Bourne Estate Agents
View company profile →
Bourne yesterday..., infants trying to do an adult job
I had approached Bourne to help my friend find a bungalow property and I was bombarded by irrelevant emails with unsuitable properties. When I insisted that they stop wasting my time with these irrelevant emails, I was informed by a Senior Sales Consultant that "Unfortunately when we sent a mailout, there isn’t a preference to select houses or bungalows, would you like me to take you off our mailing list?". Aside of the basic literacy issues here, it is clear that they and their systems are incapable of meeting the needs of individual clients. More concerning is that when one of their staff did send me details of a bungalow that I was keen to view, I let her know that I was available the following Monday and she confirmed that a viewing would be possible at 4.30pm on the Monday. Although I did not respond to this offer until late on the Friday night, I assumed that it was going ahead, unless I heard otherwise, as they had the full day on Monday to forewarn me of any changes. I stood in the rain outside the property for 20 minutes before phoning Bourne to find out how much longer the viewing would be delayed and I was told that my viewing had not been confirmed as the staff member was unexpectedly off work on the Monday and had not seen my email. I was told that viewings were due to take place at the property at 5.15pm and, given that it was 4.50pm and that the Bourne office was only a 5 minute drive, I asked if it was possible that the person doing the viewings could come now whilst I was at the property before the 5.15pm appointment turned up. The phone was passed to the staff member doing the later viewings, whom I now know is the manager, and he was highly defensive in his tone, suggesting that I was at fault for turning up at the property without the other staff member re-confirming the viewing. My request to have a quick 5pm viewing prior to the 5.15pm appointment was denied and I was offered a 6pm appointment instead. I was quite shocked by the unhelpful attitude and expectation that I would wait a further hour in the rain until all the other viewings had been completed. I declined their offer. I waited a couple of weeks in the hope that the original staff member, who sent me the viewing appointment time, returned to work. Given that I was told I should have not turned up to the viewing time she offered without hearing back from her, I thought that she would eventually respond to my email, but no. Zero customer service. I emailed her to explain the above in case her colleagues had not made her aware. I also suggested that it might be useful to cc in a colleague or manager to emails regarding viewings so that someone could take responsibility for ensuring that all clients responses were acknowledged prior to viewings. I asked for the manager's email address as I wanted to make a complaint about the "process". The staff member "replied" to my email. This was the response in total: "I’m sorry you feel this way, here is my managers email address: email address removed for the purpose of Trust Pilot bourneestateagents.com." I had not mentioned anything about my feelings in my email to her, therefore I am unclear as to what "feelings" she is referring to. However, this "response" is bog standard customer services speak for suggesting that the issue is the client's feelings, not their customer service. As she had provided her manager's email address, I was able to cc him into my response to her and I quickly got a highly defensive email from him, with no reference to the valid points I made in my original email. Whilst I was shocked to learn that the person I had spoken to that day in the rain was the manager, I now understand why there are various issues with the team that he is managing; people are led by example. An unhelpful manager who is reluctant to resolve an issue and, instead, waste time blaming the client creates an unhelpful team. I hope that they remove me from their mailing list, as requested, asap, and that I never hear from them again.