Agents in general are doing it pretty tough at the moment and instead of lending their customer base a hand and freezing prices what does realestate.com.au do…. Rocket prices up even further!
I was once told by a friend that if you have bad news to deliver send it out on Friday and if its good news, send it out first thing Monday morning. No surprise then that the email that arrived on 4:30pm on Friday Afternoon contained bad news.
Hidden near the bottom is an article about prices rises from the 1st of February that cover Feature Property & Feature All PLUS, eBrochure & eBrochure ALL, Guaranteed Top Spot, Banner Advertising.
Where are the details of the actual price rise. Not in the email!. You have to login to read it. With xml feeds the norm how many offices actually login to REA these days. In fact, how many agency owners and manager login at all?
Now back in August you could get a feature property for $75 per month. Now 7 months later the same feature property will have had two prices rises to now be $95 per month. That’s a 26% increase in just 7 months which equates to 45% per annum.
Outrageous!
Disgusting!
Ridiculous!
In fact if I would have had the rates for the other items being increased some of them might be even increasing even higher.
Lets put this in perspective realestate.com.au.. over the past 12 months as Realestate.com.au claim that UB’s and visits are up by 15%.
So What! The sales of properties that feature on realestate.com.au has dropped by 50%-75%.
How can they justify a cost of $0.77 per ebrochure as physically mailing it would be cheaper. Lets face it, the greed mentality of corporations got the world in the mess they are in today.
Here we have a company that has spent millions expanding around the world, only to have wasted a large chunk as those close and downscale their overseas operations. The world is in the middle of an economic meltdown and their main customer base that has funded this expansion is hurting. Agencies are closing down everywhere and total sales turnover is only a fraction of past of years. To continue to show a profit so their share prices does not cop a hammering they ramp prices up to the customer base they have left. And they wonder why arrogant is the most commonly used word to describe realestate.com.au.
Is anybody else as fed up as I am with these prices rises by the greedy monopolistic corporation that is REA?