The boss of The Property Franchise Group – whose brands include Martin & Co and EweMove – says that the claim by Purplebricks to be the most positively reviewed estate agent is misleading.
Ian Wilson told EYE: “EweMove has over 2,000 TrustPilot reviews and a score of 9.9 against Purplebricks’ 9.5.
“We are the only UK sized agent with this score and we claim (accurately) to be most trusted estate agent on TrustPilot.”
Wilson went on: “It’s an important point because unlike online listing models, EweMove franchisees see the transaction through from valuation to viewing offer and completion. We use a lot of clever technology along the way, but essentially customers have one person they deal with from start to finish, and if we mess up, our rating would be punished.”
Wilson said: “With the departure of the EweMove founders our focus is now on recruiting experienced estate agents as EweMove franchisees. We think that experienced agents who work within a listing model are using only 25% of their skill set and will get bored and frustrated.
“EweMove has been guilty in the past of demonising agents as disinterested in service, but in my experience the best agents naturally give great customer service because they want to get sales over the line.
“We are putting our money where our mouth is as we have cut the franchise fee for experienced agents and will back them with a cash advance for every property they list. But when they complete on sales the franchisee keeps all the commission to themselves, less a £250 completion fee and return of the cash advance.
Wilson said of Purplebricks’ claim to be the most positively reviewed agent that it was ” cleverly worded to be technically correct but would be interpreted incorrectly by the man on the street”.
Wilson said: “I think it’s a risky strategy for a business that wants to be perceived as transparent with customers.”
Wilson confirmed to EYE that the two original founders of EweMove, Glenn Ackroyd and David Laycock, left at the end of June.
The new managing director is Nick Neil, formerly one of ‘the flock’.
Three other MDs, including those of Martin & Co and Xperience, are due to take up their positions within the Property Franchise Group on September 1, with their names not yet announced.
What?? This makes top story?? I think Mr Wilson has made a fool of himself here! Most positively reviewed is purple bricks and for Wilson to say anything different is absurd!
is Mr Wilson forgetting he is a PLC company.
Next we will hear a one man band with one 5 star review come out and say he is better than them all!! Honestly you couldn’t write this!
its a completely different story though when you read their reviews on Allagents
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Who trusts Trust Pilot?
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Sent to Trustpilot Compliance on the 26/07/2018
Dear Compliance
Your terms and conditions are quite clear in that a review can only be attached to “the” or “a” company who provided the product or service (see attached). However, quite apart from the questions previously raised over the probity of many of their reviews, Purplebricks PLC are not the provider of the service/ product of which the reviewer is reviewing in the vast majority of the cases but the sole trader or private limited company with which the reviewer purchased the service from, placed the order with or, experienced the service of.
Purplebricks make it very clear on their website that their LPEs’ are self-employed and, as such, it is highly misleading to consumers and a breach of your own Ts’ and Cs’ to allocate and amalgamate reviews of several hundred other companies/ businesses to one, singular, separate, company entirely.
Please confirm that all of the offending reviews will now be removed as a matter of priority.
Terms and Conditions: http://uk.legal.trustpilot.com/end-user-terms-and-conditions
User guidelines: http://uk.legal.trustpilot.com/user-guidelines
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I seem to recall someone commenting that TrustPilot reviews for PB are done as soon as the property is put on the market and pushed by the LPE’s. These ratings are logged for putting the property on the market, not about the service that then follows (if at all) or even a sale.
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Response now in from TP and a reply sent:
Dear Robert
Cc BBC Watchdog, You and Yours and NTSEAT
1 Inviting users to submit reviews of the Company
A user (“User”) is someone who:
· has purchased a product or service from the Company,
· has placed an order with the Company, or
· can otherwise document his/her use of the Company’s service, including via correspondence or other interaction with the Company.
(These are collectively referred to as “Service Experience” in the following.)
When the Company sends invitations to its Users inviting them to review the Company on Trustpilot, the Company must observe the following rules. The rules apply regardless of whether review invitations are sent via the Company’s own system or through our review invitation services:
1.1 The Company must ensure that Users are invited equally and identically to submit reviews about their experience with the Company.
1.2 The Company may not selectively invite Users to submit reviews; as a general rule, the Company must invite all or none of its Users. If the Company wishes to deviate from the principle of all or none, the Company must ensure that the Users who are invited to submit reviews are selected in an objective, unbiased manner. For example, this could mean inviting every third User.
1.3 The language in the review invitation must be neutral, unbiased and independent of whether the User is expected to have had a positive or negative experience with the Company. It must not include any attempts to (i) influence the User to review the Company in a positive or negative manner, (ii) attract specific types of Users, or (iii) otherwise artificially achieve an outcome desired by the Company.
