Absent Agent - Get It Together!

I'm steaming mad!  Earlier this week, an unaccompanied buyer arrived at one of my listings, after 8pm and without calling.  While that may be annoying, it's not appalling.  What IS appalling is that their "absent agent" GAVE her lockbox key to the buyers, so that they could enter the home and show it to themselves!  They told my seller that they were having trouble coordinating a suitable schedule with the agent.  I don't know why, and really don't care why she couldn't manage to meet her buyers.  This was NOT a suitable solution to her problem.  I'm not amused and found it to be an example of bad judgment, at best.  I earned the right to have a lockbox key and take the responsibility with which it comes very seriously. 

The home across the street is a vacant short sale, however my listing IS NOT.  My sellers live there with their very small child.  There was no courtesy phone call as instructed in the MLS remarks, just strangers pulling up trying to enter the house.  I set the lockbox on this house not to open after 8pm and am now happy that I did.  The buyer's key did not open the lockbox.  I am guessing that's due to the programmed showing instructions, but who knows?  It could have not even been a working key.  They could have not even been real buyers.  My sellers are trusting people and actually let them in and showed their home.  I have advised them NOT to do that should a similar situation arise.  There are too many instances of people trying to enter homes with ill intentions to be allowing strangers through the door.  Their home just went under contract, so it will hopefully not be an issue.  Though the agent information did not register on lockbox, the buyers did leave the agent's business card along with their phone number.

Seriously...there is simply NO EXCUSE for giving your lockbox key to a non-licensed person.  "Absent Agent" may well have instructed them to look only at a vacant house.  If so, that truly didn't work and is a perfect example of why this is a ridiculous idea.  She may know and trust these people, but I don't.  My duty is to protect my client.  We already battle a stigma of unprofessional behavior and must justify our value each step of the way.  Absent Agent's behavior doesn't help!  No wonder we continue to fight the stereotype!