How to deal with dubious estate agents in the forum

[ronald]

Hello everybody,

I've had to edit a thread that was discussing problems that some people run into while using a specific estate agent. I realise that such discussions are very useful for other forum members but unfortunately we are forced to remove such claims whenever they are libelous for the estate agents in question.

However, this does not mean that you should not share this information amongst you. Simply that you cannot share it publicly on the forum.

So in the future I would suggest the following:

Imagine that Alice has a problem with estate agent Bob. Alice wants to warn others and let them learn from her mistakes.

Alice can post on the forum explaining what happened to her WITHOUT MENTIONING THE NAME OF THE ESTATE AGENT. Alice can describe what people should do to avoid such types of estate agents in the future.

Others can send a private message to Alice asking for further details. Alice can then have an e-mail conversation with others about Bob which, being a purely private affair, could take place with no problems.

Again, I need to repeat that while such discussions are important we cannot have serious claims against named estate agents on the forum because it may cause us problems. On the other hand, we do encourage you to share your experiences without naming names in public. After all what is really important is for people to have good guidelines on how to choose an agent rather than blacklist individual agents than can always pop back up under a different name.

Many thanks

Ronald

[tuscanhills]

So why not just delete the one message........? The rest of the thread was useful.

[ronald]

Hi tuscanhills,

yeap - I realised that about 10 seconds after I closed the thread :-)

So now the thread is available again with the name of the estate agent removed.

Cheers,

Ronald

[tuscanhills]

..........as an aside, if all Alice is doing is stating her experiences (rather than adding an assessment of thos experiences), why not keep it posted?

If I were to say I went to YYY & this is what happened to me, we're sticking to facts & not assessment & not slandering people, surely?

If one were to say I went to XXX & it was good, is that OK too? I know that there's an onus on Forums to have a control on what's posted, but does this mean that you'll be editing recommendations too? What if someone takes the recommendation & fails to enjoy it........ are you liable for that too?
;)
OK, I'm being a touch obtuse, but it's a fine line!

[ronald]

the reasoning is very simple:

if A says that B is excellent then B is not likely to complain and there is no law about flattery

if A says that B is bad then there is a law to deal with these things.


Also, keep in mind that whenever we see a post that is full of praise for some company we need to think carefully about the extend to which the praise is simply a hidden form of advertising.

At the same time (and I am not implying that these is the case with the most recent dubious estate agent thread) when someone says that someone else is very bad then we must also think about whether that is a form of hidden competition-bashing.

And that in a nutshell is the challenge of running a public forum. Whatever you say here, gets save and Uncle Google comes along (along with uncle Microsoft and aunty Yahoo!) and scoops it up and saves it as well - so we need to be a bit more careful.

Hope this make sense. There is still plenty of scope for discussion - just keep the exchange of names in private messages and e-mails.

[manopello]

I read the post and thought a lot about it.....one person's experience of an agent can be v.good another v.bad.

Both should be disscussed and we all make up our own minds...I've only been on this forum a bit but I think I can read a lot about the members by reading their posts (not just where they live) and I can take some with the proverbial pinch of salt.

It's hard on the agents when they get a v.bad post but I suppose they could register as a 'punter' and put in good posts on their behalf?

Why not have a specail forum for rating agents like ebay use with feedback and let buyers check on their status before they use them? If they get too much negative feedback they are blacklisted!

[Marc]

I too used to believe in free speech, but recently the gravity of my newly-conferred status of Senator has given me cause to reconsider.
Its damned annoying when the Plebians use the Forum to talk amongst themselves when what they should be doing is facing forward and listening to what we, the patrician class, are saying to them from the lofty heights of our podia.
The way they've been behaving recently, anyone would think they owned the place.

[Rob]

Buona Sera Ronald,

If one is parading opinion as fact, then pull it.
If one is parading fact as fact then where is the problem?

Surely you can tell the difference purely by the wording used.

Salve

[johnsm13]

If something claimed to be libellous is actually true, then that's a defence against a libel claim in court. The slight problem is that of course you have to be able to prove that it's true to the satisfaction of a judge and jury, if things ever got that far.

Therein lies the peril for moderators like Ronald.

Mike

[ronald]

Rob - unfortunately telling the difference is not always that easy and mistakes can happen that way.

Mike - you hit the nail on the proverbial head.

However its not just about not getting things to court and worrying about the law.

Its about being fair and balanced as well.

I think there is an argument to be made (outside of any legal considerations) against premitting the naming of companies (especially small ones) on the forum in a way that is detrimental.

It is unfair because checking the facts is very difficult and it is unbalanced because we would have to find the owners of these companies and ask them for their side of the story as well.

Imagine BBC's Watchdog without the team of experts behind it that check that the complaints are real before going to air and that call the companies to allow them to reply.

As I already said - please share your experiences and what you think you did wrong that led to having to deal with a bad company. Please invite people to contact you privately so that you can share further details outside a public forum.