EYE has been contacted by an unhappy customer of marketing materials supplier, Spec, which provides estate agents and developers with packages of photography, floorplan and virtual tours.
According to the agent, for a number of years Spec has provided the packages at a one-off cost of around £49 to £130 depending on the size of the property. Agents could download the photos and floorplans and the virtual tours were accessible via a weblink to the hosting server maintained by Spec.
Agents were able to access the virtual tours at any time, without limit, or additional charge. But apparently that has now changed.
As of last week virtual tours older than six months have been deactivated and are not viewable. In order to re-activate the tours Spec will charge the customer £49 + VAT, per property, for 180 days access.
Our source says that the first they knew of the change was a pop-up message when they logged in to the Spec site. No direct communication had been made by Spec to the customer to inform them of the introduction of the charges.
Sales agents may not be much affected by the charges since most properties will sell within the initial marketing period of 180 days – which is covered under the one-off charge per property for the marketing package of photos, floorplan and tour.
But for letting agents who may wish to re-use a virtual tour on repeated occasions as tenancies change, the charge could be considerable. An agency with say 100 virtual tours would be facing a bill of nearly £10,000 a year just to maintain their access.
As Spec’s website shows it is, ‘proud to partner with over 500 leading agents’ and that they include the likes of Belvoir, haart, Martin & Co, Barnard Marcus, Winkworth, Ellis & Co, Hunters, Keller Williams and John D Wood it is reasonable to assume that many of these companies may now be facing a substantial cost increase in order to maintain their access to their portfolio of tours.
Our source told us:
“Their [Spec] reasoning behind this change is that beyond 180 days they cannot verify the accuracy of the asset and it affects their liability. This doesn’t make sense, as they are happy for us to keep using the photos and floorplans if we’ve downloaded them to our own servers, and for £49 + VAT they’ll happily reactivate the link to the virtual tour so this excuse just doesn’t stack up. It’s purely about money.
“The main issue here, is that Spec sold a service for a number of years and have almost overnight rescinded on the agreed terms and have given us no notice or any other option whatsoever, other than to pay £49 + VAT every 180 days for continued access to the virtual tours we already have.
“It’s worth noting these terms are not just for new properties going forward, these are new terms being applied retrospectively for all properties done since day one.”
EYE asked Spec for a statement. They said:
Our terms and conditions have always stated that Spec assets are licenced for the period in which the property is being marketed, until it is sold/rented or withdrawn from the market. The capturing of the property, publishing and hosting of assets for this period has not changed and is all included in the initial cost.
The updated time frame enables us to ensure that virtual tours of properties do not remain online unnecessarily beyond this marketing period, which would raise concerns over privacy and security for new owners/tenants. It also ensures that we can maintain our Spec Verified accuracy guarantee.
We understand that there may be a requirement for the extended use of assets or a virtual tour in exceptional circumstances. In this instance, once we have confirmation that the property has not changed or been altered, customers can pay to have the assets republished for a further period of 180 days.
Sounds like they’ve moved from a one off charge to agents to a subscription based model!
Typical tech company thinking they can just milk agents for everything they can.
My photography company charge me a small hosting fee annually for exactly the same thing. Around £10 per year per hundred properties. That’s reasonable.
my advice would be to switch photography company quickly!
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I have a friend that used them. Their pricing was / is unsustainable, I assumed there was a catch and here it is. Surprised their customers didn’t see this coming. That’s going to hurt a lot of people looking at driving down their costs
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I used to use Spec but saw something like this coming so switched supplier. They pitched me hard initially promising this and that, then six months down the line when they couldn’t deliver this and that they changed their terms and just expected me to continue. I thought to myself if they can do that once they’ll do it again and it appears they have. I feel for the agents who have purchased services from this company and now appear to be being held ransom in order to get access back to their virtual tours! As a general rule now I never deal with a company that doesn’t have a number to contact them on their website which Spec doesn’t. It’s all online chat or waiting for ever for an account manager to respond.
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A close friend of mine worked as a property photographer and floorplan creator, she could not calculate how a company like Spec was able to provide a service at such a low fee. Clearly they hoped to gain your custom and hope that you become reliant on them for a price hit such as this.
Very much mimicking the race to the bottom on fees for agents, but good quality service cannot be obtained consistently for pittance.
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We use SPEC and the service has been good.
May I ask, who you switched to?
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