Agents express anger after being told by Rightmove ‘how to run their own businesses’

Two agents have expressed their anger after claiming that they were told by Rightmove how to run their businesses.

Rightmove has said that its teams do make suggestions about using its products, and that is to try and help agents.

One agent has now left the portal. He says he was told by his account handler, in his office and in front of his staff, how he should be running his business.

The second agent has said that in trying to reduce marketing costs, his firm was told by Rightmove that it was making the wrong business decisions – and that Rightmove would up its charge to £3,300. The firm has a single office, which handles sales and lettings.

Both agents, whose offices are in different parts of the south, had been trying to negotiate their Rightmove costs.

The first agent was querying Rightmove’s attempt to hike his firm’s subscription.

The agent says that Rightmove told him he was not using the add-on products correctly, to gain maximum commercial advantage from them.

The agent said that the remarks made in front of staff were insulting and unhelpful, and did not begin to address his concerns about the increased costs of Rightmove to his business.

The agent left the portal a week ago.

The second single-office agent approached EYE with a similar story.

This agent also wanted to reduce their marketing costs and suggested removing some of the postcode valuation tools that proved no help to it last year. The saving the agent hoped to achieve was in the region of £300.

However, the account manager told this agent that in doing so, the business would no longer be eligible for the optimiser package, and Rightmove would be charging £3,300, including a core membership fee of £1,475 plus VAT.

This would have been more than the £1,240 the agent had previously paid for core membership, and considerably more than the agent’s current total package.

The agent says that to make matters worse, the account manager emailed to say that the business had not made best use of the leads that were provided and was not making decisions that were right for it.

The agent told EYE: “We are absolutely dumbfounded at the audacity, arrogance and sheer ignorance that has been shown to us.

“It is a thought process that will undoubtedly cost them business in future, as there are portals out there offering equal quality at a much lower cost.”

A Rightmove spokesperson said: “Our packages are intended to give agents tools and products that could help open up instruction opportunities that may otherwise be hidden to them, to put their brand and properties in front of the biggest home-moving audience, and to try and help them save time.

“Our teams suggest ways these tools and products could be used alongside an agent’s expertise in selling and letting homes to try and help them achieve their goals for the year.”

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49 Comments

  1. JonnyBanana43

    I had exactly the same experience… Very patronising woman said “I’m sorry to hear your business isn’t going well”

    I went absolutely berserk – “we have had the most profitable year in 30 years of trading you ..#$€€%#>$¥€”

    Report
    1. Property Poke In The Eye

      I think I must of had the same person in July 2017 – when I told her and RM to F off.

      Report
    2. Jrsteeve

      So have you left them??

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      1. Bless You

        Last straw for me will be if they let pay any way agents like purplepricks on site..

        What? They do allow it and agents still won’t ditch them???

         

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    3. Stuart

      Haha.. I love guessing blanked out swear words… I keep it simple RM are just a bunch of cxxxs..

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  2. office@antonyrichards.co.uk

    Leaving RM last year was a great move for us. Agents need to have faith in their own business.

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    1. I want to believe

      Looks like RM are going the way of the property newspapers.
       
      I recall having similar conversations and being met with the same arrogance when trying to get a better deal in the ‘property pull out’ of my local newspaper. I now feel sorry for the rep that is flogging a dead horse and practically giving away ads that no one wants in the same publication.
       
      History tells us that if a supplier takes the p**s out of it’s customers it is only a matter of time before the customers find another supplier. Remember Mr Ratner ?
       
      Ok I get that Estates Agents are a funny breed and in any other business on the planet RM would already be dead and burried but even Estate Agents have a breaking point and RM will eventually go the way of the ‘Property Pull Out’.
       
      Either that or RM will wipe out the stubborn traditional high street Estate Agent and pave the way for the onliners – now there’s a thought !  

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  3. surrey1

    We were told prices would continue to go up. We were asked to trial the “optimiser” products. At the end of the trial we anslysed the data as did Rightmove. RM told us we had lots more “traffic”. We deduced we had no more leads. RM then told us our package had now been increased more than initially quoted when the trial was offered. We left. We have no shortage of buyer/tenant enquiries from other channels. We have reinvested the savings into other aspects of our business. Portals don’t sell houses, Agents do.

