Agent members of OnTheMarket who contacted an action group set up following grievances about the portal have been invited to a meeting with legal experts in early May.
Iain White, the agency training consultant who has set up the group, says the meeting is likely to be held in central London on May 9; invitations and questionnaires have in the past 24 hours started to be dispatched to all those agents who have contacted White about OTM.
“I’ve had so many emails I just haven’t been able to reply to each one personally - I’m sorry about that but I’ve been surprised at the sheer scale of the response, and invitations to all those who made contact will be sent out by the end of this week” says White, who claims to have received around 300 emails from over 200 agencies.
He says the legal advisers who will be at the meeting are already involved with one OnTheMarket member agency “at an advanced stage of legal proceedings.” The advisers are not being paid for their attendance at the May meeting.
White - a former managing director at Romans for 22 years and a former director at Countrywide Thames - says he was prompted to organise the group because several of his current clients are OTM members with concerns about the portal.
He says there are three main issues to be debated at the meeting.
These are, firstly, the performance of OnTheMarket against expectations; secondly, alleged variations in fees to member agents and whether changes to those fees were agreed by members of the mutual; and thirdly, whether the operation of the portal is in the interests of smaller independent member agencies as well as larger agencies involved in the founding of Agents’ Mutual and OTM.
White says that within the next week he should know rough numbers attending the meeting and may have further clarification of legal options.
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I cant understand why OTM want to go head to head with dissatisfied agents, the adverse publicity will surely prevent any new agents joining, and if these agents prove OTM to have breached their contract then more will walk, should have let them go quietly I say
I'm not sure they care too much about adverse publicity at this stage. They seem to be on their last legs as it is and want to make as much of a song and dance about everything as they can before they die out completely.
Could be wrong, but these disputes could be the beginning of the end for OTM.
I am interested to know how much the solicitors and advisors are going to be paid for all this. Nobody does anything for nothing.
Good point, James. Maybe another portal is paying their fees?
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