April Fools’ Day falling on Easter Monday this year rather dampened most agents’ efforts at pulling the wool over peoples’ eyes, but not so in the case of Purplebricks.
Splashed all over ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) were an assortment of advertisements inviting the download of the firm’s new ‘BS detector‘.
Having led a sheltered existence we Googled ‘BS’ and were offered definitions that included ‘Bishop Suffragen’ and ‘Balance Sheet’, which we didn’t think was what PB had in mind.
We then alighted on a rather crude American abbreviation involving a male cow and its effluent and concluded this was the intended meaning.
Smelling a rat (at least, we think the smell was rat) we gingerly clicked the download button – only to be led to a steaming let-down.
Instead of finding a useful app that would sniff out the use of some actual estate agency BS terms such as ‘deceptively spacious’ or ‘boasting’, we arrived at a web page showing ‘Error 104’ – presumably a subtle reference to the day’s date – and no sign of the app.
So, rather disappointingly, it seems that the promised delivery of a BS detector was in fact, er, BS.
Not even funny. Except the fact that they couldn’t even execute an April Fool properly by following it through to a funny punchline instead of an error page. Why not do something with positive overtones? PB continue to knock the industry that they are part of.
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Good honest ethical agents should work hard to overturn the public perception of a business sector some are happy to tell lies. Imagine the Met Police posting an April fool about some of the wrongs they have done? Not clever.
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The irony of this coming from a company that continues to mislead with their pricing structure and is probably one of the biggest reasons why the public are wary of ‘BS’ in our industry is not lost on me! Not smart business to draw attention to ones own failings really. I think the teenage interns running the social media accounts for PB will have had their access revoked by now.
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Ye Gods, how on earth are this shower even a thing?
This job has always required emotional intelligence and expectation management, it has the longest “cooling off” period of any sale of anything, BS artists simply don’t last it just depends on who sniffs them out first, its usually their colleagues.
This market is tough, low urgency with multiple pressures, Richard Heads coming up with excrement like this should do something else for a living, what a waste of effort.
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