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  4. Property Poke In The Eye

    If you have the property the buyers will come.

    So focus on great customer experiences with whatever number of people your are dealing with.

    Keep focused, keep positive – great things will happen.

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  5. Ouch18

    We’ve had a couple of reps do exactly the same so we’ve banned them from calling us or coming to the office for over two years

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  6. Jrsteeve

    I’m in Manchester and have two offices. Left rm at the end of December and replaced them with zoopla, who I’m aware will no doubt try the same price increases in future but at least are open to negotiation. So far absolutely no drop off in enquiries and haven’t lost a sales instruction due to not using rm either. Saving £2200 per month after factoring the zoopla spend, best thing I’ve done for a while. The saving is being used to pay the staff more and on self promotion.

     

    Leave them today!

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    1. Property Poke In The Eye

      Zoopla charge £150 plus VAT – if you are paying more then go back and negotiate with them.

      OTM are now charging £100 plus VAT for new comers and £195 for existing agents – if you are paying more go and negotiate with them too.

      Sick of these portals trying to play us of each other.  Let’s play them at their own game now!!!

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  7. smile please

    Had the same experience some hyper smiling idiot with 12 months estate agency experience trying to tell me how to run my business, spouting ridiculous stats.

    Lost count of the amount of account managers I have had over the last 5 years.

    All promise to be different and they are there to help (never able to).

    Latest issue I have is under sold prices all the photographs I have paid for and own the rights to show up. Told RM my intellectual property rights I want them removed after sale but they are saying part of my listing agreement is they have rights over my photos for life!

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  8. J1

    When a supplier starts to tell you what to do……..

    When a supplier insults you……..

    When a supplier over-charges for services that have no benefit to your business……..

    When a supplier’s offering is 15 years old………..

    When a supplier is rude………..

    When a supplier offers zero customer service…………..

    When a supplier rarely pays a visit despite dipping your pocket for £1500 a month …………

    When a supplier undermines your business by supporting cheating competitors with fake performance graphs………..

    When a supplier allows your customers to go straight to them via free offerings…………

    What would you do???????????

     

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    1. AgencyInsider

      Judging by most of the comments that accompany Rightmove stories the majority of customers would whinge loudly and continue to use the supplier.

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      1. ARC

        Well done AgencyInsider for summing up the entire comments section of this article in one go.

        Until they shake off the fear nothing will change.

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        1. forwardthinker

          Totally agree… I’m one of those watching on the side waiting to pull the trigger.

          Time for some intense analysis of our leads. I had exactly the same. My new visibly inexperienced rep was shadowed by a more slicker individual who did show compassion in the last visit, but at the same time suggested we could grow market share by investing in additional products, which I absolutely refuse to do. We’ve been there and done it already, hence why I changed to core membership only in the first place.

          It was a subtle way of saying your market share is poor and we can help if you invest more in Rightmove. Last year was my best year ever and we’re on course this year too.

          Anyway, that was over a month ago, no follow up. Not heard from them since 🙂

          Agents need to somehow collaborate on this and simultaneously serve notice. Could you imagine?? 🙂

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    2. Property Pundit

      When are you leaving J1?

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  9. OnlineEA

    Whilst I agree with the sentiment of many agents on here, the amount of agents that you make a RM enquiry for a viewing and then receive zero response or a delayed one of days later is commonplace.  You can’t on one hand moan about the cost when people are making contact to view /buy and then not even respond to the very lead generator that is costing you a fair percent of your overheads pcm.

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    1. Jrsteeve

      Eh? The leads are fine, no better or worse than other portals, but explain to me why you believe rm should charge 3 times more. 
       

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    2. DomPritch134

      Absolutely agree @onlineEA
      The amount of time between requesting a viewing and getting a response from the agents i have found to be very poor via the rightmove tool.

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    3. Certus

      Not forgetting the trigger happy user who click everything and when you PROMPTLY call they cant remember any of them. The late night leads are generally awful. Have you noticed how little info you get about the potential viewer now, often just a first name, a postcode and a number which they often dont answer as they do not recognise the number.

