[Sussex] Most irritating estate agents - Brand Vaughn

[Weststander]

Left 3 messages this week with Brand Vaughn , no one has bothered to call me back.

Are all estate agents in Brighton this poor at basic customer service or have I picked a dodgy one. Their website looks nice !

If you don't mind me asking, is the £ level of property you are selling, or hoping to buy, high? Brand Vaughn have deliberately positioned themselves to try and get into the expensive end of the market. With flashy window displays and website to match. You can envisage apathy there at wanting to call someone back buying/selling where the commission wouldn't be so lucrative.

 

[saafend_seagull]

Am putting up flat for sale near Brighton station.

Emailed and called parsons son and Basley, no response.

Phillips and still (think they are new?) on the other hand are responding within minutes to every email.

 

[Badger]

A little story about my 'attempt' to sell my property two years ago.

Tight on funds, I opted for Purple Bricks.

The chap came over, was likeable and we thought he was the right guy to sell the property. We were impressed with the online portal we could access to see booked viewings and we enjoyed the fact we ourselves could deal with the offers. His photos of the property were really good.

For an additional £99 the PB representative would conduct the viewings for us. Lovely. We both work full time so this means we don't need to worry about being around.

First few weeks we had a couple of viewings and a few cancellations.

As the weeks went on, the cancellations continued. We were informed that prospective buyers were cancelling the viewings. Maybe they booked a few properties and no longer needed to see ours?

One day, I was suspicious and called up one of the cancellations. As Purple Bricks has the online portal that the seller can access, I could see the contact details of the potential viewer.

I called and asked if they had cancelled the viewing........"no, it was cancelled by your estate agent".

It turns out he was completely snowed and was just cancelling bookings he couldn't make without ever telling me. Probably for fear id ask for my 99 quid back.

In the end we conducted the viewings yourself and got an offer there and then. I refused to pay the £99 or the full original fee.

He may have just been one bad egg but, during the process I had other smarmy estate agents offering to sell it for 0.5% commission to beat their rivals. As and when I do sell I will go down that route.

Sounds very similar to my experience. I paid the extra for PB to conduct the viewings and their were a couple of suspicious cancellations/no shows. The agent said his wife conducted a lot of the viewings, which should probably have set off alarm bells for me.

There was one viewing where the agent's wife told me she was in my flat, ready to do the viewing but there was no buzzer and she couldn't get hold of the guy when he "didn't turn up". The guy left feedback on the website and said he'd rung the buzzer a few times and got no answer. He also tried to call, but again got not answer.

I contacted another potential buyer directly after her viewing because the agent's wife was completely useless at giving information about the flat. Really basic things like parking, council tax, maintenance fees etc. These were all things I'd made sure I told the agent because I knew the questions were likely to come up.

The worst thing was having to use the legal firm PB worked with, eZie Conveyancing. I decided not to pay up-front, which meant I was contracted to use this legal firm even if I sold the flat through another agent. It's hard to describe just how useless the woman who took on my sale was. I got in touch with her a month after I'd accepted an offer, asking what was going on, and she told me she was waiting for me to give her the details of the sale, despite uploading all the documentation through their website. She had no idea what she needed to do, to the point where I was the one chasing up the seller's solicitor and giving updates to my estate agent. I accepted an offer in October, the completion date ended up being 31st January. Neither buyer or seller was in a chain.

 

[Wilko]

Am putting up flat for sale near Brighton station.

Emailed and called parsons son and Basley, no response.

Phillips and still (think they are new?) on the other hand are responding within minutes to every email.

That is where I want to move to. Details please

 

[Me and my Monkey]

I bought a flat through Brand Vaughan. I found them very good - it was 4 years ago, so maybe the agent I dealt with has moved on, or I just struck lucky. Now letting agents... Harrington’s... urgghh, what can I say? Dreadful, just dreadful. And having failed to be useful in any way, shape or form, having filed my contact details they then proceeded to hound me mercilessly with junk emails, my attempts to unsubscribe proving totally fruitless. Thank eff for GDPR, I think I may now be shot of them.

 

[Westdene Wonder]

Am putting up flat for sale near Brighton station.

Emailed and called parsons son and Basley, no response.

Phillips and still (think they are new?) on the other hand are responding within minutes to every email.

I used Phillips & Still a couple of years ago and was very impressed with them

 

[dadams2k11]

Am putting up flat for sale near Brighton station.

Emailed and called parsons son and Basley, no response.

Phillips and still (think they are new?) on the other hand are responding within minutes to every email.

That is where I want to move to. Details please

Who needs estate agents when you have NSC.

 

[Chicken Run]

You're making the assumption that they try and get a sale in the first place. That's not my experience.

I was trying to give them a chance

 

[Grombleton]

Just avoid Cubitt & Worst, they're dire. Messed up constantly when my sister was trying to buy her house.

Glyn-Jones were good when I bought my place a few years back, and Michael Jones comes highly recommended.