Zoopla has said it no longer has any relationship with a commission sharing firm that encourages agents to collaborate and split their commissions.

Zoopla gave the update after what appears to be a series of misunderstandings regarding CommSplit, a firm with which Zoopla had run a joint project.

It has emerged that some agents were not aware that they have opened accounts with CommSplit.

The firm charges £149 per month to facilitate collaboration, although there is no suggestion that this amount has actually been charged in the cases Eye has been told about.

CommSplit, which was apparently re-branded Zoopla Market for a while, has meanwhile vigorously defended its business model, saying it it a high-tech company trying to shift paradigms.

Leaders, whose logo is displayed on the Commsplit site, says it had no idea it was there.

It told Eye: “This is not a website we have heard of, signed up to or given permission to use our logo.”

However, CommSplit’s founder Simeon Miighty insisted that Leaders had indeed signed up and gave us the name of the person who had done so and the branch – Lewisham.

But a spokesperson for Leaders reacted by saying: “I’ve spoken to my colleague in Lewisham. He’s told me that he did register with CommSplit last year and took up a free trial with them to see if it could be of use but nothing came of it.

“He didn’t get any connections with any agents through it and has not made use of the site since.

“It certainly was not a company initiative to register with them. We will look into getting our logo removed from the site.”

Eye was alerted after a Norfolk agent was approached by commsplit.co.uk last week and told that an agent in Buckinghamshire had signed up to the service and wanted to work with him.

The Buckinghamshire agency insists it has not signed up.

The agent told us: “We have no knowledge of ‘activating any such account’ and certainly would never do so knowingly as we would have no intention of splitting commissions and paying an intermediary to facilitate such an arrangement.”

Again, CommSplit disagrees, and told us that the Buckinghamshire agency had activated their account on September 15.

The email received by the Norfolk agent from CommSplit said that the agent in Buckinghamshire “wants to work with you!”.

It said that the Buckinghamshire agent is “using CommSplit and would like to share their properties with you; and split the commission safely and transparently”.

It invited the Norfolk agent to log in and enjoy a free trial.

But the Norfolk agent contacted the Buckinghamshire agent to be told they were not signed up to CommSplit.

He emailed back to CommSplit telling them to delete him from their mailing list as he did not want any more spam.

He added: “I contacted the agents you were putting forward as your members and they confirm that they are not members.”

The Norfolk agent told Eye: “When I said that the other agent were not signed up to CommSplit, I was told that a member of staff had signed them up but not told the people in charge.

“I also thought it was very odd that an agent over 100 miles away in Buckinghamshire was apparently keen to work with me and share our properties.”

We asked Zoopla to clarify the relationship and a spokesperson said: “Following a limited trial with CommSplit earlier in the year, we are no longer progressing this and have no association with them.”

On August 11 a number of agents were cold-messaged a job offer.

The message, from jobs@comsplit.co.uk, said it was looking for estate agents to start working “for a property portal based in London Bridge”.

The job involved selling subscriptions to estate agents, for a basic wage of £18,000 pa plus commission, taking earnings to between £32,000 and £79,000 a year.

The CommSplit website displays a number of impressive estate agency logos.

As well as Leaders, the logos of Hamptons, Felicity J Lord, Winkworth, Hunters and Martin & Co appear, described as “satisfied members throughout the United Kingdom”.

CommSplit is the brainchild of serial property entrepreneur Simeon Miighty, who last October also founded DocInn.co.uk, a property transaction management tool, and in March this year, Moverr, an online estate agent.

We asked Miighty to comment.

He said: “Every agent mentioned on our website or via email has activated their account at some stage, and as per our terms and conditions we’re at liberty to make this fact public however we deem suitable.”

Asked why an agent in Buckinghamshire would want to share properties with an agent over 100 miles away in Norfolk, he said: “It’s simply possible that either one of the companies may have registered their details with the wrong address, therefore falling into the catchment of another member agent.

“We are a technology company who constantly innovates to make sure that its members receive a fantastic product that fully benefits their business, and will look into this further.

“We are passionate about improving the service that our members receive.

“CommSplit helps to protect estate agencies from the threat of dis-instruction, broken chains, time fused instructions, etc, and in turn improve on the service our members offer to their clients.

“CommSplit is a tool that is in the marketplace to help estate agencies, not hinder.

“In comparison to the money spent on advertising, our members collaborate on our platform and gain a direct ROI for what is nominal fee.”