“I will list my experience objectively so that readers can make up their own mind.
My property was on the market for 90 days with Purplebricks and had just 6 viewings. I believe that the low number of viewings was due to an over inflated price. Purplebrick's concierge team also phoned me and agreed and suggested lowering the price to spark interest. Sebastian Grayson, Local Property Expert, for Streatham, disagreed, despite 2 of the viewers saying that the property was overpriced, and insisted that I kept the property on at his evaluation.
More importantly I discovered that Sebastian and his team, who I had paid to do viewings, had blocked out my online calendar everyday of the week, except for Thursdays, at optimum times, making it difficult for people to view. I even had notes through the door from people requesting viewings, as they could not get through to the central office to book. I asked the central office to investigate but as the investigation was carried out by the Territory Owner, Daren Cridge, ie the franchise holder who Sebastian had bought his franchise from, I wasn't convinced that I received an impartial review. 'Sebastian has made mistakes and I have asked him to learn from these' He also offered me £150 compensation 'to end the matter' but if I accepted that would have prevented me from involving the property ombudsman, so I declined.
I withdrew my property from Purplebricks and instructed Jacksons of Streatham, who marketed the property at the same price for 4 days and showed 16 people around. They listened to the feedback and took on board that the price was too high. They then organised an Open Day, with the property on at an agreed reduced price and showed another 14 people around. Within 11 days they had shown a total of 36 people around my property and 3 offers came in. My house has now sold.
I leave the reader to make their own conclusions.”
“The WORSE estate agents we have ever dealt with!!! They make it virtually impossible to view a property. They didn't turn up for the first viewing because we hadn't responded to a email we never got. Made another appointment which they cancelled with no explanation or apology. Got a email for another appointment for 10days later. The email states urgent response needed, but no link to respond to. We have dealt in property for many years and NEVER have we encountered such unprofessional, incompetent people as PB. STAY AWAY!!! Useless is a understatement!!!!”
“waste of space mickey mouse outfit. As a tennant for a property which is "managed" by purple bricks, 4 weeks on, and a simple issue is still not resolved, due to these muppets having zero customer service skills, let alone the ability to send the right guy to do a job.....
If your looking to sell or rent out, do yourself a favour, use a real agent, as you will shoot yourself in the foot using these cowboys.”
“Do not use purplebricks they are totally incompetent at managing a
rented property. And when challenged about all the mistakes they made are happy to terminate your contract”
“Guzumped by PB and pretty sure their agent colluded in the sale. You are forced to offer through their website(not to a solicitor as normal) and receive little response to your offer. I was told the offer was under consideration then miraculously the property was then "sold" without any reference back to me???”
“We have moved a few purple brick customers who were not happy if anyone requires a removal quote please contact mark at quickpoint removals in peterborough.Many thanks”
“During our house buying process we have come across a number of properties that are on the market with Purple Bricks. I have yet to have a positive experience with arranging and confirming viewings that have taken place with Purple Bricks Representatives. Many of them cancelled appointments and never rearranged or contact me, and then some never even turned up for the viewings.
If the agent did arrive, we weren't welcomed or shown around a property, we were left to fend for ourselves. And when presented with questions about the property, they have no information or care to answer.”
“Purplebricks are absolutely USELESS I have rented a property with them since July. The communication is terrible and customer service is awful. The out of ours emergency service is slow and difficult to use and offers very limited support. When dealing with emergencies such as broken boilers there is no sense of urgency to help solve issues quickly (I had to wait 3 weeks in November to get a new boiler when it broke down after there had been recommendations to repair it since August). I have changed property manager three times - the new one has no idea of any of the issues with the flat and ignores emails. There are outstanding issues from when I moved in in July . I would never recommend using purple bricks.”
“They do not answer the phone if you have any queries. Their solicitors are appalling. They started the conveyancing for us in July 2017 and when we decided to change to our own solicitors the following March 2018 we discovered that their solicitors had done nothing at all. Therefore ours had to start right from the beginning again. I would never use them again and would never recommend them to anyone.”
“To anyone out there, please do not be duped by Purple Bricks 'full management' fees and promises of dealing with all queries with tenants - they just won't. They refer everything back to you to make a decision (often on problems that can be easily dealt with by their people) and in cases, despite them having £200 of our money in a pot for "emergencies", they will use contractors who expect an upfront fee and they tell you to pay this. I have been battling for months with them over a faulty alarm and instead of sorting this themselves (that's what I pay them the full fees to do), they are refusing to deal with it and asking us for £150 to pay this new person. It has been an endless source of problems from them changing their banking details, and then telling us the tenant hasn't paid their rent (it was sat in another account for PB and no-one thought of checking there so we had no money for days) to just being generally useless at answering emails or getting a decent response off them. Avoid at all costs, its one of the biggest mistakes we made using them as a letting agent.”
