Letter: will normal online service ever resume?

As we mere mortals get sucked into another portal – the advent of online estate agency – it’s the faceless consumer that seems to be screaming the loudest as they disappear into the digital void. Social media is enduring a veritable tsunami of service complaints regarding online estate agency, which may have already morphed into the relative calm of regulatory investigation. You know the kind: the usual presaging pale before a storm that could reap commercial devastation in its wake.

Market indicators seem to suggest that online estate agency may be struggling to secure profit, and so, naturally, other income streams appear to have recently hatched. For example, online links to access consumer credit, and apparently trying to bind consumers into secondary service contracts. And yes, you’ve guessed it: they include contracts for the provision of Scottish domestic conveyancing services. One site even suggests a significant charge when the consumer decides, in certain circumstances, to cancel these secondary contracts for services.

My first thought was hooray!… finally, I can earn a living from doing nothing!

Imagine my disappointment when I realised that although trading models and regulatory regimes for professional practice vary across the United Kingdom, generally speaking consumer protection legislation does not. Equally sad was the dawning that this legislation was there for me to see all the time – ironically, equally available in the void – begging my deflating glee to read in these interesting, if not disappointing times (suggested reading noted below).

In my experience, the regulatory wheels of rebalance tend to roll slowly, but roll they do. My concern, and the reason to pen, is that those wheels will not only squish the negligent and obviously culpable – but the unwary too.

Until then, busy have I been, issuing my Xmas cards enclosing fee notes to all and sundry using data from the voters' roll. It is after all, the perfect season to wish those poor unfortunates, soon to be impoverished a little more… a Merry Xmas for not using my services!

Note

The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Payments) Regulations 2013
The Consumer Rights Act 2015
The Property Ombudsman Codes of Practice
The Competition Act 1998
The Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977
The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008
The Solicitors (Scotland) (Standards of Conduct) Practice Rules 2008