Agent Chris Wood has been given ten days in which to comply with the Advertising Standards Authority ruling, telling him to remove two claims from his firm’s website.
Industry regulator NTSEAT has given him until a minute to midnight on September 6 to take down the claim that “49.6% of customers lost £1,000”, and “Cheap agents could cost UK consumers up to half £1bn in wasted fees”.
However Wood says he will not do so.
Wood should have removed the claims by this Wednesday, but says he did not receive the first letter from NTSEAT, dated August 16, and has been granted the extension.
The first claim he has been told to take down was in a tweet last October, which was a reference to his perception of Purplebricks’ sales rates in part of Cornwall; the second was in a blog that is now almost four years old, dating back to December 2014.
Wood, of Cornish agents PDQ Estates, had defended both claims – unsuccessfully – to the ASA, using Zoopla data to try and show the ASA that his calculations in last October’s were correct.
Wood made it very clear from the outset that he did not accept the ruling, while the ASA said it would refer the matter to NTSEAT.
In a new letter to NTSEAT, Wood accuses it of going outside its own remit.
He says: “I have never knowingly nor have any intention of misleading the public in any way and will happily comply with any proper and legitimate investigation/process and outcome.
“That said, I do not believe I have misled the public in this instance and take exception to a non-statutory, non-governmental body (the ASA) publishing what I believe to be defamatory statements about my personal integrity and business, and for the NTSEAT to agree with this situation with no apparent investigation and insist I comply with that decision despite no formal interview or due process.”
He says in the letter that NTSEAT has gone outside its own remit, quoting from its own website: “The National Trading Standards Team does not mediate or arbitrate in individual complaints between estate agents and consumers (or) award civil redress to aggrieved parties.
“(Nor does it) “conduct ‘routine’ investigations outside of its remit in issuing prohibition or warning orders under the Estate Agency Act 1979.”
Wood asks on what specific grounds NTSEAT believes he has transgressed the Act.
Wood’s referral to NTSEAT was in itself a sanction, and he has been told he could nos face enforcement action if he does not remove the claims by the deadline.
The ASA says that it does refer advertisers who refuse to abide by its rulings to other bodies, and that one of the most persuasive sanctions is bad publicity.
While NTSEAT has told him that failure to comply within the deadline will result in enforcement action, it does not say what this could be. However, its normal punishments are either a warning, or expulsion, but these are normally for legal breaches.
Comments (4)
Chris, why not play the game?
Remove the postings. Change a couple of words and repost.
When another complaint is made, do the same again.
What’s good for the goose…..
Both the ASA and NTSEAT are useless and probably don’t have the staff or process to actually enforce to the very end.
As Smile said, play the game.
The trouble is, it appears that NTSEAT, ASA, TPOS, and NAEA etc are playing ‘Haven’t got a Cluedo’.
The thing is, SP, there has been a clarification made on the post several weeks ago which the NSTEAT and ASA were made aware of.
What is deeply worrying is that NTSEAT has stated an agent must comply with an order made by a non-statutory body despite no investigation or contact by the NTSEAT. Not only does this fly in the face of their own procedure and advertised remit, it is against common law.
Despite this, NTSEAT have apparently rewritten the law on Ombudsman scheme membership, seemingly purely to allow it to avoid having to investigate a certain company for failing to have multiple memberships for its franchisees and, appear perfectly perfectly happy to ignore Purplebricks PLCs’ admission that there were several hundred breaches of AML (as reported widely in PIE and other publications recently).