Estate agents protest as Rightmove discounted fees period ends
Many businesses claim they still need time to recover their revenue pipeline, particularly in local lockdown areas, before fees go up again.
Rightmove is sending out invoices to thousands of agents at full fee as its Covid discount deals begin to lapse but many agents have taken to social media over the weekend to complain.
The portal introduced its revised discounted fees structure in early March and then extended it in May.
This originally offered its customers a deferred and slowly diminishing discounted fees structure, which after protests was switched to a blanket 75% reduction until October 1st.
But these deals have now ended and one of the unhappy customers is Sam Watterson, who says his fees increased significantly overnight.
“Rightmove just tried to double my fees and put me on a geographical membership; I’ve cancelled my direct debit and told them to stick it,” he says.
Watterson says he’s now the only agent not on Rightmove in his town but he doesn’t care “because I do a lot better than them”.
Lockdown
And another agent says his pre-Covid fees have returned despite “nearly all of South Wales back in lockdown”.
North London agent Murray Lee, who is one of the people behind recent attempts to persuade Rightmove to permanently drop its fees, says: “They didn’t listen when we told them they had to be attentive to our pleas.
“Not a word. Hence I and many – although not enough – handed in our notice head of 1st October knowing full well our fees would return to normal, and one local colleague has had a 10.75% increase as his contract renewed on that date.”
If Rightmove don’t respond to any of the reasoned appeals, that completions and therefore recovering income, is still weeks away, then it is a clear sign of their future intentions. That will be keep their head down and wait that the furore to go away and then revert to a regime of increasing subscriptions, firstly to recover their revenue losses and then to satisfy and please their shareholders. (many of which are the big Corporates) If you are expecting any other outcome, don’t hold your breath!
Some agents MIGHT take this on the chin with the sales market buzzing in many areas but once SDLT holiday comes to an end things will shift and 2021 will see us face the real impact of covid. Another open goal to have met agents halfway- but they don’t like open goals.
At least 1 more agent Im aware of resigned from 1/10
Hold the press
Make that 2 more…..Just been advised of another
From little acorns etc..
We had what you called ‘balls’ and left five months ago when everybody moaning now should of but did not.
Best thing apart from having children and getting divorced that I ever did 🙂
I emailed them about the fee hike and asked why they are so out of sync with reality and didn’t understand their own customer’s pipeline – it takes 3 -4 months to bank… no response, accept that “good news”, we have another account manager – for this week oh and an invoice.
Rightmove is silent, the agents have remained vocal, October will see which of these strategies turns out to be the winner. Perceived indifference has always been the achilles heel of many big businesses.
For a business which once launched the ‘Find your happy’ charm offensive – take it from me an awful lot of agents are very unhappy.