Zillow Premiere Concierge Service Bogus Leads cost $1000/ month Internet

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

I find it very interesting that Zillow’s response to my dispute was to send a copy of our contractual agreement. I do not dispute that a contract was entered into; however, I do dispute that although I made payments in good faith, I never received the level of services that a reasonably prudent person would expect for $1000 per month. For the record, although I have a lifetime of experience as a real estate agent, (a Realtor since 1979) I have not realized a single, solitary dollar from my “investment” in Zillow’s Concierge Service. Furthermore, I stipulate that the facts, as stated in this response to their response, fully explains my argument regarding the basis for any contract which, in this particular case, is a promise of payment for a promise of a service to be provided. Moreover, when one party fully complies, and the other party fails to live up to its side of the agreement, by either misrepresentation of terms or fraud, then that constitutes breach of contract. I lived up to my side of the contract, but Zillow failed to do the same and therefore, breached the contract. At no time did Zillow agents acknowledge this breach or that they owed me anything as a result of their failure to provide actual leads that could be verified and contacted as potential buyers “ready, willing and able,” i. e., “qualified buyers” of real property as I had understood the contract for $1000/mo. had stipulated. After all, why should they because as they maintain and counted on – they had a contract, they had my money, and they had a credit card company willing to decide in their favor, regardless of whether they, in fact, lived up to the contract terms or not.

Background Facts

I had so much success with my Google ad words campaign to attract showers that I attempted to branch out to find qualified buyers, so I tried Zillow Premier Agent Concierge Service.  My budget for Google ad words (another vendor that I pay with my Capital One card) runs approximately $500 a month in I’ve gotten over 150 verified sellers respond since June, 2017.  So, I’m quite familiar with Internet advertising and what I expect for my marketing dollar. 

When I originally contacted Zillow in August 2017, I had originally intended to start out with $500 on a smaller monthly budget plan (the same as my Google account, but after speaking with Trent Kwon, one of their top sales consultants, he persuaded me to upgrade to the premier agent concierge service for $1000 per month with the six-month contract.  That was significantly more expensive then my Google ad words campaign, but I expected to be able to match these new-found sellers on the Zillow campaign with my Google ad words source for buyers. 

 But I recognized early on that most of the so-called seller leads were obviously just people poking around on the Internet “window shopping” for houses they wanted to see with no regard for being prequalified by a mortgage lender.  Moreover, even after explaining to the more legitimate Zillow leads that I would be willing to be a buyer’s agent at no cost to them-- they balked at signing any agreement even though I explained that Alabama law required me to disclose the different agencies involved in the buying and selling of real estate.

Then, I requested that concierge telephone operators qualify these “buyers” by explaining to them the significance of being pre-qualified and getting those who wanted to “see” a property, agree to allow an agent to become their buyer’s agent before they let them speak to me. This would save me considerable time to operate the other parts of my business. Their response was to give me a 10-page instruction sheet on how to spend hours trying to contact the people they called leads.  In fact, when I pointed out, that Concierge had acknowledge difficulty connecting with several leads. Furthermore, a recent blog that I had been asked by Zillow representatives to become a part of to share thoughts on how to improve their process.  However, I noticed many complaints from other real estate professionals, about the same problems that I had encountered with respect to so-called leads who were merely “window shopping” with no real intention of purchasing a home or even having the financial means to do so – this was unfair to the latter since it lead to false hope. After two other failed attempts to leave the program (September) because I was persuaded to stay and try different approaches as they recommended to improve my ability to contact leads.  Finally, in early November (13th) I had had enough and terminated my contract. I agreed to an $2,000 penalty if I terminated before the end the contract period; however, this present dispute goes directly to the heart the matter - - i.e., the Zillow Concierge Service failed to provide any more than mere impressions of individuals who clicked on a piece of property. 

The main reason I purchase anything through credit card is for convenience and the ability to dispute a charge based on poor quality of a product and/or service and the inability to meet a standard level of expectation from that product or service. Last December 19, 2017, I was asked to participate in a survey by Zillow Group and I complied. Furthermore, I asked that the results be sent to me and they agreed. After completing the survey, I never received a copy of the results nor the $50 Amazon e-gift card as Zillow promised. That is because I’m sure the survey showed many of the same problems that I have outlined in the letter. Perhaps, Zillow would be willing to share with youthe results of the survey if you asked them for documentation to support this claim.

In November, I sent the “team” a list of email that had failed to produce a solitary lead See Attachment A. The November Concierge Premier Agent Scorecard was more of an indictment of them than myself because concierge had failed to contact many of the so-called leads as they noted before sending to me. Go figure that! In one case (See Attachment B, Mr. Templin Rolin had told concierge he was interested in renting a home, but instead, I was misinformed that he wanted to buy a home. This happened a great deal because Trulia (Zillow’s sister company focuses more on rental property and I got too much cross-over from them). Moreover, other realtors have agreed with me that Zillow’s program does not provide the level of service, i.e., “offer qualified leads of persons ready, willing and able to enter into contract to purchase real estate” that a cost of $1,000 per month would warrant. That is why I have made specific reference to a few things that the concierge service should have been able provide, without undue hardship to their processes, in order to assist us, as Realtors to obtain what we thought we had paid for according to the terms of the contract.

However, early on (September 5,2017) though I had already demanded that my money be refunded, Zillow managed to string me along. They continued to ignore my repeated request and told me to follow up with a 30-Day program to improve my access to qualified leads. Even though I pointed out, that on many occasions the concierge service itself was unable to contact the so-called leads or when Elise Alexander responded to me by email stating (“I see you have some leads, have you been able to get a hold of them?” See Attachment C)which is clear evidence that their so-called leads were merely impressions, and nothing more otherwise why would Elise distinguish between a verified lead and asking if I had successfully reached them?

To me this demonstrated, that what they called leads were nothing more thanimpressions. Their competitors, at Realtor.com explained the difference between their program and Zillow’s. Realtor.com actually provides a qualified lead, that is a real person that has been prequalified and ready to speak to a mortgage broker to determine how much home they can afford. Whereas Zillow maintains that when someone on their website uses their cursor over the picture of the property in question, the information conveyed to concierge regarding that person’s interest, constitutes a lead, when in fact, the industry denotes that action as merely animpressionwith much more left to be determined, in terms of gathering answers regarding the person’s ability to purchase a home i.e., “being qualified,” and thus, constituting a bona fide lead.

For example, many so-called leads that were sent to me had already promised themselves to other realtors or expressed displeasure at my attempts to ask them questions in order to qualify them; i.e., to ascertain their ability to pay a specific mortgage amount for the homes they were “interested in” and wanted to see. That is why I maintained that concierge, being first in line directly with the “so-called lead” would have been in a much more preferable position to gather this information as part of the initial, intake process rather than putting it at the backend for me to do it. For the most part, Zillow’s concierge service was a waste of everyone’s time, when if properly utilized, it could have been the lynch pin to this service being what I thought it was supposed to be.

For the record, I want to clarify that this dispute is all about dissatisfaction with the level of service provided by Zillow and it has nothing to do with the former contract dispute that was resolved in their favor as a result of the reading of the contract that stated I must pay a $2000 dollars penalty if I left the program early (see Attachment D)