Due diligence is something I preach to my clients but I'll admit I've been lax in doing my own DD. Today I did good. I Googled a company trying to get me to sign up for a leads program and I saved myself a lot of money and the trouble of having to cancel my credit card to stop the charges.
It started with a call from a very pleasant young lady who asked if I was interested in a lead program that required (A) No start up fee (B) No obligation if I didn't want the lead they sent (C) you only pay for the leads you keep. This was a lead program I could live with and the leads were "thoroughly qualified" before being sent out to a Realtor.
Why wouldn't I want to try this lead program if it wasn't going to cost me anything up front and I could accept or reject leads as I chose?
I was interested but was told I needed to be in front of a computer and that way I could see everything in writing. Since I was driving at the time, we set up a time she could call back when I'd be in my office. She called and gave me the website (first time she had ever mentioned the name of the company) and I typed in the web address which led me to a log in page.
The sales person for Reply Real Estate asked for my credit card information so she could charge the $10.00 set up fee and kept saying how it was usually $50.00 but she had waived the usual fee. I said I wasn't going to give my credit card information to anyone until I saw the terms and conditions in writing. She said she'd speak with her manager and see if they couldn't waive that fee. The manager came on the phone and told me she could waive the $10.00 fee and it was only going to cost me $1.00. Apparently giving someone a log in name and password is usually a $50.00 job but in my case it would only be a one dollar job and that one dollar had to be paid by credit card. Can you say "red flag"?
Meanwhile during this exchange of "I'm not giving you my credit card information even if it's only for a dollar" I Googled Reply Real Estate and found several complaints. Enough said here.
We harp to our buyers/sellers to do their due diligence and I think we as professionals need to practice what we preach. Bottom line, before you give any company your credit card information, make sure you are dealing with a credible company and you know what you're paying for.
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