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  10. Seller0169

    This sounds like another story that’s been fed in by Ian Springett.

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    1. El Burro

      As opposed to this post which seems like another story that’s been fed in by Miles Shi$shi$e

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  11. OMG

    I feel sorry for the few agents who will be left paying £20m per month per branch.

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  12. DomPritch134

    Recently I requested a valuation from two agents with one being a multi esta award winner, via the rightmove tool, the award winning one called after 3 days the other I’m still waiting to hear from. Perhaps it is the agents and not Rightmove’s fault that the add ons are not yielding the results they wish.

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    1. AgencyInsider

      Good grief! I agree with you DomPritch134 – possibly for the first time ever. I may need to go and lie down for a while.

      You are absolutely correct that a considerable proportion of enquries to agents via Rightmove (and presumably all other portals) go unanswered or answered after a considerable delay. Rightmove has repeatedly drawn attention to this at their roadshows etc. I sometimes wonder if some agents simply have money to burn because every wasted enquiry is costing them.

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      1. KC54

        I came off RM over a year ago and found no difference in business.  One big gripe I had with them were the number of ghost properties that appeared which the agents clearly didn’t have – that dated back to 2012 and they did nothing about it.  The stock was put up to attract Landlord/Seller inquiries when in fact the agent had very limited stock.  How many times did I answer the phone and the enquirer expressed surprise that we had the property available!!  Probably half those I spoke to.   All this skews the performance figures and increases “traffic” figures of stock which simply do not exist.  As well as Agents leaving, I do not believe RM is first port of call any longer!

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      2. chris

        I would suggest most joined historically because a competitor agent did. The competitor agent initialled joined to have an edge on their competitors and so the snowball began.

        So the question now is. are agents that continue to support, subscribing with a view to selling (doesn’t appear so from RMs respond stats) or just to say when pitching for the biz that we’ll promote your property on RM or are scared the competitor agent will say we’ll promote your property on RM the No 1 portal which ??EA competitor(s) don’t!!

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    2. revilo

      I do question why any serious potential seller, or buyer for that matter, would rely on a portal message service to arrange a valuation or viewing, and not just pick up the phone and have a conversation about time, dates etc? After all there is a local rate number! Maybe they knew it was you Dom 😉 😉

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      1. DomPritch134

        I do it as a test to see how responsive and active the agent is.

        You’re quite right it’s easier to pick up the phone, however not all buyers do this and it’s an indication to me of the agents effectiveness.

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      2. ARC

        I do hope that the tinge of irony in your post Revilo is the truth and not a genuine belief that an emailed or portal val lead for a val would not be a serious customer because if you are naive enough to believe that every serious customer is happy/available/comfortable enough to use your preferred method of contact then I fear for the long term future of you business.

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  13. GPL

     

    Rightmove are a highly toxic brand/service provider who dominate Our Industry – they are an astoundingly effective example of the abuse of business power.

     

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  14. JimCricket

    We tried to open a discussion with our rep about the lack of leads and traction with the add ons and were told that our adverts weren’t cutting the mustard. I asked if they would rework them into something that would justify the extra expense and the rep told us to let him have them when we had reworked them ourselves. We declined and went back to the basic package with ‘brand plus’ £1,400pcm for our sole branch. We know that the corporates are getting this for under £1,000pcm per branch. We are one foot out of the RM door. The arrogance shown by their rep was laughable and reflects the arrogance of the business more generally.

    Report
  15. Ryan Baker

    Left a few months back and glad we did. Saving £1600 PCM and the business has had little to no effect… those who can go and search for a property on RM , almost always go to Zoopla to have a look too..same leads ..: you just need the stock

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  16. B Mills

    We received a 20-25% core rate increase and when asked if we could reduce our additional product spend were told that if we removed all additional products our core rate would increase 3 fold!

    This would save us £30 per month to lose all additional products.

    We are not adding any new listings to RM on a one month trial and are only uploading to Zoopla and OTM to see if there is any noticeable impact, dipping the toe in before jumping.

