We are very disappointed that we ever signed up with Buy Owner (BuyOwner.com) to serve as an alternative to a commission based Realtor for selling our Sun City home.in early May we were promised a high quality program from a company that was owned by Southwest Multiple Listing Service. My experiences with the Tempe based operation reveals Buy Owner is a poorly managed company that is operating on a shoestring.
Our First red flag that were were in for trouble was that Buy Owner required our payment or Credit card promise totaling $5,000 up front. This essentially removed all incentive for Buy Owner to provide any kind of Customer Service. Buy Owner Customer Service is virtually non-existant.
We were promised a call from a representative of Buy Owner within 3 days of signing our agreement. (A contract that Buy Owner later hides behind as non - Cancelable.) In the two months since we signed up we have never received a call from any one from BuyOwner.com as promised, nor in response to our many calls voicing our complete dissatisfaction.
My many frustrating calls to talk to a Buy Owner Manager were always blocked by the Receptionist Christy or the Customer Service Department -Stacey - who sometimes serves as Receptionist. My frequent requests to talk to my Sales Representative Jim Finnegan were never successful.
The virtual tour, a huge selling feature of our home's interior, exterior and impressive community center, was a fiasco. The two scheduled shooting for our virtual tours were no shows. We were assured they would happen within the first week. And no problem having these on our website for our review before we went on vacation in two weeks.
We were led to believe from the Buy Owner Representative's Sales Kit, that Buy Owner uses IPIX for virtual tours.instead we had to learn that Buy Owner has contracted with Hazeltine, a company with two photographers to cover all Buy Owner's virtual tour bookings in Arizona. I have first hand experienced that this is a very ineffective company that, like Buy Owner functions like it is operating on a shoestring.
A Hazeltine photographer finally showed up to do our virtual tours at 9:00 pm the night before our vacation. Darkness eliminated any possibility of shooting our home's front or back yard landscaping, nor our very impressive Sun City Community Center. We had viewed each of these with our Buy Owner Sales Rep who assured us they were key distinguishing components to the successful marketing of our home. Six weeks later these were still not on our website. Adding insult to injury, the inside virtual tours are still very overexposed as they pans across each lamp and light that had to be on for the night time shooting. Our golden walls look white and sterile. We are very unhappy!
Our Buy Owner flier was surprisingly unprofessional and very inadequate. We were extremely disappointed when we were told by BuyOwner Customer Non-service that the flier is a template and can't be changed.
The touted Buy Owner Magazine - a catalogue of BuyOwner's Platinum homes distributed nationwide, was to include our home's listing in the next publication. We still have not received our promised copy. Two months later it appears to be all empty hype.
We have been attempting to find the backers of buy Owner in order to get some leverage for help. We have not been able to find the Multiple Listing Service that was claimed to be the prime backer of Buy Owner.
Don't make my mistake by going with Buy Owner. Save yourself a lot of frustration, and don't make a worthless investment.
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