iam-sold Ltd

Thank you for your comments. The Reservation Agreement is between you and the Buyer and IAM Sold cannot just "kick you off the contract". As a buyer you pay a non-refundable Reservation Fee to reserve the property from sale that is paid in addition to the purchase price. This is not a deposit and as we are so transparent in regard to the Reservation Fee, it is of the buyer's own choice to pay the fee if they wish to purchase the property. You receive one Reservation Agreement that is generic in terms for every buyer. This is to ensure transparency throughout the process and as part of the Reservation Agreement both the Seller and the Buyer have obligations to meet within this agreement. If a buyer fails to meet those obligations then the Seller has the right to terminate the agreement. A buyer is given the Reservation Agreement prior to placing the bid therefore have the choice to abide by the terms of the agreement or not. The terms of the agreement are not up for alteration however in certain buyer circumstances, timescales can be extended or caveats introduced to assist buyers with special circumstances. Once the Sale is agreed there is a dedicated Sales Progression Team who assist in ensuring the deadlines are met however they do not have any leverage with Solicitors or circumstances outside their control that could cause delays to the transactions - they can only enforce the terms of the Reservation Agreement - but use their exceptional negotiation and assertive skills to push Solicitors and customers to act promptly. Whilst we appreciate you may find that rude or challenging, we pride ourselves in delivering excellent customer service and are warm and approachable to ensure a comfortable customer experience. In conclusion, a buyer comes to IAM Sold to agree to purchase a property and pay a fee to do so. They are then obligated to ensure they agree to the terms and conditions of sale, including meeting all obligations and deadlines. In return, we provide them with a service to ensure all matters progress promptly within these deadlines - this is proven by our current average completion rate of 44 days. However, we are sorry this service did not meet your expectations and was not for you. If you wish to discuss your experience further, then please feel free to contact the Customer Service Team directly via email - customerservices@iam-sold.co.uk We wish you well on your future endeavours. IAM Sold Ltd - Customer Service Team

Thanks for the response. Your reply is in keeping with the rest of the experience of dealing with you - you come across as overly defensive, disingenuous and deliberately ambiguous. This perception arises because you have ignored some of my points, have misleadingly misinterpreted others and contradicted yourself on the remainder. 1) You say the Reservation Agreement is between the Seller and the Buyer. Yet you claim sole right to adjudicate (enforce" is not the right word – you're not the police and have no right to enforce anything) on whether obligations have been met, and retain (and use) the right to threaten to end the process, keeping the fees? 2) My assertion that you add no value is supported by this admission – any Buyer and Seller could use this contract without you just as effectively as with you. You also do not address the point (in fact you fundamentally misunderstood this point – please read this more carefully) that the fee would achieve its purpose as a deposit rather than a fee. As I said, never have I paid so much for so little. 3) You ignored my point that the 2 agreements do not agree – what's the point of been given a generic agreement prior to bidding if you're then presented with a different one after the bid is accepted? You also didn't acknowledge my point that even the agreement that was supposed to be specific to my case was not amended to reflect agreed terms – you refused point blank to do this, leaving all parties relying on emails and verbal agreements. 4) My experience is that the Sales Progression Team is anything but ‘dedicated'. I had to chase them ahead of deadlines, and they only noticed days afterwards that deadlines had passed. 5) The ‘exceptional' negotiation skills you refer to mostly consist entirely of making threats to cancel the process and put the property back on the market. This is not negotiation, and you do it in such a rude way you're not even bothering to dress it up as such. 6) If you had pride in your ‘excellent' customer service, you would respond positively to this feedback, rather than publishing a message in public contradicting and refuting the points I've made. It doesn't come across like you're interested in improving – it comes across that you're more interested in aggressively defending a ridiculous business model than constructively addressing buyers' concerns. 7) Buyers do not come to you – sellers do. This is a disingenuous statement. What might be more accurate is that your customers are the sellers – you act in their interest by leveraging the threat of ending the process to bump the traditional players into acting quickly on partial, ambiguous and contradictory information. The conceit of this is that in my case you failed to do this – as the process was late due to other parties you were unable or unwilling to work with effectively. I should add that since moving into my property that I've learnt that documents I received as part of this process had the wrong address on them, something your team didn't notice. This was one of the things I pointed out at the time and was assured wouldn't be a problem. It was. I would advise you focus on getting the basics right rather than posting further disingenuous messages on review websites.