Harcourts used misleading ads for a year
The Advertising Standards Complaints Board has upheld a complaint about Harcourts advertising laid by new national real estate company The Joneses.
Thursday, March 29th 2007, 12:03PM
by The Landlord
Harcourts had compared the average price of house sales over a given month in the market with the average price of sales made by Harcourts and made a claim that sellers would achieve higher prices by selling through their firm.The Complaints Board found that the advertisement used research results in a manner that was misleading.
“Harcourts is a national firm and either they don’t understand statistics, which is a worry, or they knew exactly what they were doing in misleading the Christchurch public – which is much worse,” says The Joneses partner Chris Taylor.
Taylor says that Harcourts had been running these advertisements for 12 months. “This is another example of how our industry needs to lift its game to raise standards and regain public trust.”
The ruling comes as the government announces its decision to conduct a full legislative review of the real estate industry.
The Real Estate Institute is currently considering disciplinary action against The Joneses for bringing the industry into disrepute because “we made the statement that consumers: “generally get very poor service and pay way, way too much money”,” Taylor says.
“We support the government’s review as a chance to take a much more consumer-oriented approach to the whole industry,” he says.
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