Manipulating Showing Feedback

When you get your first listing, you'll probably be using a showing service. They will schedule the showing with the buyer agent and approve it with the seller. It's a useful service because it speeds up the approval process by taking the listing agent out of the loop.

One of the other things the showing service also does is send a request for feedback to the showing agent asking for their comments about the home. We always appreciate feedback on our listings, positive or negative, because it helps our sellers understand what others are saying about their home. It's not coming from us, but a third party.

With our showing service the listing agent can elect to see the feedback before the seller receives it or have it sent to both at the same time. The listing agent can also remove or add remarks on the feedback and this is where I first saw this abused by an agent.

The listing agent was trying to get the seller to lower the price of the home and they didn't

want to do it. So before the seller saw the showing feedback he'd add something like "Home is overpriced" as if it was coming from the showing agent. There's no way the seller would know that remark had been added unless they talked to the showing agent. Sneaky!

I was surprised any agent would do that and furthermore, I couldn't believe he was telling me about it. I guess he felt it was perfectly alright to do since he believed the home was overpriced. Go figure.