An angry man alleged on social media to be an estate agent has been filmed assaulting a disgruntled tenant after being called a w****r.
Property Industry Eye has not been able to verify whether the individual works for the Eaton Green branch in Denmark Hill, south London, although it has been reported in one national newspaper that the man is in fact a director of the agency.
In a video shared online, a group of young people are seen leaving the Eaton Green branch in Denmark Hill.
As they are exiting, one of the tenants shouts ‘well done, w****r’, prompting a man from inside the office to follow them out and aim a kick at one of the youngsters.
He can then be seen picking up a sandwich board and aiming it at the group while two men in suits, believed to be estate agents, attempt to calm him down.
The incident has provoked outrage on social media. Eaton Green has since deleted its Twitter account.
EYE has tried to contact Eaton Green but received no response.
ARLA Propertymark took to Twitter yesterday to say that it is currently investigating the footage and any case would follow its regulatory processes.
“Our standards would never tolerate unprofessional or violent behaviour,” the organisation tweeted.
WARNING: video includes strong language.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1517079653864800256
Comments (6)
Violence isn’t ever the answer and in no way do I condone this at all. However, there is no context and it was also not appropriate for the tenant to verbally abuse this individual.
Sadly, we have reached a point in society where it’s all to acceptable for our profession to be shouted at, abused verbally and physically, threatened, etc. who here hasn’t been treated like that for no apparent reason? If you have worked in this industry long enough it’s a given! But, still we are wrong thanks to tenants rights.
we are not allowed to be human or have feelings and lives outside of our jobs, it’s quite a disgusting and sad indictment of where society is headed and year on year it gets worse with levels of selfish entitlement soaring.
My team have lost loved ones and we have to take them off phones for some time thereafter, and appointments, because we just cannot be sure how people on the phone will behave these days. Only recently I had to call security on site to remove a father from our offices who was yelling at my team before they needed to R2R check his daughter and her friend and couldn’t release keys to them until we had. When did all this become okay?
It’s quite clear that none of what’s in that video gives any context to the situation before or what the man concerned was going through or who he is. All of which are needed for context, although they still don’t excuse violence.
Equally I find it all too convenient that someone videoed this from the point of leaving the office and calling him a w**ker… It definitely reeks of a set up!
Whilst there is no excuse for violence, Opinions are being formed across social media, without anyone knowing the full story.
It seems ‘convenient’ to me that the clip is only 45 seconds long with no mention of the scenario or lead up to the event.
Whatever the context or prelude to this incident, violence isn’t the answer. Although there is clearly an agenda, precipitated in part by the LRU who later encouraged people to leave negative reviews on Google. Yesterday EG’s Google reviews went from circa 150 at lunchtime to now over 500.
There has been a huge wave of assumptions made on social media about the identity of the protagonist, with no clear answer yet so far as I can see. The estate agency itself has now been ripped to shreds online, perhaps irreparably, when it seems far from clear whether this guy is an employee, director or even the landlord. The requests I’ve seen from people asking for clarification have, so far, gone unanswered.
I saw the reviews myself this morning and these are completely unfair. Especially given ordinary members of staff are just trying to do their jobs and make a living.
I’m all for reviews if you have had a positive / negative personal experience with an agent but for strangers to jump on a bandwagon is out of order.
As usual, “fur coat and no knickers ” reporting. Nothing about the lead up, the background and certainly no facts yet enough to reinforce most people’s views of agents. Trial by social media.
This is extremely sad for various reasons.
Thank goodness though that the matter didn’t result in any injuries. The lady who was filming (and how did she get to record the “whole” thing? Was this a set up?) hit the nail on the head by asking if the man was alright.
Whatever the circumstances, I suspect the man was under more pressure than he could bear, and simply snapped. If so, I hope he is already getting help. On the other hand, he could simply be a thug, who knows… In one fell swoop though, he has seriously tarnished, if not destroyed an otherwise respected brand.
Violence is never the answer though!