    We our now on our 10th new Account Manger in 9 years with RM.

    By contrast Zoopla recently increased our fees by around 2% per office, we were happy with that.

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  17. Woodentop

    Rightmove told him he was not using the add-on products correctly, to gain maximum commercial advantage from them.

     

    Should read, we run a ‘cartel of agents’ who can only use the add-on products to gain maximum commercial advantage for us, that makes agents think it will give you more business.

     

    Try selling that to al those that cannot joint the RM Cartel and all those agents not on RM who are more than successful without the add-ons.

     

    RightMove is nothing more than a media outlet, with very little effort on its part and dismal media advertising for its customers. It has no experience (FACT) or expertise in how agency business should be run or right to interfere.

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  18. agenttothestars

    Exactly Same arrogance from our rightmove rep. Comes in the office with such an attitude, absolutely no need whatsoever.

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  19. Benfield

    we pay 1145 pcm for core sales and letting membership with brand plus. We are 90-95% now lettings and look to sell 5-10 properties a year alongside that. As sold only 1 this year so far and nothing available, considering to drop the sales membership,  I emailed Rightmove support yesterday, as the last rep details we had are no longer live and whoever is now our account manager has not made contact with us. I received an automatic reply acknowledging my communication and that they are currently working on email queries from 26/2 !! Maybe there are more people than we think considering their future advertising options.

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  20. The gnome

    We left RM last year and showed absolutely no difference in referrals. The first couple of months were a little tricky, as customers had seen us on RM. However that has not been a problem recently and even the national agencies are quite happy with us being on Zoopla.  The saving has been noticeable.

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  21. Property Pundit

    Who, ultimately, controls your business? If you have just one supplier that you believe your business could not function without (due to lack of alternatives), and they know it, THEY do, not you. Tell me I’m wrong here.

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  22. SLF

    So just from the posts on here we have 6 comments from agents who left RM. They don’t seem to be having a problem. That’s 6 agents who had the balls to tell RM to do one and seem pretty happy with their decision. Read their comments, then grow a pair too!

    We left RM last year and showed absolutely no difference in referrals. 

    Left a few months back and glad we did. Saving £1600 PCM and the business has had little to no effect

    I came off RM over a year ago and found no difference in business.

    Left rm at the end of December and replaced them with zoopla. So far absolutely no drop off in enquiries and haven’t lost a sales instruction due to not using rm either. 

    We left. We have no shortage of buyer/tenant enquiries from other channels.

    Leaving RM last year was a great move for us. Agents need to have faith in their own business.

     

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  23. Hampshireagent007

    Hear Hear!!  There is life after Rightmove. Hateful people!

    Come on guys… Ditch RM en masse!!!!

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  24. glasgowsouthletting

    Interesting article in yesterday’s business section of The Times, with recommendation ‘avoid’ shares.    They have peaked, are losing agents – a drip which will likely become a torrent – whilst rivals, led primarily by Zoopla are fulfilling the market’s requirements. The famous RM arrogance will be their ultimate downfall.

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  25. therealpropertyexpert

    If as estate agents we all stuck together and withdrew from Rightmove we would soon turn the tables.

     

    This will never happen though because 90% of estate agents don’t work together they want to stab each others backs.

     

     

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    1. Robert_May

      If agents realised their listings data is currently  worth about £353,000 per branch to a BIG DATA project and currently  they’re paying for the privilege of giving that value  to someone else’s shareholders they might start to understand why it is important to compete hard locally but stand together as an industry.

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      1. Ashfordagent

        Sign me up, they can have all 5 of my branches for £353,000 each!

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  26. JEL

    Rightmove …. the modern day equivalent of a Mafia run protection racket….

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  27. rookwoodtraining16

    until someone solves the problem of how to reach the consumer – Rightmove will always have the edge……. unless …. we go back to speaking to customers and picking up the phones and offering an advisory service not an appointment booking service. I have no doubt that agents who do a good job understanding their customers and spotting opportunities will be successful without Rightmove as they have a well run database and well run community marketing ( social media or simply networking) I agree – the buyers will come if you have the property.

    Report
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