1.4 If the Company has offered an incentive to Users to write reviews, this information must be shown on their company profile page on Trustpilot. The Company must inform Trustpilot about the use of incentives by sending an email to compliance@trustpilot.com. Incentives include the Company offering Users a gift, reward, discount or advantage for writing a review about the Company on our Website.
Trustpilots (TP) definition of a user above is clear and unambiguous, as is your requirement to ensure that users are asked to review “the (singular) company” and not an amalgam of businesses involved in the process (including the solicitors and loan company used by PB PLC. I would also question whether the company in question is contacting its own clients or has passed personal information to another company (LPE/ PB PLC) and has explicit permission to do so.
Whilst writing, I assume that TP are fully aware that none of the 100s’ of PBs’ LPEs businesses that were recently checked, are registered as data controllers with the Information Commissioners Office and so, may be using Trustpilot information to, potentially, breach data protection laws?
As I am sure you are aware and your solicitors will confirm, the majority of the reviews relate to an individual LPE (as they are often mentioned individually within the review). As previously stated, these LPEs’ are all self-employed sole-traders or limited companies. It is quite clear that these reviews (those that are genuine and verified, which most are not) refer to that LPE trading as Purplebricks and not PB PLC itself. It is therefore quite clear that Purplebricks PLC is using reviews of hundreds of other companies and passing them off as its own. Consumers visiting your website are assured that each review refers to “a” (singular) company but, as it stands, this is highly misleading to consumers and a breach of your own Ts’ and Cs’. A response by return is expected.
Regards
Chris Wood
From: Trustpilot Compliance [mailto:compliance@trustpilot.com]
Sent: 07 August 2017 09:39
To: Chris Wood <chris.wood@pdq-property.co.uk>
Subject: [Trustpilot Compliance] Ticket #570225 “Allocation of reviews to Purplebricks PLC which are not Purplebricks PLC customers” is now closed##- Please type your reply above this line -##
COMPLIANCE
Quality & Compliance (Trustpilot)
Aug 7, 10:39 CEST
Dear Chris,
Your case was escalated to me as I am the Quality and Compliance Manager for Europe. Please excuse my late reply as this has only come to my attention now as I was off last week.
You are correct that on Trustpilot reviews must be posted on a company profile where a user had an experience. As per Section 1 of our User Guidelines, an experience can be either a purchase, and/or a placed order, and/or a service experience. In this regards we do not see a breach of our guidelines, as the reviewers have had an experience with Purple Bricks since they have found listings, posted listing, booked viewings and been assigned an LPE, etc. on through Purple Bricks. Therefore, regardless of the employment status of the LPEs, because the reviews had an “experience” with Purple Bricks they are entitled to share that experience.
I do remain open for further feedback from you should you still have additional concerns that you feel might have been overlooked. Should you have additional questions or concerns please reply to this email as it will come straight to me.
Kind regards,
Robert
Quality and Compliance Manager, Europe
Trustpilot Compliance Team
Read more about how we’re working to maintain integrity in online reviews at: https://uk.trustpilot.com/trust
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Guess they are paid too much money by some of their customers to even consider what is right and what is wrong!!!
At least they are fast becoming a joke because of it. Well tried Chris!
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I’m not done yet… 😉
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Chris
The compliance officer refers to “a service experience” yet allows Bricks to remove any posts where they reviewer cant show proof of purchase Basically that means the majority of potential buyers and those vendors who decide not to go ahead maybe because of bad experience are excluded ie the majority of bad reviews
The fact that TP allow Bricks to police the site means they are hardly going to remove favourable reviews which maybe aren’t genuine
The syetem is fundamentally flawed and highly skewed to the company who pays TP’s fees
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You beauty! Good spot. Thank you.
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So what is the alternative? One that is commercially viable? If there was one then it would already exist.
For those of us who remember the pre-Trustpilot days it is probably the only way to do it. Better a ranking system that favours the company being reviewed than no ranking system whatsoever. It’s the same rules for everyone so you can compare companies at least.
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You mean it is better to allow them to mislead! Better to compare companies that mislead!! How about those that don’t mislead … you know the ones the public want to find?
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Yes, it’s better to compare companies that work to TrustPilot’s T&C’s rather than no comparison whatsoever.
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Chris,
You are desperately clutching at straws 🙂 Just wasting your time. Nothing you do seems to affect the confidence investors and customers have in the company from what I can see.
“Purplebricks PLC are not the provider of the service/ product of which the reviewer is reviewing in the vast majority of the cases but the sole trader or private limited company with which the reviewer purchased the service from”
You do know that customers purchase the service from PurpleBricks don’t you?
