Reply Real Estate
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I Have a Referral For You! Not!

We get our fair share of referrals from around the country, so it is often difficult to separate legit messages from schlocky vendors looking to sell us something. Prior to this past weekend, a message was left in my office from what was ostensibly an agent in California who had a buyer looking in Briarcliff Manor. That's right in my wheelhouse, so she got a call back within the hour.

Voicemail. And then, of course, the weekend.

I've been down this road before with the 4:55 pm messages, and I thought for a moment that I'd get a call on Monday telling me I was too late for the referral, but for only $XXX a month....

Fast forward to Monday, and "Mary" calls me back when I am on the road and she still does have that referral. Best of all, they weren't a real estate brokerage and they weren't looking for a referral fee, they would just ask $55 for the lead, and I could pay them after it was verified. But the buyer, I was assured, was real. OK. I'll play along. We agreed to speak once I got back to the office.

The call lasted 10 minutes. Mary was calling from "Reply" Real Estate, one of the jillions of outfits that spams me, and she said they got my name from Merchant Circle, another one of those sites that spams me. Not good news, but before I got too judgmental, I felt it wise to get to the people who sought a home in my community. That's when the other shoe dropped.

If I wanted the $55 "lead," I would have to commit to a monthly purchase of anywhere from 8-20 leads from this operation, which was pitched along with the requisite guarantees of accuracy, clean hygiene and whatever else she could throw at me.

I told Mary that I was not going to hire them to be my $450 a month lead company. And Mary then told me that she wouldn't be able to put me in touch with the most likely fictitious Briarcliff Manor home buyer. 10 minutes of my life down the drain with a bait and switch vendor. Maybe the buyer was real; if they were, they should be aware that the firm they hope will set them up with an agent isn't in a big hurry to look after their best interests. And if they don't exist, well, that wouldn't say much about "Reply" Real Estate's integrity.

Just another example of the oily way some vendors do business. They wave a fictitious or unsuspecting client under your nose, just to sell you on an expensive service that was unrelated to the referral. I used to be far more outraged at how some of these outfits play to agents' eagerness to generate clientele and income, but I am over that for the most part. It is part of the landscape now, like telemarketers and junk mail. I'm sure there is some agent out there that loves Reply and gets a ton of business from them, but I can't get past the subterfuge. If the first bite of the apple is sour, I'm not keen on eating more.

BY the way, if someone from Reply or Merchant Circle want to "reply" to me or dispute the accuracy of this post, my contact information is right in the sidebar. I considered not naming names, but thought it best to be transparent about who was who.