We recently (4 months ago) listed our home in Orlando FL with Coldwell Banker. All was going well initially! After being promised by our agent that we would have flat pictures posted to www.realtor.com (my wife and I are BIG internet users and concluded that not everyone has high speed internet access and those that do not are on dial up which is very slow, which is why we have a preference for pictures which load faster) , well it never transpired!

Our agent decided (from a pure cost perspective) that she was going to have Virtual Tour shot instead of pictures because she could get it for about half the cost via some special deal that she had with Coldwell. Well the Virtual Tour people showed up to do the shots and all was fine, until the next day we went online to view the VT and it WAS NOT OUR HOME being shown on the VT, it was a completely different home.

Furthermore, CB only had a single front view of our house listed on their OWN site (due to merger problems with Arvida, which is NOT MY problem) This is not what I paid for, I wanted maximum advertisement & exposure as we had to sell rather quickly in order to close on our new home in Tampa

Now the story gets better. We had an initial offer which we decided to decline as the buyer low balled us by $10K, however, we had another couple come and view the home in the meanwhile. Well my CB agent was on vacation, and insisted that she would cover us via cell/fax while on vacation supposedly to provide us with the best possible service. Well that was no where near the case!!! The other couple had submitted an offer on our home, but we were NOT notified by our agent. The only way I became aware of the offer was through the buyer's agent who contacted me 1/2 hour before the offer was set to expire. We verbally accepted the offer, but the buyers had an additional night to think it over and backed out. Anyway due to our desperate situation of having to relocate soon, we had no choice but to take the next offer that came in which was a significant amount less than our asking price.

In addition all sellers should carefully read their sales contract as the CB contracts (unlike FARBAR contracts which state that you have an OUT if dissatisfied, but you are still responsible for any fees spent on the marketing of your home) leave the seller no rights to withdrawal the broker for poor performance, and if we cancelled we owed them the full commission! We even discussed this with her manager and he would not budge. However, after speaking with other brokers they indicated that if a customer is unhappy then 9/10 times they would let the seller out of the contract minus any monies spent on marketing the house.

What was I paying for a few fliers, a sign in the lawn and 1 picture on the internet !!! It is certainly not worth 6% of my house. Also during the entire 4 months our agent brought a total of 1 BUYER (who was not even pre approved which we indicated in our contract) whereas, we had several other agents bringing 2-3 buyers. She claims that she has given us the "best" service, well if that is all she has to offer, then she should consider a career change in my opinion.

Oh and one more thing what is this CB $195 processing fee. According to Federal (and maybe even state) unless an actual service is performed then a fee may not be charged!! I have inquired with a law firm that is pursuing a "Class Action Suit" against CB specifically for this fee.

I will NEVER use Coldwell Banker or any of its affiliates ever again and would not recommend that anyone else does so either.

-- John P Nicholson (jpn@tampabay.rr.com), August 28, 2002