Zillow Thinking of Becoming a Zillow Premier Agent - Run the other way! Seattle, Washington Washington

As a new real estate agent trying to establish my business I was creating a profile on Zillow, when less than a minute later a salesperson from Zillow called me to talk about their handy dandy Premier Agent Services. He caught me at a vulnerable time and got me all excited about my prospects were I to become a Premier Agent.  I signed up stupidly without reading the ripoff rport first.  I blanked out.  Anyway, I was happy about the prospect, and the salesperson was so friendly and warm. He told me that there was this one zip code that I could purchase for the reduced price -they were running a special sale- of $500 per month and I'd be foolish to not jump at the opportunity, so I said OK.  He said I was guaranteed a number of impressions every month, that I would be number two in that town, etc, etc.  I would be one of 3 or 4 agents whose mug popped up when people looked at a listing. I signed up.

One thing he "forgot" to mention was that Zillow also sold a service to Premier Agents to block other agents from appearing, and I came to find out that my real estate company had worked out a deal with Zillow to include this handy dandy blocking feature as a perk for agents in our company.  The main realtor in this zip code that I purchased is also from my company, effectively blocking me from appearing in more than half of the town listings.  I got a couple of calls from people who were not serious, and thougth I was the listing agent.  It was a total waste of money.

Three weeks later I had an emergency that precluded me from working in the next few months, and depleted my savings.  I contacted Zillow and, oh surprise, they were not so friendly anymore. They were brief and would not return emails. It cost me a good deal more to get out of this service.

Please do yourself a favor and DO NOT ADVERTISE ON ZILLOW!  Ask an experienced agent in your office for advice.