It always starts the same way. A company claims to be helping, making things easier, faster, better. People trust it, use it, and before long it dominates the entire market. Then comes the shift.

Prices rise. Contracts tighten. Service disappears. Once they know you cannot leave, they stop caring.

These are not always official monopolies but what the CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) calls virtual monopolies, where one company has so much control that everyone else is trapped. You can choose another provider on paper, but in reality you cannot survive without them.

That is when greed turns to abuse. They write unfair contracts, raise prices without reason, and exploit every loophole they can find. They do their best to stall regulation, drown complaints in legal jargon, and carry on as if the law does not apply to them.

Look at energy, telecoms, tech, and especially property portals. They earn massive profits while estate agents, their supposed customers and therefore people like me, feel like hostages.

Tightens control

Agents cannot walk away because sellers demand to be on the biggest site. The portal knows it, so it tightens control year after year with higher fees and restrictive rules.

Those extra costs do not just hurt agents. They are passed straight on to consumers through higher fees, marketing charges, and inflated property costs. Everyone ends up paying the price while one company reaps the reward.

This is not fair competition. Small agents are being drained while the portal posts record margins and executives collect bonuses.

The CMA should step in long before it reaches this point, but it is too slow, too cautious, and too late.”

And when anyone fights back, class action lawsuits take years. By the time they conclude, the companies have already pocketed more profit than any fine could ever recover.

The CMA should step in long before it reaches this point, but it is too slow, too cautious, and too late.

When a company can dictate terms, act unfiarly, and crush those who helped build its success, that is not business. It is control disguised as progress.

It is time the regulators woke up.”

The longer this continues, the more ordinary people pay the price. It is time the regulators woke up before another industry is broken beyond repair.

Fair markets only exist when someone has the courage to fight for them.

Shaun Adams is Co-founder of Cooper Adams in West Sussex and organiser of a petition against Rightmove fees and a website on ‘the portal fees scandal’.

What does Rightmove say?

Listen to Rightmove CEO Johan Svanstrom’s comments during a recent BBC interview about increased fees charged by the portal to agents.

More on Rightmove fees