Check out the top rated Estate Agents. https://uk.trustpilot.com/categories/real-estate-agent
Your time would be better spent getting your own customers to review your service.
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We disagree again
And my customers (those that completed, bought, rented or let through me) DID rate me and took us to The ESTAS (as you may be aware, Purplebricks seem none too keen to accept the verdict of customers who have sold through them in #TheBet).
“You do know that customers purchase the service from PurpleBricks don’t you?”Yes, if you read my reply, you would see that I am well aware of that. You are aware that TPs Ts and Cs only allow for the company being used to be reviewed whereas all of the reviews tend to mention the LPE? PB/ you can’t have it both ways.
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Chris,
>my customers (those that completed, bought, rented or let through me) DID rate me and took us to The ESTAS
Never heard of it. What I’m saying is that you should use TrustPilot because that’s what PurpleBricks use. All your other methods don’t work but if you and 10,000 other Agents had better rankings than PurpleBricks then that would push PurpleBricks down to 1001st.
Do you really think that TP would intend to write T&C’s that exclude a company like PurpleBricks being reviewed. What do you want? People to review PurpleBricks without mentioning the person that represents them?
What is your motive for trying to get TrustPilot to drop PurpleBriicks on some alleged technicality? The idea is completely ludicrous, trivial and never going to get you anywhere.
Trustpilot’s system is flawed but it’s the best you are going to get.
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You do talk nonsense. Not intended as an insult but fact.
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Trustpilot’s system is flawed but it’s the best you are going to get.
No it should not be allowed or cease trading.
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And then what would you have?
It’s a bit like saying Google shouldn’t be allowed because it doesn’t actually produce the best possible results for a search.
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“…if you and 10,000 other Agents had better rankings than PurpleBricks then that would push PurpleBricks down to 1001st.”
Ducky – can you actually count?
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PeeBee, thanks for spotting my mistake.
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Cyberduck, I like to think that you’re actually a self aware virtual intelligence created by an amalgamation of the Purplebricks computer security systems and the major listing portals data sets. That’d be so much cooler then you being some guy or gal behind a computer screen defending a blatantly unethical company.
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We are not agents but we are involved in rental property as we sell landlord insurances. Although even as a semi-outsider I can see that the estate agency business is in quite a lot of turmoil at the moment.
Personally I would NEVER sell my house using Purple Bricks. And the main reason is their down-market and tacky looking ugly logo. Everybody knows that if you want to sell an upmarket house you paint the door grey, black or perhaps that delightful shade of sage green – you do NOT paint it purple. Now I know that ‘Sage Green Bricks’ just doesn’t cut and that ‘Purple’ has that other meaning etc, … but ‘Purple’ – Purple!
I believe the future of agents lies in neither the stick-in-the-mud traditional agencies nor internet kids like Purple Bricks. What vendors and buyers alike want is an agency that has real local knowledge and gives great service but does not cost a fortune! And the way to do this is for trad agencies to give up on maintaining High Street offices.
Once upon a time Mr and Mrs Housebuyer would drift from one bright and shiny High Street agent to another, having nice fresh coffee on the way. Now, they are far more likely to just log on to one of the well known property portals and then call up agents. They don’t really care where your office is, as long as it’s reasonably clean, local and if necessary they can come in to sign contracts or whatever. Just have nice basic offices in anonymous looking grey office blocks. Think of the massive saving on rent, rates, security and insurance and you could still give them a cup of coffee.
Suppose someone is trying to sell their house for around £900,000. If the agent’s successful at that price it will cost them £9000 plus VAT = £10800! Now I know Purple Bricks would say it would only cost around £1200 plus VAT but that’s only if they were successful. I suspect that if many good local agents didn’t have a flashy High Street presence to maintain, they could afford to charge no more than £5000 plus VAT. Still a lot more than Purple Bricks style businesses, but the vendor wouldn’t have to pay them a penny until they’d actually done the deal, including all the really hard work chasing solicitors, management companies etc!
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I think the public realise what nonsense TrustPilot is.
The companies pay them so they can be reviewed. A company as brash and bulshy as PurpleB would pull a very lucrative account from TrustPilot if the reviews weren’t what they wanted, and multiple examples have been posted to show the figures are massaged in PB favour.
Anyone the believes the rating needs their head examining frankly.
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“I think it’s a risky strategy for a business that wants to be perceived as transparent with customers.”
Very Funny
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I did a poll about TrustPilot …. guess what, many said who? and others said they don’t trust them. The others thought the information must be accurate or they wouldn’t be allowed the ratings.
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