Only two out of eight online agents’ websites have been changed since the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that claims by Purplebricks about savings could not be substantiated and must not be made again.
Following that ruling in early July, EYE visited eight websites, including that of Purplebricks.
Since July 10, it would appear that only eMoov and Tepilo have made changes that reflect the ASA’s ruling. The ASA raised concerns which would affect all those online agents that make claims about savings.
Both eMoov and Tepilo have changed their websites in the last four weeks. Both now make it clear how they arrive at their savings claims, and also mention ‘viewings’. However, eMoov says it has reached its savings calculation based on a high street agent’s fee of 1.3%, while Tepilo bases its claims on 1.5%.
At the time of our first visit, Purplebricks had already made the changes required and, not surprisingly, does not seem to have made any further alterations.
The fact that five out of the original eight seem to have not altered their original claims does not, of course, mean that those claims would fall foul of the ASA.
In no particular order, we have revisited the following sites:
eMoov: Has been changed. “Save thousands” – a click on this shows a box saying how the savings are calculated, using a high street fee of 1.3% and stating that the £795 fee does not include accompanied viewings. It claims: “On average our sellers save £2,857”; it also claims: “Our sellers achieve £5,600 more for their home on average”. A deal with £200 off is currently running.
YOPA: Appears not to be changed. It charges £839 (£1,399 in some London postcodes). “Saves over £3,000 in fees, gets over 98% of their asking prices.” Has a calculator which says that high street agents charge “between 1% and 3% plus VAT”. Elsewhere it says high street agents can charge as much as 3.5%. Viewings package costs £300 extra.
Tepilo: Has been changed. It said then that it charges from £645, saving up to £3,855 on a £250,000 property. It still charges from £645, but now quotes a smaller saving of £3,245 on a £250,000 home, and explains that this is based on a high street fee of 1.5% plus VAT, and on Tepilo’s fee of £895 plus £360 for accompanied viewings. Elsewhere it says that the average Tepilo customer saves £5,120 in fees. A pop-up box, similar to that now used by eMoov, repeats the explanation that this is based on a 1.5% high street agent’s fee plus VAT and is based on Tepilo’s VAT-inclusive fee of £895 plus £360 for viewings.
easyProperty: Appears to be unchanged. It said then, and still says, that it charges £825 and will save £6,675 on a property worth £500,000 assuming the high street agent’s fee is 1.5%.
Purplebricks: Unchanged. Purplebricks charges £849, or £1,199 inside London. The prices are unchanged and the site continues to display a calculator showing that sellers of a £280,000 property could save £3,351 on a high street agent fee of 1.5%. However, at our first visit four weeks ago, Purplebricks would already have made changes.
HouseSimple: Unchanged. Fees unchanged, at a fixed fee of £595 or a no sale, no fee model from £995. On its site, it was giving examples of savings from £1,736 to £5,870 in actual sales it had made. Yesterday these were exactly the same examples that we found four weeks ago. Some of the portals where HouseSimple claims to advertise appear to no longer exist (see screengrab below). https://www.housesimple.com/selling/marketing
Settled: Unchanged: Charges £499 and claims that the average seller saves £5,000.
My Online Estate Agent: Unchanged: charges from £395, and claims to have saved its clients so far £1,685,165 in fees. It has not updated this impressive figure since our first visit four weeks ago.
More ASA rulings due out soon…
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Anyone who is on twitter also needs to get on there and like retweet #purplebricks comments made by Chris Wood and peebee doing a great job but no one supporting.
Also Its FRIDAY!!!!! do you know what that means?? it means everyone has to click on the Adwords 100x and cost these online gits some cash!!
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Thank you, mon ami!
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If my memory serves me correctly the ASA ruling against PurpleBricks also determined i) that the traditional estate agents commission typically included an accompanied viewings service ii) that the advert that the complaint was about (an old one) didn’t clarify that the fee they were quoting didn’t include an accompanies viewings service.
The last time I looked at PurpleBricks’ website this still didn’t appear clear (to me anyway – perhaps I missed something).
Of course there is no reason why a company has to agree with the ASA decision. If I was PurpleBricks I’d want to fight what they might consider unfair focus on themselves when in general Estate Agents don’t publish material information on their websites such as an explanation of their own charges, length of contract and whether the agreement rolls over at the end of the term.
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At the end of the day, these website estate agent probably think the ASA are toothless and arent going to follow through with any sort of punishment. Until a huge fine is issue to one of the companies, the flouting of the law will continue as there is no meaningful deterrent.
