Estate Agent Ethical?

hechizero

These are the relevant excepts from a director of the company in reply to my complaint. I will not be taking the matter further as both the manager of the branch and the agent involved are blatantly lying about events. It would be my word against theirs and to be honest life is too short to take that stress. This experience has left me a little depressed to be honest. I would probably never be able to buy a property through this agency as there is a total lack of faith.

"When any property is marketed any member of the public can make offers at any time and these nmay have come in whilst the negotiator was out of the office. in fact on this property we had 3 offers all at the full asking price. Because of this all the staff were told not to make any further bookings for valuations . There would have been no value in putting foward your offer with 3 other offers already on the table, so to speak, and you were advised of this."

Just to remind you I did ask to put in an offer and was rejected. So it may well have been above the full asking price.

"We also had a priority buying list of people who had been financially vetted by Kings, and we would be going back to these if any offers were declined. I understand you were offered the same service but again declined this. We have to act in the interest of the vendor so we would not be doiing our job correctly if we did not put forward any offers that had been properly vetted. However, we would not tell anyone that it is mandatory to see our Financial Advisor before considering offers, but anyone who had been vetted would be on the priority applicant list. All 3 offers in this case had not been vetted by us, so to say we acted incorrectly is really without substance."

So the bottom line is that "vetted" in this case means using their service.

"Finally, your e mail seems to suggest that there were some sort of spurious negotiations going on around this sale, but this is without any fabrication, or substance. We have acted legally, and lawfully, and also acted in the best interests of our client, the vendor. The three offers were put forward to the vendor, and it would be their decision to choose the right one."

I am still not convinced about this sales process being totally fair to the vendor or the buyer.

"I am sorry you have felt it necessary to complain, but thete is no grounds to take this any further internally, but should you wish to complain further I suggest you contact the Ombudsman for Estate Agents."

Well at least I got a reply, these guys sure closed ranks quickly. Please note the numerous spelling errors by the director, surely he knows about spell check, or is this symptomatic?