As you were - Purplebricks share price riding high ag...

Purplebricks’ share price has now recovered all of the value it lost after being criticised on two BBC consumer programmes and yesterday recorded its highest ever closing value.

After post-trading movements the hybrid agency’s share price closed yesterday at 514.99; although it has topped 520.00 during occasional trading days in the past, yesterday’s was its highest closing figure. Its previous closing high, on July 24, was 513.00.

Last week, after its share price had drifted down slightly over several days, it lost around seven per cent in one afternoon following a BBC You And Yours programme.

The show alleged the agency had repeated banned claims on savings, and had failed in some cases to make clear that a deferred payment scheme for vendors would involve a loan from a separate company.

A statement to the City the next morning steadied the ship and now Purplebricks appears to have resumed its bull run.

However, the agency continues to draw criticism from traditional estate agents, one of which has called for the creation of a website which would be used to log the experiences of sellers unhappy with the performance of Purplebricks.

Kelvin Francis, who operates an agency under his name in Cardiff, contacted Estate Agent Today to claim that such a site could be some form of balance to what he believes is the overwhelming scale of positive reviews for Purplebricks on the Trustpilot website - an oft repeated criticism by some traditional agents.

“Trustpilot claim that they have means to identify false [reviews] but I have read some of them and they are so sycophantically praising. Someone might like to consider setting up a website and encouraging anyone who is unhappy, or had a bad experience with Purplebricks, to log it” says Francis.

Last evening a statement to Estate Agent Today from Purplebricks said: “We are leading the way in establishing that those who give reviews are genuine customers, whatever rating is provided. If our team cannot immediately identify the customer from the review, whatever the rating, we report it to Trustpilot so they can ask for more information.

“We send more four and five star reviews to Trustpilot to verify than any others. Our process of internally validating all reviews is honest and consistent irrespective of the star rating we receive and ensures that all reviews are a fair reflection of those who have been customers of Purplebricks. We would welcome more widely the same level of effort for transparency across the industry.”

The statement said the agency also monitors and reviews each ‘net promotor score’ (NPS), between zero and 10, given by its customers. “We get thousands of NPS scores and comments every month. We are proud to achieve an NPS score of +79 which is as good as global household brands like Amazon and Disney” says Purplebricks.