blundells.com

Rarely answer the phone, share personal details with other buyers and facilitate gazumping.

From beginning to miserable end, our dealings with Blundells Banner Cross have been poisonous. I’d say it was poor from first contact but it’ll take you a dozen unanswered calls before you can get through. Once you do, you’d better hope they’re not in their morning staff meeting otherwise they’re not interested, ask to call you back and then ‘forget’ to do so.After eventually getting through and arranging a viewing at the weekend, we loved the property and called to make an offer on Monday morning. Georgia answered (after the usual number of attempts to get through). On hearing we wanted to make an offer, she told us they were in their morning meeting and if they could call back in ten minutes. Bit of a surprise. Half an hour later, I called back. She said she was just about to call me (of course), took the details of the offer and said she’d get back to us. We heard nothing all day and, once they’d closed, we received an email saying our offer had been sent. And then begins the opaque language. “The offer is acceptable but not accepted, proceeding with preferred offer, I’ve got to be careful with how I phrase this, they’re just getting legal advice, we’ll let you know as soon as we know more.” The lack of transparency meant we had no idea where we were in the process. We were told the vendor needed legal advice as they’d undertaken works on the property without the freeholder’s permission. Eventually, we were told that the vendors were happy and that our offer had been accepted. They requested that we visit the branch on a Saturday morning to take our ID documents and sign forms for credit checks etc. Following this, we instructed our solicitor and told our mortgage advisor to go ahead with the mortgage application We celebrated, contacted nurseries and visited the area at the weekend to get a feel for the sites and amenities. A week later, we had a call to say our offer had been accepted. This after we’d been told a week ago that it already had been. We thought nothing of it and that it was the usual incompetence and lack of communication. Devastatingly, we received a call a few hours later completely out of the blue, telling us they had gone to the vendor with a higher offer from another buyer and that we'd lost the property. This news was given to us in the evening by someone we’d never spoken with before. They told us the vendor didn’t want to hear any more offers from us.The next day, we upped our offer, anyway - a degrading feeling, considering we’d already had our offer accepted. The vendor decided they wanted to hear best and final offers from us. Refusing to move and be messed around any further, we gave them a deadline that passed. The house was now somewhat ruined for us by the experience and we just wanted the charade to end. By far and away, the most worrying aspect of our dealings were data protection issues. The negotiator told us the names of the other bidders, their occupation, that the vendor was worried about having a survey done on the house due to the nature of the works they had done on it and other inappropriate information I felt uncomfortable being told. She seemed only interested in increasing the price for the vendor and not in avoiding gazumping or honouring our agreed sale. Throughout the whole process, all dealings were ambiguous and shady. The sale falling through should not have surprised me, as every dealing we'd had with them had been unclear, unhelpful and unprofessional. They didn't even have the courtesy of getting someone we'd been dealing with to call us with the news. The advert for the property was sloppy with poor photos taken of rooms and some key rooms (like lounge and master bedroom) missing entirely. The branch manager called me to discuss what had gone wrong. He recognised there were errors in process and said he would deal with them ‘sensitively’. He was civil and clearly disappointed, but I received a classic, “I’m sorry if you feel that way” apology without any real action outlined beyond talking with his team. Buyers and sellers alike should avoid this agent. Compared to every other agent we've spoken with in Sheffield, they are miles behind in terms of technology, customer care, data protection and responsiveness.

Date of experience: Nov 15, 2020