Houses For Sale

Nothing makes us happier to than to hear agents having success! Congrats on closing the deal! We all know it takes a lot more to close than just a lead. I want to personally take a look at your account and see if there is anything else we can do to make your site even more productive. Congrats once again! John Brown Founder

Thank you Lisa, we pride ourselves in making our platform easy to use and affordable for all budgets.

Thank you very much for sharing your experience, Mike.

Trayvon, we appreciate your honesty, thank you.

David, I’m sorry you had this experience and I think the best way to address this comment is to simply post my response I personally emailed directly to you as soon as I became aware of the issue. I have waited to hear back from you before posting this, but I never received a response. Please see below response sent in June.

“Hi David,

I am John Brown, the owner of HousesForSale.com. Monday morning when I saw your review, I was dismayed and dumbfounded as to the how and why a customer had such a negative experience and left such a comment. I immediately directed our team to dig into your account and find out why this happened. Our ticketing system records all interactions with customers so luckily, I was able to go back and see exactly what happened and where things fell off track.

This was a complete screw up on our side and you should have never had to cancel your card because of HFS. We have a simple and easy cancellation policy. We instituted a simple cancellation policy of sending an email request, that way it’s in writing and matches our records. Early on we had an issue of more than one agent pretending to be someone they are not (competition) calling in and requesting to cancel so they could go in and buy the exclusive zip code for themselves after it was canceled. So, a simple email prevents this.

You followed this procedure and requested to cancel on 8/29/2019 via email and that should have been the end of it. You should have received a confirmation of cancellation immediately thereafter.

This was a fluke and not how we operate, but the responsibility lies with me as the owner and we definitely dropped the ball. Many protocols have been put in place in the 10 months since your cancellation, ensuring this does not happen again. Additionally, the automatic email you received asking to update your card was triggered because of the “failed” attempt on your card and is an automatic process on our side. Still, I completely understand how infuriating that must have been.

We have refunded your money 100%. Please allow a few days or for this to reflect into your account. Again, I apologize for this experience.

In an attempt to make it right, we are offering you to keep your zips codes for free for one year and have placed them back into your account. If you have any questions, please reach out directly and I will personally make sure you are set up correctly and have zero issues going forward."

Hello,

I am John Brown the creator, founder, and owner of HousesForSale.com and I have a firm belief in personal responsibility. I am choosing to hold myself 100% accountable for the actions of my team and my company, so I’m taking this opportunity to personally respond to you.

Misha, I want to first address your claim that we sell $30 zip codes. Our exclusive zip price points are: $5, $15, $25, and $35. While you do pay the full cost of the zip the first time you pay to reserve it, we only charge $5 a month until you get your first lead. This is a proof-in-the-pudding concept and one that we think is extremely fair. I see you never got to your second invoice and never got to see your price drop to a mere $30/month for ALL the zip codes you purchased!

To read a little more about what I’m talking about, you can view our terms and conditions found on our website.

I was a Real Estate Agent myself, and I hated how I was mistreated by big companies that were trying to make a buck off me. When I started HousesForSale.com, I made sure I threw out the junk I hated, like contracts, referral fees and competition within a zip for business. One of the zip codes I owned on another website had me competing with SIXTEEN other agents. Sixteen of us, all paying huge dollars to get a tiny share! Ridiculous. I despise the notion, so I swore we would only offer one agent per zip code, PERIOD!

Misha, you were the exclusive owner of your zip and the exclusive receiver of the leads that came in through that zip. I’m saddened to hear that our model didn’t work for you, even though you were offered personalized help from both Dana and Katie, including videos and basic guidance on how to build your presence on our website to attract leads. We strive to provide amazing customer service because I’ve used some horrible real estate tech products that have the worst customer service on the planet. I know I speak for all of us at HousesForSale.com when I say we worked tirelessly to help you get where you wanted to be, and during the 28 days you were on board, my team offered you as much help as they could manage.

I do admit that sometimes we do get overwhelmed. We are growing, and we do sometimes have a few growing pains. We are new still, and our team is still adjusting and looking to improve because great customer service is one of our cornerstones. We even built in a feature that allows us to screenshare and offer one-on-one training with anyone who needs it. We know how important excellent customer service is to agents like you, so we put it at the forefront of our entire platform.

Knowing that agents operate in many ways, and what works for one agent might not work for someone else, we put our heads together and built something for everyone. I know if you had continued to work with us, Misha, that we would have gotten you the leads and activity you deserved.

I would have to say one of the biggest accomplishments has been taking all the tech stuff out and make it simple to use. Heck, there is even a way you can buy a $5 zip out in the country and brand the entire platform as your own. I know that a major national portal started offering this late last year, but we were the first national platform to do so. In fact, you can do so with literally two clicks, it’s that easy. We only ask you upload a photo of yourself to represent your brand on our website.

We do highly encourage our users to do more than upload a picture as there is so much more you can do. The more you put in, the more you get out of our service. But most importantly, every time you upload fresh content or create a landing page with two clicks, you’re helping everyone else out as well as yourself! It’s something that we call Crowdsourced SEO and here is a short one minute explainer video that shows you how it works. https://housesforsale.com/zipCodeAvailability

I want you to know I hear and understand your frustration, Misha. We will continue to strive to do better and hopefully re-earn your business. I would like to reach out personally and see if we can’t figure out how this got off track, make it right, and use this as a learning experience to improve our customer service.

Thanks,
John