Zillow Extreme hard sell to Realtor promising lots of leads and exposure Internet
Zillow called me to sell me advertising on their real estate website stating that a positon in the zipcode I was interested in had opened up, insinuating that there was not a lot of agents allowed in each zipcode. I told him I wasn't interested as I wasn't selling real estate anymore but my wife was. He asked for her number and I gave it to him. He called her and she explained that she hadn't had any sales and was just starting out. She also informed him she couldn't afford it. She also pointed out that she didn't even have a website set up.
The Zillow sales rep convinced her she would get so many leads that she would make enough money to pay for the ads.
She signed up for just under $800 a month and a six month contract. Then he informed her she had to go into the site they set up for her and get clients to provide feedback and to fill out all kinds of other information. This after she had told him she was just getting started and hadn't sold any houses that year. She then found out that anytime she showed up on a Zillow pager she would be one of three agents on the page and you only showed up occasionly. When she checked the zillow pages there were well over 50 agents for the one zipcode! Many from huge agencies that she was now supposed to compete with. Many of the agencies had all these sales and gold stars by their names and she was supposed to hope someone clicked on her picture and submitted their info for her to call them
When she tried to cancel with zillow she was told that she would have to pay for two months to get out of the contract and that was all she had left anyway. He also informed her that the first couple of months not to expect any activity, so apparently you pay $800 a month for nothing.
Zillow announced in the news shortly after her contract expired that they were going to be focusing more on the superagents who spend $5000 a month with them.
My wife was out almost $5000 and in the total six months she was with Zillow got 10 leads and only four that she was actually able to speak with. So a half a lead a month and none of them wanted to buy only get more info on the house listed on Zillow.