Purplebricks responds to BBC investigation across two programmes
Online estate agent Purplebricks has issued a defensive statement, following discussions on the BBC’s latest features on the company. You and Yours and Watchdog recently aired investigations into the firm, causing its share price to drop. The statement, given to the London Stock Exchange, stated that Purplebricks is “confident” that the disclosure on deferred payment facilities is “clear and transparent”. The company maintains that the Property Ombudsman and the Trading Standards Institute have given their approval, with only two complaints ever lodged and dismissed from the prior 47,000 facility agreements.
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Purplebricks this morning issued a statement to the Stock Exchange following yesterday’s You and Yours, and Watchdog programmes.

It reads as follows:

The Board of Purplebricks Group plc notes the recent share price movement.

The Group was the subject of two BBC features on Wednesday 2 August relating principally to the clarity of the deferred payment facility available to customers, the Group’s compliance with a recent Advertising Standards Association (“ASA”) ruling, and alleged exaggerated claims by some of its Local Property Experts about levels of instructions and/or sales they had obtained.

The Board is confident that disclosure of the terms and nature of the deferred payment facility, provided by Close Brothers, are clear and transparent. The registration and acceptance process of the facility has been reviewed by the Property Ombudsman and by the Trading Standards Institute and no issues were raised or changes requested. The Group has received complaints relating to the payment terms and facility from only 0.2 per cent of customers.

Furthermore, from the last 47,000 facility agreements entered into by customers only two complaints were considered by the Financial Ombudsman and in both cases neither were upheld.

The purpose of the facility is to offer Purplebricks’ customers an alternative to immediate payment on instruction, and the majority of customers take up this option. The facility comes with no additional cost or interest to the customer.

In the context of the small number of cases where customer feedback has indicated that the disclosure does not match Purplebricks’ high standards for transparency, the Group has nevertheless committed to enhance the clarity of its notification to customers accordingly.

With regard to the ASA ruling, Purplebricks has previously sought to quantify to potential customers in its marketing literature the levels of savings that they might on average achieve based on publicly available data, such as the Which survey on estate agent commission levels. In a ruling in 2016, the ASA requested that Purplebricks no longer refer in its marketing to an indicative average saving, based on the premise that this could prove misleading.

The Group had in any case already decided to remove references to this figure from its marketing materials. The BBC drew attention to examples of a standard email format that inadvertently still included the savings figure. The Group immediately removed this reference and apologises for this oversight.

The BBC also aired claims that certain LPEs have provided exaggerated instructions and/or sales figures for their respective areas.

Whilst Purplebricks has not had access to the precise data and areas being reviewed by the BBC, the Board believes that the figures provided by the LPEs concerned have fairly reflected the performance of the teams operating in those areas. However, the Group has committed to ensure through its ongoing training that LPEs are clear about the statistics that they use and the territories and postcodes to which they are referring.

Michael Bruce, founder and Chief Executive of Purplebricks, commented: “The Board and the Group are committed to the highest levels of customer service and disclosure, and we believe this is reflected in the business’ sales growth and the high levels of customer satisfaction evidenced by its 23,000 Trustpilot reviews with an average score of 9.5 and its rating of Excellent. The Group is the most positively reviewed estate agent in the UK.

“We seek to satisfy and surpass our regulatory obligations at all times, and where we find circumstances where we have fallen short we seek to rectify these situations at the earliest opportunity. The Purplebricks’ offering has already saved consumers in the UK tens of millions of pounds when selling their properties, and we are focused on building on this position still further.”