- Question to everyone, especially moderators/admin (Only constructive comments please).I'm not a hateful or a vicoius person and truly hate conflict, hence I'm testing the water hear, but I would like to start a couple forum posts along the line of:1. Real Estate agents who are gold.2. Real Estate agents to stay away from by all means.The way I see it is, RE agents fall into 3 categories, 'great', 'do there job' and there those who are just 'down right hopeless, unprofessional and unethical'. The later should be highlighted to the public and people warned, especially like minded people on this forum.So would such a forum posts be allowable? posts which people could list good and evil?What do you think?
Im not a moderator for this forum, but have thought about this a lot. eg a good doctor, dentist, mechanic, etc.
The problem is you are dealing with peoples reputations based on specific, and in most cases, subjective/emotional feedback.
I would assume any site that gets real notice doing this cops 100s of legal attacks every day putting them out of business.
If I did not have this fear of losing my entire lifes wealth I would be tempted to set up such a site!
Very dangerous to do that I believe on an open forum.
If someone asks about a particular person's service here, and it happens that you've had some experience with that person already and it was negative, then send them a private message.
There's too much negative and personal attack comment on this forum already.
By all means give thumbs ups where warranted of course.
Any negative statements about a specific agent or agency would only be libellous if they could be proven to be false. Of course truth does not necessarily play any part in proviing libel and often those with the deepest pockets win, so even if your statement is true the question is; can you afford to defend yourself if required?
That's the problem with the legal system, it's catch-22; you need to make it so that ambit claims are minimised (which has largely been accomplished by making the system prohibitively expensive), but by doing so you make justice unaffordable. How many of us have copped a fine only because it's too costly to mount a challenge? But then the counter argument is that the system would grind to halt if it cost tuppence to do so.
We could play a game of dare here. I’ll start with a statement and well see who is prepared to better it. The winner is the person who makes the the most outrageous claim (fact or fiction). Or perhaps people can post a vote on each statement from 1 – 10 of riskiness. Here's my opener:
Tom Cruse is a short little man (relative to me).
Yep. Real problems with naming RE Agents who are "down right hopeless, unprofessional and unethical". In fact, not only can you not name them, you can't even only provide enough information to identify them, eg, mining town, north Queensland, approx 20,000 people, pink and red colour scheme on their brand name (the town is Mt Isa but the rest is made up by me to provide an example). If you give enough information away on the forum for people to work out who you are talking about, it is potentially defamatory.
Words like "hopeless, unprofessional and unethical" are all opinions, not necessarily fact. While I'm sure some forum posters would carefully word what was said, it would be too easy for most posters to cross that arbitrary line and for the owners of the site to be sued.
BIt of a shame really because there are some shockers out there.
Cheers
K
Now the other problem is that real estate agents and property managers probably more so, move around a lot. They might be with harcourts one year, professionals the next and then Ray Whites. A new principle property manager may change the whole attitude of the office with his/her enthusiasm and diligence. So I think it is a bit hard to single out particular offices. word of mouth is best so if you had a property in in say bathurst, you could ask the forum if they had any recomendations.
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