After years of pointing out to the public that the majority of RICS surveyors should not be allowed to survey so much as a rabbit hutch, RICS predictably went looking for an opportunity to have a go at me.
Instead of cleaning up their act, RICS decided that they needed to try and teach us a lesson by putting us through their ‘professional standards’ process. Stupidly; because there was nothing they could do other than drawing attention to themselves, and their asinine processes..
So what happened to make them write a nice story about me in their silly magazine, Modus?
In 2019, we quoted on a survey on a £2 million property. It was Grade 2*. The client was one of those that clearly didn’t want to spend money on surveys – they demanded a discount, and wanted the cheapest possible survey. We quoted them two options: A full survey with detailed report, or a Consultation survey, in which I spend the day on site and at the end of the day go through the survey findings with them, with no report. There was around £1000 difference in price, as it takes me several days to put reports together on properties like this and I explained I was going overseas the day after the survey.
It was a long day. The front end of the property was Georgian, and built onto a much older timber frame that was a rotting mess, and moving. Trusses were twisting out of shape and the gable frame was compost, held up by good luck and thick coats of plastic paint. A lot of illegal work had been done – and it was clear the owners didn’t realise this, or the implications. They genuinely had no idea of the state of the frame. I explained the problems, and they were more than happy to try and fix the issues, including getting retrospective Listed Building Consent for the issues I’d found. At the end of the day, the clients turned up and I explained the issues – told them not to buy, that a lot of problems needed sorting, but the vendors were willing to work with them and sort things out. I offered to facilitate a meeting with the local authority Conservation Officer.
I took them round, pointing out the issues – at one point I stood by the gable end and pointed at it – the man couldn’t understand what I was talking about. I pushed my hand into some timber that fell apart in my hand, and said ‘the whole bloody gable end is the same – it’s a total mess, and some idiot has rebuilt it in the past with all the wrong methods and materials’.. The Woman by this stage was huffing and puffing, and came out with ‘ You blasphemed! How dare you blaspheme! You used foul language in the presence of our lord’, and with that she stormed off. I finished showing the guy around and sat him with the vendors, and we discussed options. Everyone seemed on board with solving the issues and making the sale go through.
A few days later The Woman emailed, demanding a report. We explained that we had quoted, and they had accepted, a survey without report. And no, we couldn’t do a report because I didn’t have photos, time (I was overseas) and they hadn’t paid for it. I was training some younger surveyors, and told her that if she wanted, I’d get one of them to send his report when it was done, but it would take time, because he was busy and only doing it for a training exercise. I then heard from the agent that The Woman had upset the vendors so much that they took the place off the market, and refused to sell it to them under any circumstances.
The Woman continued to complain, writing lengthy letters and demanding a report, then when she got the training report I organised at no cost to her, demanding her money back. I said no – and she then complained to rics, who told her to demand our dispute process.
Becoming a RICS 'Accredited' Firm:
At this point I should explain that one of our crew, who was an assoc rics member, had suggested that being rics accredited might help get more work. All you had to do was fill in a 1 page form with his details and you were then ‘accredited’. No exam, no training, nobody came to see if you were worthy of being ‘accredited’ – just fill in the form please. So we did – and that was our only connection with the organisation.
What follows is the direct result of being RICS 'accredited' – and shows why I tell anyone thinking of joining them, or gaining any form of accreditation with them: DON’T.
RICS tell you to use CEDR for dispute resolution:
SO you get accredited (sorry – you fill in a 1 page form which is in no way any form of ‘accreditation’) and then apparently have to submit to using one of their nice cosy arbitration schemes. The biggest one by far is a dodgy outfit called CEDR. A quick look at the CEDR google reviews is very revealing:
“CEDR is quite clearly in the pocket of the surveyors association and is a complete joke from the pov of holding the industry to account in any meaningful way. What a sham.”
“We were told by two highly experienced surveyors that we had a strong case to claim compensation when our HomeBuyers Survey failed to spot a serious roof problem. These surveyors helped us put a technical case forward. CEDR appointed someone with zero experience in surveying who dismissed every aspect of our case, quoted the wrong regulations and totally ignored facts. The whole process was a waste of time and caused nothing but stress. Avoid - a no win no fee solicitor would be better”
“They carried out mediation on surveying and the outcome was disappointing.
They favoured the company in all bar one issue even when there was sufficient evidence.
You cannot ask for an explanation - as there could be misunderstanding on either side.
Resubmitting your argument is ignored.
The winners are CEDR who probably are paid by the company when a customer raises a complaint.”
The review summary on Trustpilot is even worse:
“Most reviewers were unhappy with their experience overall. Customers express concerns about the company's ethics and customer service. People feel the payment processes are not up to par. Consumers report that the service is not satisfactory. The opinions regarding the staff are mixed, with no real consensus among reviewers. Some reviewers describe the staff as inefficient. Many consumers feel that the company favors big businesses over individual consumers. People report that their issues were not addressed fairly or transparently.”
“Useless bunch of idiots. Arbitrators stands for ar*sehole*. Speaking to foreigners. Not a clue what’s reality. Had a dispute with Vodafone adding on a possible broadband appointment which we did not request. These muppets spent weeks pretending they had investigated the issue and case was rejected. However the numpties had no clue that Vodafone had already cancelled any orders. A pathetic lazy ( in favour of the business, not impartial) shoddy outfit.”