“howard.russell@purplebricks.com lettings operation director
lee.wainwright@purplebricks.com
UK CEO
Following unsatisfactory correspondence with eight (8) company representatives inside two months (I chose to sell and let through PB), I researched and emailed the above two staff.
Despite both demonstrating speedy response, 48hrs on, I am still overwhelmed with a sense on deceit, first rolled out by several of the afore mentioned eight representatives.
Superficial online money saving estate agent.
I have now chosen a local agent and been able to negotiate a price within 5% of Purplebricks too-good-to-be-true service offering.”
“I employed Purplebricks to sell my home after 3 months I realised they where totally incompetent, I suspended the sale and employed another estate agent, Purplebricks have now invoiced me £1,200, during the sale they only ticked the boxes ! When I complained the said we have marketed the property correctly, if you want to throw you money away employ Purplebricks they are pathetic”
“If I could give 0 stars, then I would! What a dreadful company, full of sales pitch and broken promises. From beginning to end it’s been dreadful. The marketing pictures taken were like a 10 year old had taken them. I’ve had four viewings in the space of 10 months and have had to pay a high street agent to actually sell the property. They’ve not only cost me precious time, it’s also cost me an unecessary amount of money. As for being able to complain, they don’t want to discuss my concerns and still demanded full payment. If you want to sell your property, then avoid at all costs.”
“Used Purple Bricks on a fully managed basis to let out our flat whilst abroad. There have been a multitude of problems.
They asked us to conduct the viewings for them then they called our tenant the night before she was meant to move in stating she could not longer move in without informing us, this left her in tears and we had to go the next day and check her in and exchange keys ourselves.
They kept her deposit for 4 months before putting it into the DPS scheme.
Despite being fully managed we have had to deal with all repairs ourselves from the other side of the world.
The 6 month inspection date came and went with no correspondence from them until we chased it up, it has now been over 7 months and no inspection has been carried out.
Our 'dedicated property expert' takes over a week to reply to any emails we sent.
Essentially, this has been very stressful and not what we paid them for. The company is useless please don't use them to rent out your property they are absolutely terrible (hence the overall star rating!)”
“All they do is taking few photo and post it on line , they claim they charge you £899 and you can pay before ,,after or end of 10 months but they dont tell you if you dont use lawyer they force you to use you must pay them almost £400 pound fine , they claim they assist you through the sale but you dont hear from them unless you call them , PLEASE ASK ALL THE QUESTION BEFORE LETTING THEM IN YOUR BUY OR SALE”
“im experiencing a very awfully expedited renting by Purple Bricks. basically me and my family (2 small child) was promised of paint and secure parking. turned out all was just to boost our interest in the viewing time.
if i tell you we went trough in hell? believe it.
still having problems...slow or zero response for maintenance issues too. and we have have to go through on so many people but non of them take responsibility. if my emails are heated? the other one responding or saying "i will call the landlord and get her approval.
im pretty sure landlord was bearly called up. anyways, we already moved into our 2 bedroom rented flat, 2 weeks im still not received answer where is electricity and water meter.
locksmith was promised too. both front and back doors lock is broken and very hard to get in...and you know, after a long day work im not in the mood of trying and keep trying to get key turned and open the door in dark.
very bad agent shame on you Purple Bricks. dodgy! we made a deal, you said paint will be finished and i have offered extra £75/month for the flat...than you broke the deal, but i still paying you the extra £75/month. okay. i will make sure let everybody know who you really are.”
“Travelled for more than three hours to view property. Agent arrived on time but remained sat in his car. Went up to window. Now you or I may have opened the door and said something like,'Just on my phone, be with you shortly.' Not this guy. Just a condescending smirk and a wave of the hand. Not being sure how it all worked, I asked if he was an actual estate agent or someone sent to simply show us around. 'I have been sent to show you round and I am an estate agent' was the response, with just a tad too much attitude. Thereafter, he was 'good enough', it seemed, to do us 'the favour' of showing us around.
Later agreed to buy at the full asking price. Tried to use the website platform. What an absolute nightmare that is. Had originally opened the account on phone. Our email had been taken but the call centre operatives failed to record a password. When we tried to log on, the system asked for a password. We tried to reset but each time PB sent us a reset email, so it timed out so we could never use it. There must of been twenty of them. Then late one evening we got a text from our friend in the car, asking for proof of our identify and bank details. Notice a text message, not a message through the website as per their own stated charter. When we queried this we got messages from our car friend that quite frankly seemed to be an attempt to be intimidating, with exclamation marks and accusatory statements. How odd we thought. The outcome is that this individual and Purplebricks totally undermined our confidence in the property we wanted to buy. Who would use such an oddball outfit? We pulled the plug. A great loss to the vendor and hopefully also Purplebricks. I wouldn't touch them and advise you not to.”
“It is over-advertisement agency, they do not miracles and do nor dealing professionally. It is one of the worst letting team agency on the market !
Regarding selling the property, you will stay with them forever, otherwise you will pay leaving fee, so another way they will charge you. Do not chose them!”
