EA not passing on offer

blackshirtuk

so after investigation if they find in my favour, the agent "could" get a warning....seems a lot of hassle for no real result.

rosie383

blackshirtuk wrote: »

so after investigation if they find in my favour, the agent "could" get a warning....seems a lot of hassle for no real result.

Unfortunately if everyone thinks like this then nothing will change. It may be hassle to complain, but if everyone can have a tiny voice, it can make a big noise.

eddddy

blackshirtuk wrote: »

so after investigation if they find in my favour, the agent "could" get a warning....seems a lot of hassle for no real result.

There's no concept of "finding in your favour". It's a question of whether they've broken the law.

Did you ask the question because you were hoping for some kind of monetary compensation? I assumed you wanted to report a corrupt EA for breaking the law.

FWIW - if the seller has suffered a loss as a result of the EA's actions, they could probably make a claim for damages from the EA.

ShAnE

We have a similar issue with estate agents around our way, they seemingly aren't fussed about getting the best price possible as everyone makes a blind offer (no final, or seal bids) then the buyer accepts one of those.

No negotiating, just accept which ever of the 5 bids are on the table. Which I find very odd as surely you'd want to tell the other 4 bidder that they are not the highest bid to see if they can improve their offer.

But I guess if all bids are quite close the EA will be encouraging them to accept the bid from the person getting a mortgage/survey through the EA.

dodger1

blackshirtuk wrote: »

He went to the agents office thursday am to sign some paperwork and was told that the person who had offered £230k cash had now upped their offer to £237K !!

We told him what we had offered and that we could have offered if more if given the chance but were refused by the agent. We left our number and he was going to speak to agent.

Why not just tell the vendor your new offer, it's up to the vendor which offer is accepted not the EA. I can't believe that completion has happened already.

blackshirtuk

eddddy wrote: »

There's no concept of "finding in your favour". It's a question of whether they've broken the law.

Did you ask the question because you were hoping for some kind of monetary compensation? I assumed you wanted to report a corrupt EA for breaking the law.

FWIW - if the seller has suffered a loss as a result of the EA's actions, they could probably make a claim for damages from the EA.

Not looking for any compensation just feel it is unfair for the seller, but if there is no real punishment it feels a bit pointless for me to complain and it should be seller.

However as I doubt that the seller would complain as we have tried to explain the situation to him but he doesn't understand and wants us to deal with the agent.

blackshirtuk

dodger1 wrote: »

Why not just tell the vendor your new offer, it's up to the vendor which offer is accepted not the EA. I can't believe that completion has happened already.

We did, we went to see him and told him our offer, The other offer that was accepted at £230K was mysteriously raised the following day without any further contact between the seller or ourselves and the agent.

eddddy

blackshirtuk wrote: »

Not looking for any compensation just feel it is unfair for the seller, but if there is no real punishment it feels a bit pointless for me to complain and it should be seller.

However as I doubt that the seller would complain as we have tried to explain the situation to him but he doesn't understand and wants us to deal with the agent.

I interpret the rules slightly differently, more like:

"Do it once and you get a warning. Do it again and you're banned from being an EA for life."

(Or if it's sufficiently serious you can be banned straight away.)


So I guess the EA has managed to persuade the seller that you're the baddy and the EA is the goody.

By not reporting the EA, perhaps they will go on to mislead other 'less sophisticated' sellers as well.

If you're interested, here's the list of EAs with warnings and banning orders: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140109151452/http://www.oft.gov.uk/OFTwork/estate-agents/register/earalpha/

You'll see there's a guy called Alan Langley-Smith on the list. He was banned back in 2004. A news report from back then says:

Investigators who caught his staff making up the fictitious bids also found that a vendor was not told about an offer from one would-be buyer who had declined to use the firm's in-house mortgage advice team.
...
It was found that Langley-Smith had not passed on an offer from a buyer who did not seek mortgage advice from Hadleys staff, but did pass on a much lower bid for the same property from a buyer who did seek their guidance.

Trading standards officers reported Langley-Smith to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), which has now ruled him "unfit to carry on estate agency work". Police and trading standards are considering whether to bring criminal charges.

Link: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/estate-agent-forced-up-prices-with-bogus-bids-6952771.html