Challenger ratings website raterAgent has been told that it cannot repeat its claim that it is the UK’s “most trustworthy” site for getting proof of an agent’s quality of service.
The claim was challenged by allAgents and this morning upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority.
The ASA said that it lacked comparative evidence to “be able to determine whether raterAgent’s procedures for checking reviews, and consequently the trustworthiness of those reviews, was superior to the procedures of their competitors”.
This morning, raterAgent hit out at what it called allAgents’ “refusal to share information”.
It said it is seeking legal advice.
The allAgents challenge revolved around text on the raterAgent website which said: “rateragent.co.uk is the UK’s most trustworthy site for getting proof of the quality of an estate or letting agent’s service. Using … checked and verified reviews, from people just like you that have gone through the same process …”
In its challenge, allAgents said it was not possible to verify that all reviews were genuine.
It challenged whether the claim that raterAgent was the “most trustworthy” was misleading and could be substantiated.
In evidence to the ASA, raterAgent said its checking system consisted of 13 checks, followed by human moderation.
Authors of potentially suspicious reviews were then told that their review would not be published without further authenticating information.
The ASA said that the claim suggested that raterAgent’s checks for authenticity were “more demanding and more stringent” than those of their competitors.
It also noted that raterAgent had identified “practices adopted by their competitors which they considered were likely to raise concerns about reliability and trustworthiness.
“They included an absence of information about the respective amounts agents paid to be featured; the payment of fees by agents to correct errors; and discrepancies in the order in which agents were listed (with the first agents listed not necessarily being the ones who had received the most positive reviews, while some agents with poor reviews were not listed at all).”
However, the ASA said that there was no information as to how raterAgent’s competitors verified their reviews.
It concluded: “Because of that, we considered we had not seen sufficient comparative evidence to be able to determine whether raterAgent’s procedures for checking reviews, and consequently the trustworthiness of those reviews, was superior to the procedures of their competitors.
“Therefore, we concluded that raterAgent had not substantiated the claim and that it was likely to mislead.”
This morning, Mal Macallion, chief executive of raterAgent, said: “The refusal of the complainant to share information on the number of reviews they reject themselves is specifically stated by the ASA as the reason why we can’t claim to be the ‘most’ trustworthy.
“Consumers and agents will make their own minds up about why they withhold this information.
“raterAgent will continue to pursue its goal of bringing transparency to the area of review sites so that quality agents can thrive, not those that have the time and inclination to ‘game’ other sites. We’ll be judged on our behaviour and the integrity of our reviews, as will others in our space, and we will not be deflected from our core mission to force a higher level of trustworthiness into the open in online agent reviews.”
He added: “raterAgent’s latest data continues to show that one in six submissions to its site is found to be a fake, none of which are put up on site.
“Comparable statistics from competitor estate agent rating websites have never been made available.”
I am glad the complaint has been upheld. As I have previously said I managed to post a fake review. This was months ago and still showing.
Nobody advertises on the site apart from a handful of agents. Really is no benefit to an agent these sites.
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I take complete issue with this post.
Allagents is littered with fake reviews, please do not claim it is not.
Take for example Curtis and Bains in Manchester, horrific reviews across the board over a period of a couple of years not to mention other reviews online.
The company sells out and all staff move to a new company called Ascend in Manchester – Amazing customer service all of a sudden from the very same people.
Really?
4 of my own RaterAgent reviews were disallowed or not posted because they could not verify the person posting and of course these 4 people were either current or past tenants of my agency – All agents have no way of even checking where reviews are coming from and it is the reason why we stopped paying the monthly fee because of the amount of fake reviews.
Incidental our company was always in the top 5 and still is I just refuse to promote our reviews on this particular site as they have no integrity.
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“Allagents is littered with fake reviews, please do not claim it is not.”
‘smile please’ didn’t – so I don’t see the relevance of that comment at all.
Those that pays their monies to Rating sites simply have too much money or are easily parted from it.
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We pay for the pro account so we are able to customise our page with our logos – Nothing else.
4 of our reviews were still disallowed because RA could not verify the tenants details even though we offered to send the TA.
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Allagents complain about a competitor who, as I understand it, is trying hard to be transparent and to weed out fake reviews? The cheek of it.
I’m just gobsmacked to read this story. Shame on Allagents (yet again).
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I would love to know Allagents vetting process of reviews…… seems if you pay you become the top of the leader board.
