Your experiences (good & bad) with estate agents

A_Nice_Englishman

Thanks for that cheltenhamgirl.

It was interesting to note that you have compliance visits and mystery shoppers. Presumably you receive training in the law and the Ombudsman's Code of Practice too?

I had to complain to my estate agent and it was clear from his response that he was ignorant of some parts of the law and the Code and hadn't even read them before replying to me even though I referred to them in my letter. This was a single office independent agent. I would always use a large regional or national agency in the future.

cheltenhamgirl

Yes, any one who works for our company has to undertake 10 'training days' over the first three months of working here. The first and most important of these is all about property law, the ombudsman, and how it relates to us. We are all then required to take a test to confirm that we have all taken it in. Our compliance tests are twice a year, and if the whole branch scores less than 95% the manager loses money from their basic salary! The same with mystery shoppers...it's a very good incentive for the branch managers to keep everything above board and legal I guess!

DanceInThe_Dark

I've been lucky in that most ea's I've dealt with have been ok.

The worst ones don't return your calls (and that's when you are trying to buy!) and don't seem to understand your requirements ie I asked for a large garden in a rural location and was sent anything that happened to be in my price bracket such as flats in town centres etc!

The worse one I met while selling was what I suppose you'd call a "wide boy" just started to work at the agency were my proeprty was being marketed.
Houses were slow to sell but as I hadn't found anything I wasn't worried.
Anyway he passed on an offer around £20,000 lower than the asking price and told me I should be grateful to get it and that I should rip their arm off.
When I said I'd already spoken to the buyer and they had told me they could go another £10,000 higher I was told that I "didn't know what I was talking about and that he knew the buyer wouldn't go any higher."
He then went into "estate agent speel" about how lucky I was getting an offer when the market was so slow and I should find rented so I didn't lose my new buyer.

Finally I got a word in edgeways and told him "NO!" and put the phone down on him.

So my advice is, don't try to bully people in any way.

madfrenchgirl

Lynzpower: sorry about the age discrimination thing. What I really meant behind that is that Laura had to induce a dress code. Having pink hair or emo hair spike din every direction and a thousand piercings does not look serious in a service industry.

lynzpower

madfrenchgirl wrote: »

Lynzpower: sorry about the age discrimination thing. What I really meant behind that is that Laura had to induce a dress code. Having pink hair or emo hair spike din every direction and a thousand piercings does not look serious in a service industry.

Im quite staggered at this.

Ive never known ea to have anything BUT a smart uit , blouse & skirt, tigts & shoes dress code.

cheltenhamgirl

I have to say, I am too....If I turned up with Pink hair , or just not wearing a suit I would be sent home and told not to come back to work until it was sorted....I'm a young(well, youngish...) girl too and I am very aware that I need to make my sefl presentabnle in order to be taken seriously in this job.

madfrenchgirl

Even if you wear a suit, having pink hair (girls) and emo hair for guys still does not look serious.

(and before I totally get slanted for my comments: I am a female business consultant, 25 yo, working in a male dominated environment where the average age is 45, I know what it feels like to be young in an industry where people expect you to be old. In these cases, you have to make the most out of yourself and if that includes giving up young fashion statement so be it!)

cheltenhamgirl

I'm not sure whether you've misread my comment or i've misread your comment, but I totally agree, pink hair or peircings are not serious, and no-one in my company would dream of turning up to work with either of those.

reformedEffortMaker_2

well, for the doubters, I can name a certain EA on the borders of London/Essex who seem to employee wide boys as standard. They all wear half a tub of hair gel and pink/lilac gingham shirts, with loud pin stripe suits, BROWN, yes BROWN!!! leather pointy shoes and insist on shouting down the phone (as if they are on some virtual trading floor), and turning up to viewings with the roof down on their sporty convertibles and rubbish music blaring.

I also think I can justify discriminating based on age a bit, I do it in my current job with success. I understand that you cant tar everyone with the same brush, but how can an 18 yr old, (whose mum still pours out his coco-pops in the morning) understand how devastating it is to loose a house just before exchange after you have resigned from a job and enrolled your kids in new schools?, or how concerned you would be about teenagers hanging around in the alley way behind your potential new house, or the fact that there is a 3 yr waiting list for the nearest doctor.

I think when it comes to buying HOMES not HOUSES, they just lack the necessary experience.
(Sorry if I have offended anyone) :rolleyes:

A_Nice_Englishman

reformedEffortMaker wrote: »

well, for the doubters, I can name a certain EA on the borders of London/Essex who seem to employee wide boys as standard. They all wear half a tub of hair gel and pink/lilac gingham shirts, with loud pin stripe suits, BROWN, yes BROWN!!! leather pointy shoes and insist on shouting down the phone (as if they are on some virtual trading floor), and turning up to viewings with the roof down on their sporty convertibles and rubbish music blaring.

Presumably they are only doing what we have been discussing and dressing in the way their target clientel expect an estate agent to?