Advantage Realtors Robert A. Whitfield Robert Whitfield The HomeBuyer's Rep The HomeBuyer's Advantage Scam, Scam Artist, Fraud, Liar, Lied, Hasn't sold a home in a year Roswell Georgia

**Scam Alert** **Robert A. Whitfield** *TheHomeBuyersAdvantage* TheHomeBuyersRep** *Advantage Realtors* *4195 Edinburgh Trail NE Roswell GA 30075* *678-585-9691 ** **Scam Alert**

In January 2014, I had the unfortunate experience of getting scammed out of money by an agent in the state of Georgia whom I found right here on Trulia! His name is Robert A. Whitfield and he is posi... ng under a number of businesses. If you are considering buying, selling, or renting in certain areas of Georgia, please be mindful. This agent has not sold a home in quite some, was obviously desperate for money, and lied about several things from the very beginning, including his past experience. He is licensed, unfortunately, and was comfortable enough to run a scam thinking he could just get me to go away. I had to file a complaint with the Georgia Real Estate Commission for an investigation. Another individual filed a complaint with the BBB concerning his practices in 2010. Just go to BBB.org and type in ADVANTAGE HOME BUYER or call them for details about the complaint. Since then, he changed the name of his business in hopes that no one would find out, relying on clickshares for income, hence the reason for the multiple websites.

He convinced me to send him funds overnight in order to provide me with property listings (Red flag #1). He never would disclose why he needed the money in such a hurry, but questioned why I was in a hurry to move, although he swore he could find me a place to live in a short period of time. Silly me, I sent money to him that he received the following day and he had his phone set up to display to callers that it was out of service! (Red flag #2). I immediately emailed him asking where the listings were. He wrote back stating he would send them later on, claiming to have experienced some type of "technical glitch".

Of the listings he sent, I qualified for nearly NONE of them and they were also in run-down neighborhoods. Why would I all of a sudden have a desire to move into such a neighborhood if I wasn't living in one at the time and had not lived in one in the past? He claimed he knew how to negotiate with owners, but did absolutely nothing,..never picking up a phone to contact anyone, send an email, or arrange an in-person meeting. He also refused to meet with me in person just days after sending him money. (Red flag #3)

The pathetic little guy created fake client reviews on his own profile (reviews are from the same i.p. address) to make it appear as if he is this sought after expert in the real estate field who knows the ropes. Little did I know that he is the complete opposite. He has several elaborate websites claiming to be a seller of multimillion dollar homes and he doesn't even live in one himself. I found out he has 0 employees, besides his wife who is UNLICENSED, and they live in a home that is only worth about $260,000. Far from a million. In the past year, he has sold only 1 home, and that home WAS NOT one of the million dollar homes that he advertises on his sites.

An agent who knows what they are doing and is really about business doesn't need to advertise much about what he or she can do. Their work will speak for itself, AND REAL people will actually leave REAL feedback and REAL reviews.

He lists his hobbies and memberships on his sites as if they are somehow relevant or influential to a buyer or seller's interests. Seriously, how many homebuyers or sellers weed out agents according to their personal hobbies or interests? Do people actually give a d**n about whether an agent collects butterflies in their spare time? LoL, typical square. He claims to be from Tampa, but is actually from Clayton County Georgia. He is too embarrassed to include that in the rest of his phony "portfolio" because Clayton County is considered one of the more downtrodden, high-crime areas of Atlanta that has deteriorated over the years. This sixty something year old guy also associates  himself with the Boy Scouts and that is pretty scary. Not the 'Lions Club',  'Rotary Club', or the Masons, but the Boy Scouts of America.

He made up several lies once he realized that he may have been in violation of SEVERAL ETHICAL rules, even claiming at one point that he had been "threatened and harassed". He trolls this website at all hours of the day (too much time on his hands) just to monitor my activity here and have my posts flagged. He tries his absolute best to offend me by referring to me as a "Section 8" tenant with no "education" who is "violent" and a "liar". This is as far as his mind goes as he cannot think of anything else to say. His one track mentality explains why he is still lost in another decade and obviously more modern, educated, cultured, and civilized people recognize this. I seriously doubt he is someone you would want to do business with and I would hate to know that someone else was scammed out of money too.

