Buy Owner will rob you blind and then laugh! It's completely useless. It's the ultimate scam!!! Beware!!! Deerfield Beach Florida
Warning : Buy Owner will take your hard earned money, and leave you with a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. It's that kind of feeling that you only get when you know you've been bamboozled by someone unscrupulous. The kicker is that you're the one that signs off on this ludicrous deal and you're the one who invites these people into your home. It is truly the ULTIMATE SCAM. I implore you not to have anything to do with Buy Owner. You will regret it immediately. Don't be a fool like me.
They do it with deceptive advertising, high pressure sales tactics, and complete omission of pertinent facts both orally, and in those utterly aggregious contracts that you should never, ever sign. They use completely unfair trade practices to get you to agree to the most ridiculous conditions, only meant to benefit them.
They only want your money. I repeat, they only want your money, and could care less if you ever sell your home. There is a no refund policy. Companies with unsatisfied customers don't want to give you your money back. That's how they stay in business.
A sales representative came to my house the other day, and completely lied to my face. She was extremely complimentary to me and my house. I actually liked the woman. I'm sure all of the tactics she used are taught at the sales meetings. I'd love to be a fly on the wall at those. Anyway, she took some temporary pictures of my house, and along with some stock photos she had on file, she proceeded to snow me.
I asked about a couple of the packages I had seen on their website (the Executive, and the Platinum, specifically) and she told me that they started at $10,000 and went up to $30,000. It was a complete lie. The prices actually start much lower, but they won't tell you that if they think you'll pay more. In fact, they even tell you that their plans are tailored just for you.
They're tailored for sure, based on how much your'e asking for your house, and how much they think you're worth. They deliberately omitt the fact that you are allowed to pick and choose as many or as few pictures as you want. I was left to believe that $10,000 was the lowest price package.
They make it sound feasible, by letting you break it up into 4 payments. Never do this, because they make you mortgage your home to do it.
She proceeded to show me file footage of pictures she said I neededin order to sell my home: pictures of a playground a mile away, pictures of the ocean 10 blocks away, pictures of the bay, though I'm on the land side. She even said I needed pictures of South Beach, even though the house I'm selling is in North Beach, two zipcodes away. This all sounded a little off, but I thought all this was included in the package, so what could it hurt? Wrong, wrong, wrong.
They try to get you to agree to as many photos as possible, all to be re-shot later, to puff up the bottom line. In the end I had unknowingly signed up for a 43 picture, 43 virtual tour package. It is a package suited for a huge mansion. My house is a 1,922 two bedroom ranch. They pick all the pictures, and then pretend like it was you. It is beyond wrong to contract people for something so insane.
Any buyer shopping online for house is not going to want to sit through 43 virtual tours of a small house.
There's one home on their site now with the same 43 virtual package that I signed on for. Four of the 43 separate tours are of different angles of their backyard! Why? Because a normal size house doesn't warrant so many virtual tours.
If you go to some of the more well known realtor sites, you'll see the homes they have listed have between 4 and 6 virtual tours of the key areas of their homes. Forty-three is totally excessive and unnecessay. It's bound to be repetetive, especially on a small house.
Luckily, I came to my senses a couple days later, and cancelled the mortgage deed they had put on my house, and the professional photographer that was supposed to come to my house to take the virtual tours. I have already given them a $3,000 deposit which they say is nonrefundable. The worst part is, that they're saying I still owe them $7,000 for photos and tours that were never even taken. Once you have a problem, their customer service people become rude and belligerent. One even hung up on me today. Take it from me stay away from Buy Owner.
All of this would'nt even seem so bad if they actually helped sell your home which they rarely ever do. All of those hits that they brag you'll get, simply aren't there. Neither are the calls. In the 5 days my profile was up, I was the only one that ever saw it. You will do much much better by using one of those flat rate mls listing services for a couple hundred dollars. They let you post your pictures and everything. Supplement that by listing on free sites, etc.
Whatever you do, don't add insult to injury, by going with their own realty company sneakily called MLS realty. It's just another way they have devised to get more money out of you. If you want to go the realtor route, use a good one that is not in any way affilated with Buy Owner. I know this was a long testimonial, but I was trying to be thorough. I don't want anyone else to fall victim to this scam like I did.
Nina
miami, Florida
U.S.A.
2 Updates & Rebuttals
bj
Miami,Florida,
U.S.A.
Sadly it's true
#3UPDATE EX-employee responds
Thu, May 03, 2007
I'm sad to admit that the complaint from the customer sounds accurate. How do I know? I'm an EX-EMPLOYEE of Buy Owner. The description of high pressure sales tactics and not being up front about what the prices start out at is the way the sales training is conducted. You are correct, no one needs dozens and dozens of photos to sell a home.
