Purplebricks has responded to the review website AllAgents which recently reinstated some disputed reviews - but there appears no threat of legal action.
In September AllAgents suspended the reviews because it wanted to avoid possible legal action: Purplebricks had sent legal letters to the review site over a number of disputed statements about the agency’s performance.
This morning Purplebricks has issued its response to the reinstates reviews. The agency’s comments, in full, are below:
“We have noted AllAgents reinstatement of certain reviews on Purplebricks. We have asked on numerous occasions for evidence that would allow us to verify whether or not they were from genuine customers, AllAgents have been unable or unwilling to share this data with us for reasons best known to themselves.
Our position has always been very clear – we welcome all reviews from anyone who has been authenticated as a customer, whether they are good or bad. We do not welcome reviews from people who have not had direct experience with us as a customer, as this can lead to misinformation for consumers. In the overall scheme of things AllAgents is now listing just 73 reviews of Purplebricks ( which may or may not be authentic), covering a period of over 3 years, which represents just 0.07% of the over 100,000 customers Purplebricks has acted for since it was founded. To put this into perspective, Trustpilot is currently listing more than 33,000 reviews of Purplebricks. Trustpilot has considered Purplebricks' review process and verification measures and has confirmed that this approach is consistent with its high standards of objectivity and transparency. Trustpilot reviews are "live" and can be updated by customers at any time should their perspectives of their service quality change up to and after completion.
Furthermore, as announced Purplebricks will be launching a second review platform with the highly respected review service Feefo early in 2018. Customers will be contacted directly by Feefo and Feefo will directly oversee reviews coming via its platform.
Our experience of allAgents has been extremely poor, as it seems is that of many agents across the UK. We have never sought or had any commercial agreement with Allagents and we have no desire to work with them in the future, as we have no confidence in the veracity, robustness and transparency of its service."
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Don't forget how much they are paying for their commercial relationship with Trustpilot !!!!!!!
Reviews are far from easy and transparent, they are opaque and vulnerable to manipulation and management. The problem is they are also part of the world we live in. In general terms, if a company does nothing, even if it’s good, the reviews it gets tend to be bad because dissatisfied customers are more likely to shout about their dissatisfaction than a happy customer is to shout about how delighted they are. However, if you proactively solicit reviews, particularly if this is done at an early stage in the process, call it the Honeyman period, or directly at the point a sale has been made successfully, then it is very likely you will get a review from someone who would never have otherwise done anything. These types of engineered reviews are not that helpful to new customers as all they show is how good the company is at getting reviews rather than how good the company is.
Does anyone really believe what they read on either trust pilot or all agents? Both are in it for the money and neither care about accuracy in my experience.
The issue is, if people are encouraged to use PB as a result; because, at that point they’ve parted with their money! Whereas a no sale - no fee agent gets ‘kicked into touch’ and has nothing if they appear to have benefitted from ‘spurious’ recommendations.
Any body who uses any agent has to know what they are doing. It is quite possible to happily use a bad agent if you know how to, "expertly put the boot in when needed" and get the transaction back on a good path. This has to be done in a firm and friendly way of course. The converse is also true. A good agent can make a mistake and again you need to be on the ball to help out stop your losses.
There are other ways to reduce the stress. Never pay large deposits. It only takes a couple of pounds to legally secure a contract. You can walk away from that with little fear of retribution unless it is entirely your fault.
There are many ways to part a seller from their true sale price. The most common (with fifty years experience) is selling your property to a friend of the agent and not telling you other buyers were available.
If you do not have a lot of capital you can risk then stay away from auctions or at lease just go and watch a good few first. There are a lot of tricks that are possible to rig auctions and they are usually impossible to prove.
As said, reviews are a difficult subject. Always understand who is complaining about what. Very few householders know much about anything technical in a house. The same goes for estate agents' staff.
I have just been out to a house where the agent reported the shower head was not working. Utter rubbish. The hot water tank thermostat had failed and the hot water tank was at boiler temperature. The shower tap did not stand a chance but there is nothing wrong with it.
PB really are like a child that does not like to be told anything they don't want to hear. My six year old acts in much the same way but she doesn't advertise herself as a supposed five star service.
If PB have dealt with 100,000 properties (we still don't know ho many were actually sold) and they have 33,000,4 and 5 star reviews, that is incredible! What I would request of PB. is that they go back to all those reviewers and get an up to date opinion. 73 reviews, many of which are critical seems to worry them over much. They are bigger than that aren't they. Also I not impressed with them going to Feefo, which while it is a good and respectable site only deals with sales that are directed to it. I wonder how many those will be?
The industry should congratulate allAgents for standing up to Purplebricks and the industry should all get behind allAgents.
It should be noted you do not have to pay any money on allAgents to get a review, so reviews are fair and transparent
Purplebricks don't like it when they can’t manipulate reviews and don't get their own way
Nothing has been said about the misery of Purplebricks charging huge commissions on legal fees if sellers defer their upfront fixed fee.
Proper agents get paid for success - Purplebricks is nothing more than a paid listing service and all that is going to happen is agents that can't sell value will end up offering the same price or less than Purplebricks, we will have an army of order takers
Professional estate agents sell value not price but unfortunately only the smart sellers get that.
I have written negative reviews on both sites for Purplebricks. As a genuine customer for PB for over a year I felt I should warn others about the risks involved with their service (as is the point of review sites). I can vouch that Allagents are extremely cautious in checking that their reviews are from genuine customers and I had to provide more than one piece of evidence that would be hard to fake. Trustpilot themselves did not ask for ANY evidence at all, it was only PB themselves who contacted me vis Trustpilot to verify I was a genuine customer (which would make sense, as I am sure they would like to remove as many negative reviews as possible). It would be VERY hard to write a fake review for PB on Allagents site.
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