He uses these websites to run his scams: Robertwhitfield.com, TheHomeBuyersRep.com, TheHomeBuyersAdvantage.com, advantagerealtorsga.com

Following is Advantage Realtors rebuttal to the numerous false statements and outright fabrications in Ms Andrews complaint report #1159904 - our comments are in contrasting italic typeface at each false statement. We can easily prove that every rebuttal statement we make here is accurate and the truth.

From the start Ms Andrews was difficult to work with, unresponsive, unforthcoming, and continually changing and "up-leveling" her 'acceptable property criteria', and changing the date by which she needed to be moved from an original 30 days to only a week or few days depending on email. We informed Ms Andrews we were very good but her expectations were unreasonable. We counseled her that in the Cobb market in 2014 no owner or landlord would reduce monthly lease rates by $200 - $300 on top of supplying utilities, that we were having trouble even getting owners to agree to include utilities in the price. 

We agree with the right to free speech, but the First Amendment does NOT protect statements which are false and defamatory. That is likely why Ms Andrews refuses to use her real name, both here and on Trulia. After the salacious and untrue statements she has made we have no intention of ever refunding her non-refundable brokerage fee. We refuse to be held hostage to her low ball false accusations, threats, and defamation attempts.

The Body of the Complaint Allegations with Advantage Realtors Rebuttal in Bold Italics:

In January 2014, I had the unfortunate experience of getting scammed out of money by an agent in the state of Georgia whom I found right here on Trulia! In truth Ms Andrews Breached her Tenant Representation Agreement (multiple times) with us and was therefore sent a Termination Notice - even then we sent information on two different property management firms that advised us they did accept Section 8 recipients, and may have available housing units in Ms Andrews price range - if they accepted her as a tenant. His name is Robert A. Whitfield and he is posing under a number of businesses. We aren't posing as anything - this is a salacious falsification. We have one registered and licensed business and operate and advertise it under our DBA name because our Corporate name is very long - many businesses do this. If you are considering buying, selling, or renting in certain areas of Georgia, please be mindful. This agent has not sold a home in quite some, was obviously desperate for money, and lied about several things from the very beginning, including his past experience. This statement is false like most of Ms Andrews statements - she has no way to determine our transactions or annual revenue from real estate activity.  He is licensed, unfortunately, and was comfortable enough to run a scam thinking he could just get me to go away. [continued below]....

 ..... I had to file a complaint with the Georgia Real Estate Commission for an investigation. Conveniently, and this really says it all - Ms Andrews fails to mention that the Commission after investigating her 20 pages of rant, concluded that she clearly had breached her Agreement, and that our firm had not acted improperly and had broken no rule or regulation, and her complaint case was closed. Another individual filed a complaint with the BBB concerning his practices in 2010. Another false statement - in over 20 years in business, Ms Andrews is the only individual to post a negative online review of our firm - few large or small businesses can say that. Just go to BBB.org and type in ADVANTAGE HOME BUYER or call them for details about the complaint. Since then, he changed the name of his business in hopes that no one would find out, relying on clickshares for income, hence the reason for the multiple websites.  A blatant lie - our business name has never changed and we do not use click shares or allow ads on any of our websites. Our business name and logo is on all 11 of our real estate websites, which are each targeted to specific market areas.

He convinced me to send him funds overnight in order to provide me with property listings (Red flag #1). He never would disclose why he needed the money in such a hurry, but questioned why I was in a hurry to move, although he swore he could find me a place to live in a short period of time. A complete fabrication - we do not begin work on behalf of clients we charge a brokerage fee to, until we receive the brokerage fee. This was fully explained, and Ms Andrews agreed to overnight  her $500 "non-refundable" brokerage fee, so we could get started immediately. This fee was clearly specified as non-refundable in the Tenant Representation Agreement she signed before sending the fee. We discussed our fee in detail before agreeing to assist Ms Andrews and explained that agents only receive $100 - $200 for securing a lease, and that we would only assist her with properties in Cobb County - our home base market. This brokerage fee was a quite a bargain, (which we won't offer again) because in addition to finding and negotiating a rental property which would accept the lower than market rates the Section 8 Program approved for Ms Andrews,(which turned out to be much lower than she originally stated) our fee also included elite level services no other agent/Realtor provides - a physical site evaluation of the property to assess its condition and assure there were no safety hazards, faulty systems, or shoddy workmanship, so often prevalent in investor owned property, especially lower priced property.

