Zillow rolled out a new feature where consumers can rank agents. What are your thoughts?

I think it can be a double edge sword. While I think it's a great marketing tool, we all know in this business no matter how excellent your customer service is, there will always be someone who wants to leave negative feedback. Also, what's to prevent a competitor from rating other agents negatively?

I do believe they offer agents the ability to respond to negative comments however once it's out there, true or not, it will leave an impression which may be negative.

I don't like how zillow packages my listings and sells referrals to other agents who buy time with them. I suppose if buyers want to take the time to rank them I could really care less, but I do not see it as something a buyer wants to spend time doing. Generally they will take the time to say their agent stunk. But that is V for vendetta. On the flipside I do not know how many buyers will follow the rankings. If there were numerous rankings it would have more credibility. How is someone to establish a working relationship existed? Can I have my mom, dad, wife, 4 kids, 3 siblings all go on and write kudos about me? And can I puff my own image with a positive rating?

[quote=Doin' bpose]I don't like how zillow packages my listings and sells referrals to other agents who buy time with them. [/quote]

This bothers me as well. I called on behalf of our company to purchase the zip codes in our area as featured and the rep on the phone quoted a very high price for one zip and a much lower price for the other. Her comment to me was that the higher priced zip code must have more expensive homes to which I laughed and said quite the opposite. :confused:

Seems like a necessary evil since so many consumers utilize the service.

In my neck of the woods (and while this opinion is limited to myself and a few of my colleagues), it seems that Zillow is losing some credibility. I think some of this may source from homeowners being surprised by "lower than expected" Zillow estimates and writing it off that Zillow cannot be accurate. In fact, Zillow is not utilized in the appraisal industry likely for many of these same reasons. So, in my opinion, this new rollout by Zillow probably won't take off as a source of "negative" reviews for most agents...well, at least I'm hoping that most of the reviews (if any) will be positive! =)