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Yes, its like a cheeky game at the moment…. if they had to spend the same again on adverts saying they lied they might think twice about it.
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sb007ck,
The ASA cannot enforce legislation. The normal people to do this would be trading standards but then they would hopefully take into account that it is Estate Agents who are making most of the complaints to the ASA about online Agents and review the claims being made throughout the industry not just in regard to the online agents.
Whilst it is the brief of the ASA to only decide on what is actually said in an advert, Trading Standards also take into account what is not said prior to something which may cause a consumer to make a transactional decision. So the fact that traditional agents typically fail to disclose anything about commissions on their websites might influence what Trading Standards decide to do.
I would imagine there will be informal discussions between Trading Standards and online Agents before any action was taken and I imagine these points will be made by the Online Agents. In fact if you look at the argument PurpleBricks gave in response to the claim over their advert they do mention that most Agents won’t tell you what their commission is.
Trading Standards have to be careful with their resources and if pretty much the whole industry is in breach of the law then they may think it unfair to just act against the online sector.
Prior to arranging an appointment consumers would benefit from complete transparency in regard to commissions/fees don’t you think? Hopefully Trading Standards look at the bigger picture before acting on the complaints of Traditional Estate Agents against their competitors.
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“Trading Standards also take into account what is not said prior to something which may cause a consumer to make a transactional decision. So the fact that traditional agents typically fail to disclose anything about commissions on their websites might influence what Trading Standards decide to do.”
Why?
The only way that an Agent is in breach of that “fail to disclose” ******** you refer to is if they actually do fail to disclose their charges – which they have to do at the point of taking the instruction – ie when the transaction is decided and concluded… SUBJECT to the statutory 14-day ‘cooling-off’ period, of course – however it seems that some NSPR Agents dictate that this Legal Right terminates the second you make your property ‘live’.
But that’s perfectly fine, dandy and proper okey-dokey with you though, I take it, ducky?
That’s if you’re a shareholder that day/week/second and the Fee pumps up the volume, obviously…
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>Why?
Because the whole idea is that a consumer is informed of the material facts before making a transactional decision.
Trading standards state ““’Transactional decision’ is defined widely and is not simply a consumer’s decision to use your services or not, or to buy a property or not. It could, for example, be a client’s decision to accept an offer, or a buyer’s decision to enquire about a property””
So not what you are saying “which they have to do at the point of taking the instruction – ie when the transaction is decided and concluded”
PeeBee, it says a lot that you don’t actually know this.
But then of course Trading Standards could be wrong and you could be right. It only matters when the transaction is decided and concluded. In which case the ASA decision against PurpleBricks in respect of the extra viewing fee is of very little significance because by the time the instruction is given they have seen that the fee for viewing is additional before they complete the payment process. Also any information provided by the LPE would be taken into account.
I’m sure you would prefer PurpleBricks to be more transparent than Traditional Agents and explain everything in their adverts. Hopefully Trading standards can see what is really going on when Traditional Agents are making complaints and encouraging others to make complaints.
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A transactional decision is, as far as the law and TSO (the people tasked to enforce the law, as opposed to the ASA) is concerned can also be as simple as deciding to pick up a phone and call a particular agent based on a statement made in an advert.
Ergo, if an agent makes a claim that suggests consumers will save money and uses incomplete or non-existent ‘evidence’ on which to base a transactional decision of several hundred pounds, the ASA will consider that claim on its own merit or otherwise.
If the ASA rule an advert is misleading, there is little more than they can do, other than publicly naming and shaming however; as Purplebricks and others have discovered, falling foul of the ASA allows competitors and the public to take an informed view of that agents’ morals and business practices, publish the transgression with relative impunity and, if appropriate, request the NTSEAT or TSO to investigate and, if appropriate, take enforcement action.
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“PeeBee, it says a lot that you don’t actually know this.”
Oh – don’t you worry your little ducky head – I know, all right. I eat, drink, sleep and breathe it.
Here’s what you clearly don’t know – or don’t want to admit to knowing.
Prior to instructing an Agent to market a property – aka “making a transactional decision” – that Agent must visit the property; appraise the property and advise on price and value (with relevant evidence to back up their opinion); discuss and agree marketing plan and Fees/charges/terms of engagement IN FULL with the vendor.
