I believe I am a victim of 21st Century white collar slavery. One would ask, How is this possible? How was a college educated woman duped into such a position in today's day and age? Youthful naivet? A unyielding drive to succeed? Perhaps, but the issue goes far deeper than a unfulfilled promise or a bad business decision.
A company, HouseValues.com offers the JustListed.com service to millions of curious real estate enthusiasts and promises each one of them a realty service via email although they are not licensed to perform the services. Fulfilling this promise may not be a problem if the service was a fully automated, but it is not... Or if their paid employees were authorized by law to fulfill such requests, but they are not. And hiring licensed real estate agents to provide such a service to every curious consumer would be astronomical.
So this same companywho just went public this fallemploys agents under the guise of offering them a service as well. They insinuate that the service enhances the agents' chance of procuring sales and increasing business. However, they do not disclose to agents before signing up for the service that it can take up to a year for any of these leads to actually turn into a sale nor do they guarantee that any of them will.
But how do I think that this service constitutes slavery? Up until this point, their legal eagles have been able to cover them from numerous consumer complaints and legal actions. However, they forgot oneperhaps more— important issues.
Without the agents, HouseValues.com would not be able to fulfill their promises to the end consumers. So they require agentswho technically are not employed by the company to attend seminars (some of which are NOT free), maintain a certain real estate status, and follow order fulfillment rules. From my understanding, all practices are illegal under IRS independent contractor laws. Finally, agents will not be compensated for the services they render to the company if they don't sell a house.
Here's the icing on the cake: once the real estate agent becomes wise to HouseValues/JustListed practices and wants to be released from the contract, they extort more money from the poor soul in the form of a cancellation fee. This cancellation fee is nothing more than a slavery bond: Agents, if you want to stop working for HouseValues/JustListed, you must pay us for your freedom is the idea that came to me.in my case a fee in excess of $3,000 was issuedwhich I refuse to pay. So they have enlisted a Collection service to collect a debt which I did not incur. Representatives from this company have threatened me with serving me legal documents at my office and with wrecking my credit and they have NOT contacted me in writing concerning the issues at hand. I will be following up with a specific complaint for them.
So what do I hope to accomplish by taking action against HouseValues/JustListed?
1) I would like a full refund for the amount that I have already paid to this service
2) I would like HouseValues.com to drop their collection case against me
3) I would like other agents to know exactly what they are getting into when they sign an agreement with this HouseValues or any other similar service company.
4) And I would like the general public to be aware of the business practices employed by this Corporation before choosing to invest in their publicly traded stock.
I must include that I am willing to attempt a class action approach to resolve this conflict.
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