Estate Agents and their Shortcomings

We have just sold our house and bought another one. It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of Estate Agents as we were forced to do. Our ones were called F*x and Sons. I leave you to insert the vowel of your choice but I can confirm it was not A, E or I.

We only used them because they were selling the house we wanted to buy, and we thought the lure of 2 sales commissions would motivate them to action. What fools we were. F*x and Sons stayed in their office with their feet on the desks, filing their nails throughout the whole process and stirring themselves only at the last minute, to serve us a huge bill with more alacrity than they had shown during the whole rest of the proceedings.

I made particular enemies of 2 of their operatives, known to us as 'Mrs Assertive' and 'Supercilious Man'.

We should have known from the start that there would be trouble because it took three phone calls from us before they arranged to show us round the house we wanted - and when they did they did not bring the keys for the outbuilding which I particularly wanted to see, and thought I was a nuisance for wanting to do so. Mrs Assertive offered to make another appointment so that we COULD see the outbuilding, but made it clear I was being unreasonable. No matter that it had been an utter pain organising for our family to be available to look round the house at the time arranged and I had no wish to do it all again.

They lied and dissembled repeatedly, made us show our prospective purchasers round, never rang back when they said they would, always claimed to have been discussing our sale/purchase that very morning, various people were always "out of the office" and would be back "early next week" (they never were) and essential repair works which we demanded be done on pain of our backing out of the purchase, were always "in hand" but never got done. 
Furthermore the particulars they wrote for our house were of very low quality and negligible literary merit so that we were ashamed to distribute them. I wrote one of my own which was far better than theirs, and I am not even being paid for my pains.
In their description of the house we were buying, they called the kitchen "a real 'hub of home'". This is a wicked thing to do and has resulted in our family saying such remarks as "I've left the wine in the Hub of Home." We can't help it. Once heard (read) one can not forget something like that; and there is a constant danger that the neighbours might hear us. Imagine if your new neighbours were overheard referring to something as 'hub of home' - you'd be horrified and you wouldn't yet know them well enough to realise that they were exercising sarcasm at maximum setting. Assertive Lady is suspected of being the perpetrator of the phrase.

We were made fun of for not wishing to move into a house with an active flood from some of the plumbing. They told total fibs to our purchasers and sent round people who particularly wanted a house with a garden for their dog to cavort in (we hadn't got one) and told them we used to have a dog, which we had not, because the property was not suitable for dog husbandry.

A selection of dogs none of which, sadly,
live or have ever lived at our old house.

Further dogs that have not lived at our house. I'm sorry but there it is.

I planned to do some revenge when their bill was to come in; I was going to say we'd been talking about it that very morning, and that my husband was away until early next week and I would get him to phone them when he got back, to tell them the payment of the bill was in hand and in the post, to make fun of them for wanting to be paid what they were entitled to, and to inefficiently date the cheque Jan 2015 (a perfectly understandable mistake as it was the beginning of Jan 2016) and to make it payable to Mrs Assertive and Supercilious Man. In the event however, Supercilious Man was so unpleasant when we went in to pick up some more keys that had come to light, that I decided I wanted nothing further to do with him or any of F*x's hateful Sons, and therefore sent off the enormous, utterly unjustified cheque to his head office without comment. I had thought of including a covering letter remarking how DELIGHTED I was to be ending my dealings with them but I could well imagine them using  ' "Delighted" - Mrs M Carroll' in their testimonials, so I didn't. Also as mentioned, the less you have to do with people of this sort, the better.

We are now receiving by every post, brochures and so on from firms of whom we have never heard, much less informed of our activities, congratulating us on our move and offering various services for which we have no desire. We must assume that the Sons of F*x have been selling our details to the open market.

We must throw off the yoke of these appalling parasites. Every bad thing you have heard about Estate Agents is true. Should you wish to sell your house do it on one of those online selling sites. Together we can expunge Estate Agents from every High Street in the land, and the world will be for ever in our debt.