Prior to instructing the Agent – aka confirming the transactional decision with a binding Agreement – the vendor must agree IN FULL to ALL of the above. The Vendor must be advised of the nature of the Agreement that is to be entered into, which MUST carry wording to the effect of
“You should not sign this Agreement unless you agree to these terms and conditions”
When – and only when – a vendor confirms that they wish to proceed do they sign the Agreement.
That is known as “having made a transactional decision”.
Now if you want to be a really clever @r$£ – which I would assume would make you a clever duck’s @r$£ – you could go along crying stoopid is as stoopid does, and say that the “transactional decision” would be part or wholly based upon knowing the Fee before inviting the agent to visit.
IF that were the case – and it clearly isn’t or we’d all be drifting up 5h!t-creek by now and you’d have more paddles than you could ever know what to do with – then let’s take it all the way to the waterfall, shall we.
The “transactional decision” could be affected by the Agent’s appraisal figure. So, then – based on that principle, Agents will be required to provide the owner with the “Valuation” of the property; Terms and Conditions of Business; Marketing Plan; hook… line… sinker as well as Uncle Tom Cobley and all, BEFORE setting foot on the garden path to visit the property.
Hey – let’s chuck every stick at the fire and see how it burns, shall we?
Why don’t we make it a Legal requirement for an Agent to produce an up-front, fully present-and-correct Marketing Brochure complete with all details, internal and external photographs of the subject property for the Vendor’s perusal and approval prior to booking an Appraisal?
In fact – how’s about we have a system where a Pre-Appraisal Marketing Campaign* is carried out – where we as Agents are required to provide all of the aforementioned, but in addition we have already agreed a price with a fully qualified, ready, willing and able buyer who has signed an unconditional Contract for the purchase in absolute readiness for the potential of an appraisal appointment being secured by the Agent, once the vendor makes the “transactional decision” to allow the agent to carry out a Pre-Appraisal?
There ya goes, ducky – in one afternoon you and me have completely sorted the industry just the way you think it should be.
Just one small thing to bu99er up the whole shebang – the annoying disruption that there are millions of pesky bods out there that won’t want it your way – who in their hordes like to be known and referred to as “reasonable people”.
And the real p!$$er is that it is them that the likes of chuffin’ Trading Standards use as their model to set the benchmark of requirement for, innit.
Ahhh, well – at least we tried to work your idea through. Sorry it ended – as most of these things do…
…in a #duckshoot.
(* Note to AgentV – we could give the above the buzz-word ‘PreMark’ – register the Trademark before Charlie or Brucey nabs it from under yer nose…)
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PeeBee,
Last post on this. I’m not coming back to check your reply.
You have completely ignored what Trading Standards (and Chris Wood) are saying.
“A transactional decision is defined widely and is not simply a consumer’s decision to use your services or not” (Trading Standards) or as Chris Woods says “can also be as simple as deciding to pick up a phone and call a particular agent based on a statement made in an advert”
There seems to be some perception that a traditional Estate Agent’s website is not an advert but that in the case of Online Agents it is :). It’s very odd that typically an Estate Agent does not publish its normal commission rate, term of contract and whether that is a normally a fixed term or not on its website. In my experience they don’t actually mention it at all prior to the small print on the contract unless you specifically ask. Surely this information would be classed as material information when choosing which Agents to provide you with a valuation. It wouldn’t take more than a few lines to explain the reasons and by how much the normal rates may vary by.
Respect to AgentV who previously gave the reason “I wouldn’t publish it on the website because my competitors would then publish on their websites ‘we charge £300 less than quoted on x’s website’”. Funny that he repeatedly states that PB should make it clear (in a very short advert) that their service isn’t free.
No wonder the profession has such a bad reputation. Talk about double standards.
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Funny that he repeatedly states that PB should make it clear (in a very short advert) that their service isn’t free.
That’s because many people are misled into making a call because they think it is free! Anybody that visits our website is never ever led to believe we provide a property selling service for free, and if we did short TV adverts we would never insinuate that people could use us without cost. Cost, only upon success, mind!!!
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“Last post on this.”
Oh, purrleeasssse – stop teasing us with such happy thoughts – you will be back, and we know it.
“I’m not coming back to check your reply.”
Probably just as well – you being a sensitive sort of duck and all that – but I’m typing it anyway.
“You have completely ignored what Trading Standards (and Chris Wood) are saying.”
No, I haven’t. I have put forward an argument which you don’t like because you can’t counter it.
“It’s very odd that typically an Estate Agent does not publish its normal commission rate, term of contract and whether that is a normally a fixed term or not on its website.
