Letting Agent Ripped Apart by Social Media

Whether the complainant is right or wrong it has always been the case that a shouting person can do a great deal of damage to business reputation. The appropriate response can only ever be to be calm and conciliatory. Which leads to the thought that business would be so much easier without customers. 🙂
In the face of a 'hate' campaign there is little to do but quietly state your facts without antagonising or being personal.
Better to avert the situation by considering the true balance of cost. One mattress, some compromise, and learning the lesson that in future your systems need to be more watertight would perhaps have been far less costly in the long run. A complaint is always an opportunity to improve customer service and systems. Keeping a customer happy, even if you and they know they are taking the p_ss, could have diffused the whole muddle. The rights and wrongs of it are kind of irrelevant. It's part of running a business with human beings as customers. People can behave badly and a business owner needs to consider wider implications than any specific instance might immediately suggest.

£220 fee PER STUDENT? Wow! Was this on top of landlord's charges? if so, I"m surprised this agent has any business to lose. For that money I'd expect them to throw in a new mattress. Tessa is right, a charm offensive it's what's needed now - I suggest they offer a free mattress protector to all new tenants.

Unfortunately, death by social media is all too common. While I can't comment on the case in question without complete facts and both parties submitting their facts (in a sensible manner) this instance does highlight some good points.

Engaging with customers is a serious business and letting and property management agents need to have a policy established to deal with complaints and adverse social media publicity.

In this case, and in my opinion, Campbell's Property need to take the higher ground on this matter. Polite and professional, no emotional or personal reaction.

A statement indicating their disappointment in how this matter has been reported through social media would allow them to rise above the worst of the publicity.

I've attracted some adverse publicity myself in the past by siding with the private rented sector. Unfortunately, responsible private landlords and letting agents are being tainted by the minority of the rogues, with the public tarring everyone with the same brush.

When it comes down to it, the majority of the public will WANT to believe bad publicity. Intelligent people will always question what they are told. As with using social media to promote adverse publicity about one particular company is about not crediting your audience with enough intelligence to allow them to make up their own mind.

I'm sure, this will have no long-lasting effects on Campbell's Property, though it may effect them short term.

Campbell's Property can hold their head high. Whether right or wrong, there was no intention to defraud. They simply applied a policy they believed to be right, that has been used by certain people to besmirch their name and ruin their business.

There is nothing wrong with the letting agents policy of charging a letting fee, and not requiring a bond. We do the same. It is in fact a massive benefit to tenants and should encourage more applicants.

Having a guarantor is also more beneficial, because generally tenants will behave better because their risk is unlimited and it ties in, often a parent to whom they have a sense of responsibility for.

However, in this instance, I feel that the agent has, whatever the rights and wrongs, badly managed the situation.

Within every property you get back, there are certain minor snagging issues, wear and tear items item. For items of low value - I would deem that to be a business cost to be borne by the landlord - What would a mattress cost? £100? Certainly not worth the admin time/hassle etc to pursue.

Where people make untrue representations which damage reputation, you could claim defamation - but this is making a mountain out of mole hill and would be wholly disproportionate in cost to contemplate pursuing.

The owner of the agents should arrange a meeting with the guarantor, agree to drop the claim in return for removal of the facebook site and any lodged complaints, and also both sides should sign a confidentiality agreement.

I am very impressed with the comments and advice offered on this article so far. It's great when we can all share best practice in this way. There are, however, still a few unanswered questions for me.

If agents could bank some positive testimonials from tenants and have tenants email addresses to call on for some positive feedback for FB and twitter, this would arm those good agents against detrimental libel and slur campaigns, and be called to use at trade association tribunals.

When the defamatory remarks are counter balanced by positive ones, it leaves the public with two different aspects to consider and in most instances, accusatory people leaving slanderous remarks can often look insignificant with a personal axe to grind.

I totally agree with you Madalena, that's exactly the basis our Directory works. Try it yourself, just do a search for a letting agent in your area and see what comes up. It's very new at the moment but in time all the businesses with the most testimonials across all property services will sit at the top of the directory search results. We even run a competition to attract testimonials by offering a £100 B&Q voucher for the most informative testimonials every quarter.