Silly me, I sent money to him that he received the following day and he had his phone set up to display to callers that it was out of service! It was out of services -we had a temporary outage with our Uverse phone system router and it was restored the same day. At all times we were reachable by email and cell phone, as her next line proves. (Red flag #2). I immediately emailed him asking where the listings were. He wrote back stating he would send them later on, claiming to have experienced some type of "technical glitch".

Of the listings he sent, I qualified for nearly NONE of them and they were also in run-down neighborhoods. Why would I all of a sudden have a desire to move into such a neighborhood if I wasn't living in one at the time and had not lived in one in the past? He claimed he knew how to negotiate with owners, but did absolutely nothing,..never picking up a phone to contact anyone, send an email, or arrange an in-person meeting. He also refused to meet with me in person just days after sending him money. (Red flag #3) All false, significant work was done on Ms Andrews behalf, and many properties were emailed to her - she rejected all of them. Ms Andrews was unwilling to accept rental market realities in her price range, and expected us to negotiate rental rates of $800-$1100 per month down to $575 - and include utilities as well. We are very good negotiators but we are not magicians.

The pathetic little guy created fake client reviews on his own profile (reviews are from the same i.p. address) to make it appear as if he is this sought after expert in the real estate field who knows the ropes. Little did I know that he is the complete opposite. Completely false and makes no sense. We pride ourselves on providing unmatched services and representation, and have scores of happy buyers and sellers and some of those recommendations and testimonials are on our various websites, and we do have originals of both our client letters and emails.

 He has several elaborate websites claiming to be a seller of multimillion dollar homes and he doesn't even live in one himself.

 I found out he has 0 employees, besides his wife who is UNLICENSED, Incorrect  as well and they live in a home that is only worth about $260,000. The value of the owners home is immaterial but completely wrong. Far from a million. In the past year, he has sold only 1 home, and that home WAS NOT one of the million dollar homes that he advertises on his sites. False again

An agent who knows what they are doing and is really about business doesn't need to advertise much about what he or she can do. Their work will speak for itself, AND REAL people will actually leave REAL feedback and REAL reviews. 

He lists his hobbies and memberships on his sites as if they are somehow relevant or influential to a buyer or seller's interests. Seriously, how many homebuyers or sellers weed out agents according to their personal hobbies or interests? Do people actually give a d**n about whether an agent collects butterflies in their spare time? LoL, typical square. He claims to be from Tampa, but is actually from Clayton County Georgia. Complete fabrication - Robert is from Detroit MI, lived in Tampa FL until he was ten, moved to Atlanta GA and has lived in metro Atlanta ever since. He is too embarrassed to include that in the rest of his phony "portfolio" because Clayton County is considered one of the more downtrodden, high-crime areas of Atlanta that has deteriorated over the years.,

He made up several lies once he realized that he may have been in violation of SEVERAL ETHICAL rules, even claiming at one point that he had been "threatened and harassed". He trolls this website at all hours of the day (too much time on his hands) just to monitor my activity here and have my posts flagged. He tries his absolute best to offend me by referring to me as a "Section 8" tenant with no "education" who is "violent" and a "liar". Trulia the subject website, deleted scores of Ms Andrews negative rants over several months. The readers of this diatribe can make up their own minds about Ms Andrew motivations, ethics, and honesty. This is as far as his mind goes as he cannot think of anything else to say. His one track mentality explains why he is still lost in another decade and obviously more modern, educated, cultured, and civilized people recognize this. I seriously doubt he is someone you would want to do business with and I would hate to know that someone else was scammed out of money too. We have many past clients that say otherwise, and we have never scammed anyone out of money or anything else. On the contrary, we provide a host of invaluable extra services for free.  

He uses these websites to run his scams: Robertwhitfield.com, TheHomeBuyersRep.com, TheHomeBuyersAdvantage.com False again - we have no ownership or connection to the latter business, website, or domain name.  advantagerealtorsga.com