{"id":424,"date":"2013-02-28T20:05:04","date_gmt":"2013-03-01T01:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/number1homeagent.com\/?p=424"},"modified":"2013-02-28T20:06:16","modified_gmt":"2013-03-01T01:06:16","slug":"how-zillow-cheated-me-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/number1homeagent.com\/?p=424","title":{"rendered":"How Zillow Cheated Me \u2013 Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I finally discovered in late January what Zillow had done to me and all of their paying customers outraged me so thoroughly that I called and made several demands.\u00a0 Working my way through their channels it became obvious that they had no intention of doing any of them.\u00a0 From their point of view they had done precisely nothing wrong.\u00a0 They had sent a notice.\u00a0 It was all legal. In other words, they could get away with it.<\/p>\n

The 2nd person I spoke with is named, Martin.\u00a0 Martin\u2019s job was to handle people who wanted to cancel their account with Zillow.\u00a0 I told Martin that I was aware of the continuous price increases but that what they did in October was a covert and underhanded move designed to hide a massive price increase and that they had actually cheated me and all of their other customers when they did it.\u00a0 It was about the same as a Realtor filling out a listing form, charging the seller 6% and then going back in to an elderly person and having them unknowingly agree to a 15% commission.\u00a0 Martin didn\u2019t see it that way at all.\u00a0 But that is exactly how I saw it.<\/p>\n

You can see the specifics at this link: http:\/\/zillowripsoffagents.com\/zillowcostsandresults2012.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

I am accustomed to advertising vendors attempting to overcharge me.\u00a0 I spend a little over $800,000 a year on marketing.\u00a0 Every year at contract negotiation time pretty much every TV and radio station wants to explain why we should pay more for even less.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t the fact of a price increase that outraged me \u2013 but the disingenuous method they chose to use.\u00a0 And no TV or radio station (or other source of internet leads I\u2019ve ever used) has ever attempted to trick me once I made a deal with them.\u00a0 According to Martin, Zillow\u00a0 had simply \u201cchanged their business model\u201d.<\/p>\n

I explained to him that based on what each lead cost me the cost per closed deal (buying Zillow leads) went from about $1,100 a deal to about $1,900 a deal.\u00a0 He became agitated that I kept insisting on using a cost per lead \u2013 he let me know \u201cwe don\u2019t sell leads, we sell number of impressions\u201d.\u00a0 Really, Martin?\u00a0 Cost per impression?\u00a0 Fine, if you hadn\u2019t at the very same time tried to hide the fact that you REALLY jacked the price this time.\u00a0 So high that I believe any agent who sees and understands what your company just pulled and can see what their true cost is now will simply stop doing business with Zillow.<\/p>\n

My demands were:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Refund to me the money they had overcharged me.<\/li>\n
  2. Refund to all of the other agents they had overcharged.<\/li>\n
  3. Issue a public apology for having been sneaky about it.<\/li>\n
  4. Promise to never do it again.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Martin made it clear Zillow wasn\u2019t going to do any of these things.<\/p>\n

    They didn\u2019t have to refund me or anybody else.\u00a0 They had \u201csent a notice\u201d they were making those changes.\u00a0 It was legal.<\/p>\n

    http:\/\/zillowripsoffagents.com\/how-zillow-cheated-me-part-1\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    When I finally discovered in late January what Zillow had done to me and all of their paying customers outraged me so thoroughly that I called and made several demands.\u00a0 Working my way through their channels it became obvious that they had no intention of doing any of them.\u00a0 From their point of view they had done precisely nothing wrong.\u00a0 They had sent a notice.\u00a0 It was all legal. In other words, they could get away with it. The 2nd person I spoke with is named, Martin.\u00a0 Martin\u2019s job was to handle people who wanted to cancel their account with <\/p>\n

    Read More<\/a> <\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marketing","category-zillow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/number1homeagent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/number1homeagent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/number1homeagent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/number1homeagent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/number1homeagent.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/number1homeagent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":426,"href":"https:\/\/number1homeagent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions\/426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/number1homeagent.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/number1homeagent.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/number1homeagent.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}