to police and there is no-one on this planet who can argue that. Impossible to stop agents reviewing themselves …. period. This is nothing more than a person to make money, with that same mentality of his background, "agents will be afraid to be left out and cough up" but only if the market moves to only those that are reviewed. Reviews are only as good as the honesty of the input and I have seen so many reviews that are contradictory to each other. What Mr McCallion needs to get into his head is LIABLE which is so much easier to achieve since the change in law over web sites. His idea is fraught with malpractice. I have one local agent is still advertising best NAEA agent form ….. 20 years back, another who has been in business since pre 1900 but under new ownership since 2000 and the best of all is the agent who won an award voted by his own customers for the best agent in the area … he was the only entrant!!! Another agent has the most horrendous google review I have ever seen but I'm sure they did make someone happy once! STAY AWAY it will not stop bad agents, more likely to give credence to them.
A great post, sums it up perfectly! I especially like "agents will be afraid to be left out and cough up" That's lets face it is what good old Mal wants. I wonder if there is an opt out option, guessing not!
It's free for anyone to leave reviews., for you to see them and respond to them. The £30 provides additional services which cost us to deliver – use of logos, notification of reviews about you, etc – but raterAgent is there to enable anyone to leave a (genuine) review for free and for you to see it and respond to it free.
Do email any questions in – thanks again for taking the time to comment.
20000 agency offices …. how are you going to review for example one review per office (and if your site is going as good as you hope, we are talking ten fold by ten fold!!!), how are you going to remove liable and blatant lies, how will you know?
Some serious competition for all-agents is extremely welcome, but £30 per month?
Thanks for all of the comments, genuinely.
Quick piece of transparency – this is me: uk.linkedin.com/in/malmccallion/.
I've been in the industry for 15 years now and have a real passion for quality estate agency. I have never thought that this quality has been visible enough to get past the negative media and easy stereotypes. The vast, vast majority of agents that I have met over the years are great, really great, but it’s so hard for them to be able to shout about that quality, without the cynicism kicking in that there must be something false in it.
raterAgent is going to break that. We’re going to allow quality agents to surface the real, genuine comments of their customers and we’re going to do it honestly, transparently and with respect.
If you try and ‘game’ raterAgent, we’ll discover it – it’s a rare site that promises to read all reviews and try to make sure that they’re genuine, but we give that promise – and once we’ve discovered it, we’ll make it clear that we have. We’ll check the IP addresses of the reviews, we know the science behind words and phrases that indicate fakes and, over-riding all of that, you have to have an email address to leave a written review and we’ll have a conversation with you if we think that your review’s false.
It is such a big area and we’ve done such a lot of work to ensure that you’ve got nothing to worry about if your service is great. Even if there’s a blip, addressing it quickly turns a complaint into a raving fan, it’s been proven time and again. We encourage and enable you to do just that.
raterAgent is here to champion great estate agency. Thanks again for your comments , I can’t address them all in this space but if you’ve any specific questions then please do email me at mal@rateragent.co.uk. Cheers, Mal
How about instead of charging an agent £30 per month to defend themselves, you charge the public £5 to post a review? if you are about promoting agents and think they do a great job this would show it. Only really impressed or really unsatisfied clients will use it and deter fake reviews. But it wont make an income will it and that's whats its all about really!
@ Mal. In my opinion your site relies on us professional agents using our valuable time (and money) to monitor what is being said about us. In older days this was called a protection racket , and in my opinion,this is exactly what your company is. The bad, dishonest and shoddy brigade don't give a hoot about a bad review on your site, leaving us pro agents with yet another thing to use our valuable time to monitor. All the negative reviews we have received on other review sites have been from disgruntled applicants who think we've tucked them up because they haven't had their ridiculously low, or ill financed offers acepted by our clients. We have been around for over 100years and trade on our professional name and service. We DONT need referees like yourself trying to make a living out of those that want to trade insults at us through a third party in the name of transparency and progress.I think, and hope your site will fail big time.
Thank You Cards, Letters of Thanks, Flowers, Wine, Biscuits and Chocolates the staff get on a regular basis PLUS the knowledge you have so many valuations booked in with the comment "You've just sold my friends house" that's all…… much better than a review site. Its actually where your companies social media coverage of your ACTUAL letters (photographed) and cards and gifts work best! Not you retyping it. My view anyway.
It's the right view Ric. As for Eric's comment of TripAdvisor and critical mass, I for one eat out at least once a week with Mrs Smile Please. I think I have only ever posted 1 comment on the site and that was because it was so poor. It will never meet critical mass as people at best move every 5 years they do not think of posting good reviews only bad ones which usually amount to "it's so unfair, they went with another buyer" (that's if you exclude the other agents comment's ) so yes best recommendations social media and newspapers (published testimonial) rightmove banners with testimonials and alike.
Do tenants only move every 5 years? If you don't like it, don't use it, but have a look at it first.
