Estate agents don't have a great reputation. Today did nothing to improve that perception for me. We arrived to view a house but the owner didn't show. It turned out the estate agent was supposed to call him back to confirm the time and date but hadn't. We rearranged, this time directly with the owner and managed to meet him mid-morning.
He was very apologetic about the mix up and as we headed into the garden said, 'So as you know we're not selling this property now but Paul (estate agent) said you were happy to see the other one'. We of course knew nothing of this. We'd even asked the agent if the owner was reluctant to sell when he hadn't turned up. Obviously he said no. We ended up having a look around the other property and it was an interesting building but it's not what we'd hoped to be viewing. Poor management and a truly terrible customer experience.
The problem is what can we as buyers and sellers do? Well the seller can opt to move to another agent but as a buyer, if the property you're interested in is registered with an agent that shows little regard for 'a customer', then you either suck it up or walk away from what could be a dream house.
When you're talking about hundreds of thousands of pounds, it's not unreasonable to expect better service than we experienced today. Sadly it seems to be unrealistic.