Do B&Q sell mattress protectors? 🙂

Thank you very much for all of your supporting comments. Firstly and most importantly I would like to say that Campbell Property places enormous value on customer satisfaction. We take great pride in the properties and schemes that we design and develop and it is always distressing to feel that anyone has not enjoyed their time with us, let alone that someone feels sufficiently aggrieved that they are moved to complain by any media or forum.

As a business we are absolutely focused on implementing best practice in every area of our business, which covers asset and project management as well as lettings and tenancy. It is never our intention to deliberately mislead tenants and in fact we make every effort to devise processes and to invest in business systems that are as transparent, fair and reasonable as possible.

These processes include the provision of detailed move in inventories that are signed and agreed by the tenants, with accompanying guidance notes that specifically draw tenants’ attention to the fact that this will be used as the basis for determining any end of tenancy charges. We do also provide tenants with a mattress protector too! We complete pre move out inspections with tenants in the month or so before they vacate their property, we publish comprehensive move out guidance notes and targeted communications to invite queries from tenants regarding their obligations. All tenants are offered the opportunity to arrange a supervised clean where Campbell Property will organise an experienced cleaner (with a small fee to cover material costs) to supervise the group’s cleaning and to provide advice and guidance on cleaning methods and products. The final move out inspection is not accompanied for a number of reasons that I have discussed at length with Mark, but every charge is itemised and supported by photographic evidence and a contractor statement. Whilst I do not feel that it is appropriate to comment publicly on individual cases, I am very happy to provide further explanations of our processes or policies.

We do, to my continued frustration, make mistakes! I am well aware of the how emotive end of tenancy charges can be, particularly if a mistake has been made. This is one of the reasons we decided to offer tenancies without holding deposits. We felt that publishing costs and providing a portal with supporting evidence, and functionality specifically designed to empower tenants to query each charge if they felt that it was unfair or incorrect would be a positive for many tenants as they would not be out of pocket whilst any disputes are resolved.

We have made mistakes and where we do, we apologise and remove or amend charges. I do absolutely sympathise with tenants who have been told on a number of occasions that a charge will not be removed, only for that decision to be reversed once they speak to a different or more senior member of staff. I am aware that a significant level of frustration has been caused by this and we are in the process of reviewing our processes and complaints procedure to improve our ability to make the right decision first time or at least the first time a query is raised.

Inevitably an impasse is sometimes reached with a tenant. A move in inventory may have been signed by a tenant saying a room was clean, a carpet unmarked or a mattress unstained and the evidence collated on move out indicates otherwise. As sympathetic as I am to tenants in this situation, I also have to be sympathetic to the landlord who is also my client and is not able to waive charges for every tenant who says that an issue must have been there on move in but they didn’t record or notice it, or that it happened during the year but it wasn't them. Unfortunately, the only option available to us in such circumstances is to rely on the agreed move in inventory. We are of course sorry if this leaves any of our customers feeling aggrieved, but do feel that our options are somewhat limited in such cases.

I think this story highlight how important it is for businesses to build up a long tail of contribution to the social web. If they do, all the positive can easily outweigh the negative as people generally consider an overall view, and do not take one incident like this FaceBook page in isolation.

If the company in question has a long on-line history & evidence of ethical practices and satisfied customers, this would drown out this obvious campaign against them.

They should also write a blog about what actually went on and direct people towards it whenever the matter arises.

People will judge how they react to this and take a view on it.

Like I said, people will make up their mind about a company across a lot of content and a lot of platforms. If they are not involved in any of these, it is likely that something like this FaceBook campaign could do some serious damage.

The moral of the story is therefore to be a net contributor to the web, and build up an army of people who know, like and trust you. Then you have little to worry about from a campaign like this that has an obvious agenda behind it.

The web rewards transparency, so don't be frightened of it. Embrace it. The same strategies that you worry about people using against your business, can be harnessed by you for the greater good of your business!