Lettings may differ (I do not offer lettings) but average person in the uk moves 8 times and average age is 80 so more like every 10 years. You are right with your comment of "Don't like it, Don't use it" but as with Allagents I do not expect you can opt out – Your companies reputation can be attacked by competitors and applicants, vendors (even teanants and landlords) who do not understand the property market. Look at Allagents littered with comments such as "Went with another buyer disgraceful" and then give a 1 star rating – Why should that go against an agent?
Sorry Eric what was your point about Tenants? Tenants have virtually no use for a site that rates Agents, vendors and landlords will use such sites when employing an agent but purchasers and tenants- nah! If you want to support a mate that's fine but don't dress it up with your usual high and mightiness.
You wouldnt be saying that if your review page was blemished with disgruntled tenants, having their ill informed say based on their own needy, neurotic and ignorant outlook.
And how exactly is this site going to verify the information it is willing to put in the public domain?? Nonsense. Typically a bitter ex tenants loses much of their deposit for damage. rent arrears etc – They then have a free rant on the portal to say their money was unjustly stolen by the incompetent rouge agent. How is this information going to be verified??? Tosh, just like Google reviews which is a million times bigger and still doesn't concern me because everybody knows its full of bitter ex tenants, employees & other agents which too much free time on their hands because their business is flat on its backside :-)) Happy New Year.
I have every faith in Mal's vision. I have heard the concept first hand and fully support it. I have no issue with All Agents other than their refusal to change office details where they have relocated or edit incorrect office details unless you subscribe. Mal's concept is excellent, but will need traction and support of the industry as critical mass it key. There is little doubt some agents abuse AA as some appear to have more positive reviews than they do customers. Anything which filters this and adds credibility is most welcome. Good agents will promote the site and draw customers towards it. To those who say consumers don't search out review sites, I say 'Tripadviser'. It works because it has critical mass. Good luck to Mal and rateragent.
I'm sorry Eric but you are way off the mark with this, in my view…….You say "Good agents will promote the site and draw customers towards it."..and monitor it also…….and WHEN exactly do you suggest we get time to do this?…….You see you are totally missing the point…..This is yet another site that will have to be monitored by agents, taking up time they SHOULD be using on providing service to selling vendors. If another 10 "protection racket" sites emerge we all will end up with more complaints on those sites from our customers because we are too busy dealing with those sites to look after the customers properly……And please "Faith in Mal's vision"…RIDICULOUS, in my view.
It will be good to see if Mr McCallion engages with the audience on this forum, after all there is a gap in the market for a decent review site, one that doesn't bend agents over a barrel and expect money in return for putting right fake reviews.
There is an awful lot wrong with allagents and the way they go about their business, if Mr McCallion thinks he can address that, then good luck to him. Still wouldn't pay £30 for it though.
I am sorry to harp on this post, and believe me when I say I am not a negative person, I actually look for the best. But why are people trying to change an industry that works the majority of the time? All these "services" "add-ons" "additional services" "revolutionary ideas" At the heart of it basic estate agency is being honest, knowing your trade, working hard, creating relationships, doing what you promise to do and being proactive not reactive. Too many of these new ideas look to simplify the process and take away the basics of agency. The only thing I would invest in / promote would be a body that promotes high street agency. This is what is needed a body that as agents we subscribe to that promotes us and justifies our fees and fights our corner. Advertises the benefits of being a member, promotes standards and has powers to enforce them. That is the only thing as far as I am concerned we need as an industry.
Well said and lets not forget that the vast majority of agents do fantastic work in their local community and run fantastic businesses with a genuine care for the clients as well as being constantly innovative. You're never going to keep everyone happy but it is too easy for people to complain these days.
There is another website out there but can't remember what it's called now – I thought it was called Rate My Agent but that throws an error on the domain name. I quite liked that site but was quite hard to work out to use it.
All Agents in my view are not up to standard for aesthetics and when one of my clients posted a glowing review but selected 1 star they refused to change it, despite the client askign them to, they asked me to upgrade and I could thenm do it myself – In addition to this it is hard to work out how as an agent to login and update your profile
If Rate R Agent deliver an easy to use site for both the end user and the agent then I think they may take on All Agents with a lot of credibility – Especially if their site is good looking!
The whole issue of review sites is credibility – I've interviewed staff who were made to post negative reviews of competitors and incentivised to get family members to post fictional positive reviews on AllAgents. I've even recently heard of one agent who offers to pay clients to post positive Google + reviews – its a sorry state of affairs when it comes to that desperation. If someone is pleased with the service, they don't need remunerating for that.
The testament to this site will be the integrity and moderators that it outlines as well as the ability to reply to genuine complaints as this will prevent the made up ones. I very much hope it proves to be a positive success for the industry as a whole.
"family members to post fictional positive reviews on AllAgents"…..Sometimes it is the only way that some agents can redress the balance. If, say you were a 1 office agent and someone got the hump because another applicant bid more than them and got a house they wanted, and so posted a "1 star drubbing about being dis honest" the only thing you can do is get people you know to post positives…therein starts the rot. As someone said earlier most people post to complain…..not to rave.