All anyone has to do to find out for sure is to call or email some of the customers from the Buy Owner website. You can find out for yourself if the customers are indeed happy or not. My guess is that you will find many more customers just like the ones that posted on this site.
Nina
Miami Beach,Florida,
U.S.A.
BUY OWNER IS LYING ONCE AGAIN!! DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING THEY SAY. THERE WAS NO AMICABLE RESOLUTION !!!!!
#3Author of original report
Thu, April 26, 2007
I cannot stress this enough: BUY OWNER LIES. This time they have gone so far, as to lie about a resolution that never took place. It was all a manipulative rouse, to try and get me to go away, and to drop my claims against them. If I thought they were bad before, I can tell you now, that they are so much worse than I could ever have imagined. Nothing was cleared up and nothing was done to rectify the situation. I was stupid enough to fall for their false advertising and lying salesperson in the first place, but they were stupid enough to promise to resolve our dispute amicably, ON TAPE, and then do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Yes, that's right. They promised to resolve the matter, and then I've never heard from them again. What I can't believe, is that they had the gall to state that our situation was rectified, in print. That could not be further from the truth. In fact, it is a downright lie.
Here are the facts: On April 11, 2007, at 3:01 p.m., I was contacted by, a customer service manager, at the South Florida Buy Owner Branch. He stated that the franchise owner wanted an "amicable resolution" to our dispute. He offered to change the package I was sold at $10,149, to the package I had inquired about in the first place. I finally found out how much the Platinum package was: $5,149. My salesperson led me to believe that $10,149, was the lowest price I could pay at the time. Anyway, the customer service manager said, if I agreed to the lessor package, they would then refund my credit card $5,000, the difference between the two prices. I agreed. I asked him if I had to sign anything. He said no, they would just issue the credit, and he would call me when it was done.
Well, as you can imagine, I never heard from him again. Of course, I called to follow up. On April 17th, 2007, I called to ask when they planned to issue the credit. He literally said, "Oh, well we sent you out something to sign a few days ago, haven't you received it yet?" Another lie. They never sent me anything. If they really wanted to send me something to sign, they would have done it certified mail. Furthermore, you don't need to sign anything to have a credit issued on your card- (Just like I didn't have to sign anything when they charged my card. They just did it !!)
In the interim, I had filed a claim with the Better Business Bureau, as well as this fine consumer protection vehicle, The Rip Off Report. It is my guess, that they were trying to manipulate me into saying our dispute was resolved, and then totally bail out on the whole deal, once the case was closed, in the end never fullfilling there end of the settlement. Well think again, Buy Owner, because I have all of your false promises on tape. While I contemplate what to do with it, I urge anyone and everyone who has been scammed by Buy Owner, to file a complaint against them with the Rip Off Report, and The Better Business Bureau as well. What they're doing to people is wrong.
I dare Buy Owner to refute any of this. I have you on tape, so STOP LYING !!!!!
If you are lucky enough to have never fallen victim to Buy Owner, please, please run in the other direction. Just ask them what their statistics are on selling homes. They won't give you any, because it's completely, and utterly useless. They will just take your money, and leave you with nothing. All of that advertising they claim to do is only targeted at you the seller, and not the all important BUYERS. Think about it. Those "Thanks Buy Owner" commercials are directed at you. You'll be soooo much better off, if you avoid them like the Plague. Like I said in my initial complaint, if you're dead set on selling your home by yourself, use either a flat fee listing service for a couple hundred dollars, or the original and far superior For Sale By Owner. Otherwise. just use a good old fashioned Realtor. Trust me on this one, using Buy Owner is like throwing your money away. Learn from my mistakes, and stay away from Buy Owner.
P.S. The Buy Owner employee who gave the rebuttal to my original complaint is also lying about the procedure checklist. Nowhere on there does it address anything substantive. It is a totally nonspecific form, that has nothing to do with your particular package. It is ludicrous for him to suggest that this would clear up any of the lies or misrepresentations of the salesperson. What they should give people in written form, is a breakdown of all of the pricing, per package, per picture, per virtual tour, and per placement. This is what would eliminate any confusion or "misunderstanding", not some vague checklist which says things like,"The Buy Owner advertising program you purchase does not include closing costs." Well gee, thanks a lot.
It's totally bogus. They don't want to give you a list of the prices, because they are trying to get you to buy the most expensive package they can. If you knew you could pay $1,000, you might not want to pay $2,000, or $4,000, or even $10,000 like I did. It's a classic case of sales manipulation and omission. They want to keep you in the dark as far as pricing goes. For them to try to justify it is disgusting.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope you now have a better understanding of what Buy Owner really is.