It is not odd at all – it is majority practice, therefore it is odd when it is. Invariably only those that sit in the ‘bargain basement’ advertise that very fact, whose instructions are usually gained by that cheapness above any other measure.
“In my experience they don’t actually mention it at all prior to the small print on the contract unless you specifically ask.”
B0ll0cks. You’ve gone off on one of those flights of fantasy you seem to have a liking for.
There are hundreds – thousands, in fact – of Estate Agents reading this who all know the smell of horse manure and you’ve just dumped a frickin’ great cartload of it all over this page.
If – and that, Sir, is the single most incredulous IF I have ever if’d in my entire life – that genuinely IS your experience then I would suggest that you should donate your body to science NOW, as they need to study you. You are clearly unique – no other being has ever nor will ever I believe walk, crawl or otherwise transport themselves from one place to another like you. I have never met – or heard of anyone else meeting – a single person living or dead who was not aware of an Agent’s Fees and Terms prior to needing to read them for themselves on the Agency Agreement.
I would suggest trying to up your own game rather than to look for ways to suggest I’m not on mine. It will make you look somewhat less of a numpty to even those who weren’t sure how to spot one they read your diatribe – and might even win you back some respect with some of the more forgiving ones with more tolerance.
“Surely this information would be classed as material information when choosing which Agents to provide you with a valuation.”
You know what? To some, it probably would.
BUT – we still go out and give those people our time and attention, free of charge. We give them all of that because we genuinely want to help people – regardless of how narrow-minded, doubtful, concerned or prejudiced towards us they are. We do it because at the end of the day they want something done and we can do it for them – and we actually enjoy doing it.
Some people simply want the highest “valuation”. Some simply want the “cheapest” Fee. There are of course some that want both.
And, unfortunately, in the majority of cases those people get what they want – because there are some Agents who prey on them and use value and fee like candy to a wide-eyed child.
But if they then make the wrong choice – for those wrong reasons – then that was their decision. The fact is that we have done what we can to do what is right – we gave them our time, our attention – and our services to that point – freely and willingly. We could have refused to do that if we felt that our time, money and experience was going to be wasted on those people.
“It wouldn’t take more than a few lines to explain the reasons and by how much the normal rates may vary by.”
More uninformed nonsense posted purely to provoke a response? Or maybe – just maybe – it’s a cunningly concealed way of showing your resignation to that fact that you’re talking complete b0ll0cks so you’re not even putting decent effort into it anymore.
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“Our sellers achieve £5,600 more for their home on average”.
How the fandango does emoov say it can substantiate this claim! Anyone have any idea!
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Yep, they just make it up like the rest of them!
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Because they give up on emoov, go on with a local, experienced, qualified, knowledgeable “Estate Agent” and end up getting £5,600 higher from our negotiations….they just forget to put the “Ex” before Sellers.Technically it’s true? Isn’t it?
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“How the fandango does emoov say it can substantiate this claim! Anyone have any idea!”
You know me, AgentV – always happy to oblige. From the eMoov website:
“£5600 equals 2% higher selling price achieved compared to the average of our competitors according to property analysis site Hometrack”
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“Both eMoov and Tepilo have changed their websites in the last four weeks…”
Purely for the purposes of factual correctness, eMoov change their website weekly – to update their #permasale headline (as also referred to in the article body).
Current offering (added Wednesday) –
“Promotion extended! Get £200 off selling your home with code: JULY200 – Ends midnight Monday”
Replaced the previous 19-26 July inclusive:
“Limited offer! Get £200 off selling your home with code: JULY200 – Ends Midnight Tuesday”
which in turn replaced this offering from 11-18 July:
“Get £150 off and a free Premium Listing (worth £270 in total) – use code FREE270 – Ends Midnight Tuesday”
…and the band plays on.
I’ll keep collecting them.
I know they say that it won’t be replaced until next week – but every day I check two or three times, just to be sure. The same routine – same Steps:
Step #1. Clear cache and cookies
Step #2. Click on the handily positioned link at the top of the search page – that nice one that has ‘Ad’ in the box next to it…
Step #3. Repeat steps #1. and #2. using another device…
Step #4. Repeat step #3…
Step #5. As above but replace #3 with #4…
Step #6. Etc…etc…etc…
Step #37. One more round before beddibyes? Why not…
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to manage 10,000 Steps a day like Mrs PeeBee – or if these ones would even register on a FitBit – but I’m working on it! ;o)
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