I totally agree, however two wrongs don't make a right. Your post demonstrates what an utter waste of time AllAgents is because its not a trustworthy site and can't be reliably used for a vendor to make an informed decision. Look at the Home Moving Trends Survey produced by Property Academy which showed only 2% of those surveyed chose an agent based on an Online Review site. Ultimately the key for any good review site is the right of reply for the agent and how they conduct that reply very often can turn a negative into a positive, if the complainer is transparent with their name and proven to be a factual customer then this could wipe out the fictional ones. I think we need to give this new site the benefit of the doubt and hopefully they've considered the apathy of AllAgents in producing an alternative offering. Agents need to stop raving about their AllAgents scores as ultimately the public aren't stupid and can tell that in many cases the comments are competitors mischief making.
What a total nonesense this site promises to be be. In the famous words of Jim from the royal family "Transparency my axsx"
Another mal mcallon attack to extract money from agents purses with a limp product that promise much, over prices and delivers nothing.
Don't forget the video product nonsense
Finally! Another company that is all about Transparency and giving us another option outside of them cowboys that run allagents.co.uk. I'm looking forward to getting involved with rateragent.co.uk. Sounds great!
This comment is just what I mean! – Obviously has a connection with this new site, running down Allagents and promoting rateragent while dropping in a link to their website and using overly non-aggressive yet sales speak from a poster that I have not seen before. Thank you for proving me right by 8.30am!
Yep smile, unbelievable….isn't it…… Come on next chapter, lets have some more of your balanced viewpoints on the industry……What region is your agency in?, What portals do you advertise on?, How long have you been reading the eye?……
Chuckle! itz gr8 how they have posted in the style of a 16 year old school leaver, innit?
If you all want to see how Estate Agency should be done – Check us out at http://www.nextchapterhomes.com. We have no affiliation at all with rateragent. There, I've left out .co.uk. I'm sure that makes you happier. Get a grip. Anyway, we support innovators and forward thinkers which you're clearly not. Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if you're a supporter of the backward portal onthemarket.co.uk, shouting about the duopoly of the 2 portals, only to then ditch Zoopla! The less expensive of the 2. The problem with this industry is the lack of transparency & forward thinkers. I'm looking forward to http://www.rateragent.co.uk
You didn't read the terms did you? when you signed up to PIE you agreed not to post self promoting links. Innovators and forward thinkers? how is a late in the day copy of something that has been about 6 or 7 years forward thinking or innovative?
"If you all want to see how Estate Agency should be done – Check us out…" So… let me get this straight. Firstly, you direct us to a website with only about 15% of its functionality operational. Secondly, as a company you clearly aim to invoice out LESS than £81k per annum… yet you claim to be "changing Estate Agency" – NOT the kind of "change" that every one of your local competitors will want to join in, I would suspect. Thirdly, you state "We're Brentwood's AWARD WINNING Estate Agent" – yet there seem to be no further references to this claim on the 15% functional part of your website. Exactly WHICH "award" are you referring to your ESTATE AGENCY having "won"? Rather than go on forever, I'll simply ask you to respond to those three easy ones first. I REALLY look forward to your response, as I'm sure others will…
Brentwood- Essex- that explains everything – Innit. Nice tan and teeth..Yeah?
Time will tell whether or not rateragent becomes credible but the right to reply and engage they plan to include has to be a good thing. Allagents appears to be an ideal medium for abuse by agents and for disgruntled and very often ignorant customers to vent their spleens.
It wont be credible trust me. None of them are. Checkatrade – Has a small handful of posts from happy clients when they are taken on (as you need to offer 3 positive reviews to be accepted) and then the public cant post negative reviews as the tradesman can veto them. Tripadviser – Just stuff to the rim of other owners putting down opposition and then endorsing their own premises. Allagents – well we all know what a joke that site is! As for the right to reply on rateragent it will cost you 30 quid per month, if its such a good idea and "transparent" for the public why is it not free? – ahhhh yes money. Basically what this site wants to do is incite hatred for agents and then charge them to limit the negative reviews.
Smile please, that's really not the case. You have a look at most credible review sites and overwhelmingly positive reviews outweigh the negatives.
It's pretty much irrelevant what our views are anyway as the public today love review sites so you can either be Canute like or engage and use them to your best advantage.
Whaley I think social media is a true review site. Allagents and this I am sure will be full of positive reviews but I know a vast majority of them are made up by the agents themselves, you can tell by the similar style they are written. Dates they are posted. I also know for a fact that at least 1 corporate agency instructed it's staff to post positive reviews. Industry review sites are a fantastic concept but reality is they are all coroupt.
£30 per month …… basically an insurance to protect yourself against agents trying to run your business down. I will be surprised if they "police" it effectively. All review sites are not a fair reflection in my opinion. Even trip adviser you can see is full of fake reviews. Problem is with review sites they only tend to attract people to complain. Rarely will people who have had good service will after the event seek out a website and post a review. They tend to drop a card and bottle in when collecting or dropping off keys.