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Careful you will have Mr S implying he will sue you next 😉
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How ironic!
RaterAgent claims to be trying to make the process more transparent yet will not be transparent themselves!
ALL review website are full of made up reviews. Just look at Purplebricks they even posted their own script with *Insert name here*
All these sites do in leach money off agents.
If you are interested in reviews direct your clients to googleplus. Also helps with SEO its free and much more beneficial.
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OOHHH, smile please – RA won’t be happy with you today at all! The entire workforce will be hitting their ‘dislike’ buttons like Duracell bunnies on PCP.
(Just I case you’re wondering where both the ‘Dislikes’ come from…)
;o)
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I know, its always funny when you see new posters and dislikes on a story that would not usually get them.
Maybe we should have a transparent view of the dislike and likes here?
Whats good for the goose …… Think there maybe a few red faces!
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I thought you meant me for a minute!
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Heck, no – you’re the original and best ‘RA’… others are pale imitations! ;o)
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Agree, Google has to be the best place to ask genuine reviewers to go.
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I get bored with these endless ‘Next best things’ which are of no material benefit to agents whatsoever.
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This article is definitely pot calling the kettle.
I am sick of having to post replies to negative reviews that we receive on these sites from buyers who think we are dishonest on the basis their offer wasn’t successful on a property we were marketing.
NONE of the complainants have EVER taken up my invitation to discuss the complaint / review-in spite of me listing my name and telephone and e mail.
Review sites should ONLY take reviews from our bona fide customers ie sellers and landlords and NOT any old buyer or tenant who, for whatever reason in the sellers interests, didn’t get what they wanted.
I urge ALL agents reading this to suggest their customers use your company website to leave a review.
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Hi all. Thanks for the comments, we’ve been blown away with the positive messages of support (not necessarily +completely+ reflected on here, I will grant you, but they rarely are!)
As I said in the article, we’re obviously disappointed that we can’t use the word ‘most’ to describe how trustworthy we are, because allAgents won’t say how many ‘reviews’ they reject nor clarify their processes, so we’ve nothing to compare to.
That said, we’re not going to be bullied out of the way under any circumstances and will continue to do what we do – check every submission manually, provide numbers regarding our rejection rate (1 in 6 is currently) and enjoy the impact we’re increasingly making on those desperate to keep the status quo.
raterAgent is here to help great agents prove their quality of service and win more business at stronger fee rates on the back of their triple-checked reviews. And we will!
Cheers, Mal
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The dozens of estate agents that I represent have never requested me to exam any ‘review’ sites because of fake reviews but you have so few numbers upon your site and I noticed that you have been around for some time now. Could you tell me why that is? Is it because of so many fake reviews from estate agents. Why don’t you publish your review numbers please. The word ‘most’ is not a problem to me but ‘trustworthy’ is so the numbers would help. I look forward to hearing from you. I will not be interested in a meeting unless you numbers. Why are different than All Agents? or any review site please?
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You “…represent…” dozens of Estate Agents in what way exactly?
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Hi Mal, that’s interesting the 1 in 6 rejection rate. Can you give me numbers on the total number of reviews that have actually approved. Please don’t include the google reviews that you are now posting . Thanks G
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Hi Curious G. Our actual review number is commercially sensitive but in the thousands and growing exponentially. Having only formally launched on 24 April, we now have over 1,000 branches ‘claimed’ – ie the branch manager/owner has taken control of it to generate and respond to reviews – and that’s similarly growing daily.
Interestingly, 78% of the fake ‘reviews’ are agents 5-starring themselves up and 14% are 1-star ‘bombs’ chucked over the fence at their competition. I still struggle to understand why other sites won’t reveal this information as it’s surely the key metric in determining trustworthiness?
Regarding Google reviews, that’s something that we’re trialing. We use their API to pull in what they call the 5 ‘most relevant’ reviews (which are not necessarily the most recent) and provide them (suitably caveated – we have no idea whether these are fakes, as Google’s processes aren’t as stringent as ours and we can’t do our checks) so they’re for additional information only.
We might pull in others in due course but they’ll be similarly caveated – and some sources just won’t be worth bothering with at all, they’re so open to fakery. We spend so much time and effort (and money!) on checking each raterAgent review we won’t let any (dare I say it) ‘untrustworthy’ ones in without appropriate warnings. Happy to chat further on mal@rateragent.co.uk if you want any more details.
Best, Mal
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