And so it was that our blasphemy Woman insisted on us undergoing a CEDR process. We were contacted by CEDR and told we had to participate as rics members, and there was a fee to pay. I asked:
We received no answers, and as a result ignored them. Speaking to them was useless – you ended up talking to someone with a totally unintelligible Asian accent who was clueless. I told them to go and learn English and hung up on them several times. We then received a load of paperwork from them, (with an invoice which I threw in the bin), and a demand to attend an online meeting with – you guessed it – a RICS surveyor, paid by CEDR.
I threw the bloody lot in the bin and told them to shove their arbitration where it hurt.
This wasn’t professional arbitration. Using a RICS surveyor was a clear conflict of interest. They refused to be open about who they were, or how they operated.
Months later we got a ‘result’ – finding us guilty of nothing, but telling us we should pay the survey fee back to the client despite us having clearly shown we had done what we were paid to, and a lot more. Legally, as our solicitors confirmed at the time, The Woman suffered no loss, and I prevented her from walking into what would probably have been a VERY expensive exercise requiring a detailed application for Retrospective Listed Building Consent (which there was no guarantee would succeed), and most certainly costing around £100,000 for timber frame repairs. The silly Woman fell out with the sellers who refused to sell the place to her.
After this, the RICS harassment process intensified. We started to receive emails, mostly originating from China or South East asia, with dozens of pdf attachments purporting to be findings of their professional negligence investigations. My partner at the time who was Assoc Rics took it all a bit more seriously and actually submitted to some sort of internet ‘hearing’ in which he was told he had breached heaven knows how many professional rules and regulations – and was fined. I told him to tell them to shove the fine, but he paid it. He then resigned as a RICS member. They then ‘suspended’ our firm, Heritage Survey LLP and advertised to the world we’d been suspended. This was interesting, as I’d already emailed them several months before and told them to shove their accreditation, as of the date of my email. They conveniently ignored this, and carried on hounding us with dozens of emails, and many more dozens of lengthy pdf files. One that I bothered to open for a laugh was 90 pages of purported rules and regulations that I, as a non-member of their silly organisation, had apparently broken and they were going to fine me and sue me for damages.
By this stage we had decided to shut down the LLP company anyway, as it didn’t fit with the way our other partners wanted to operate their finances, and we decided to start a new limited liability company to replace the LLP. This had nothing to do with rics, and was suggested by our accountants as a better financial model. These days you can't de-list a company and have to liquidate it thanks to Covid loans - HMRC automatically object to a strike off request.
Many more emails arrived from a woman with a Chinese name using an Asian RICS internet address. After telling her to desist numerous times, and stop harassing us, I finally told her to shove her emails where it hurt. RICS clearly uses cheap Asian labour to handle their complaints, people who have zero understanding of conditions in the uk, or of their own dispute procedures and their shortcomings. I never heard from her again, but the intensity of emails, now coming from a london email address of RICS – probably their boardroom full of manic directors seeking retribution, became almost daily. There were long diatribes from people claiming to be barristers and QC’s telling me that serious proceedings were taking place and heavy fines were being levied and telling me to take lagal advice.
I ignored the lot – I’m not a member, never wish to be and legally they’re no different to the local pigeon fanciers club – just bigger and make more noise.
They are toothless wonders full of hot air.
An email appeared in which we were ‘ordered’ to attend yet another internet ‘hearing’. We actually responded and said no, we are overseas on that date. They said under rics rules we had to attend on that date and it could not be moved. Then we received another series of emails saying that they had a meeting which we did not attend despite being given the opportunity to re-schedule the dates ( which is another blatant lie on the part of RICS).
The upshot of that meeting was that they predictably huffed and puffed and threw us out of RICS (we were never members in the first place ) and fined us some stupid figure (about £14,000 in legal fees apparently!!) and said they’d write it all up in Modus and make an example of us. You have to conclude there were thousands of hours of RICS legal and 'professional' peoples involvement in this - an utterly pathetic mis-use of an organisations time and resources. There were many hundreds of pages of legalese bullshit with their email which I never bothered to read. This was then promoted all over LinkedIn, presumably in an attempt to harm our business and hurt me personally.
It had the opposite effect: We were showered with emails and messages offering support, and a lot of people started to tell us about their problems with RICS - both surveyors and victims of their rubbish surveys. It has exposed just what an awful organisation it is.
We ignored them and never got an invoice for any ‘fines’ – it was all just bluster – they know there’s no legal basis for any of this rubbish. It gave them an excuse to write about us in their silly magazine, and totally ignored the fact that all of this started when:
Interestingly all of this could have been avoided had there been a simple process where an intelligent person in rics sat down and discussed with the parties what had happened. I personally don't think there is a single sensible brain cell in RICS. The Woman had no legal claim – she had suffered no loss. This was all about the RICS professional standards system, and their much vaunted CEDR ‘dispute resolution’ system that clearly has not, and never will work. They have used it to try and knock my / our professional reputations.
It is worth saying that we hear from upset victims on an almost daily basis about similar situations – the common thread being that RICS and CEDR always fail to solve the issues raised, and leave the victims to resort to legal action.
RICS propaganda about looking after clients is just that – propaganda. It is unworkable, and bears no results. We have exposed the reasons that clients never get satisfaction, and for that I’m grateful. It helps us to help people by advising them not to bother even attempting any form of RICS resolution.
The bottom lines:
Make sure you have legal cover on your mortgage or home insurance. Any problems with surveys - ignore their complaints procedures - they are meaningless drivel.
RICS were clearly trying to take us down, but we are as busy as ever, and recruiting.
We know that we are not alone in our opinion of the RICS!
We will do a proper ’how to complain' guide shortly.