Finally the English have come to terms with the concept of complaining – and about time too, after years of shrugging off poor service in shops, poor food in restaurants … and poor communications from estate agents. The figures speak for themselves: in 2010 the Property Ombudsman Scheme received 1338 complaints.

1338 may not seem like that many in the Great Scheme Of Things, but when you consider that’s the most complaints the Ombudsman has received in a single year since the program was started over 20 years ago, it’s a definite sign that people are actually starting to stand up and make themselves heard. The Property Ombudsman Scheme deals with complaints about both rental and sales agents, and in this case, it was almost a 50-50 split, with 672 complaints about the letting side, and 646 when it came to sales. And what were those complaints about?

In reverse order, there was duty of care, then complaints about commissions/fees, then advertising and marketing, in at number two we had the way estate agents handled complaints but right up at the top of the list – especially in the South East – were complaints about poor communications.

Examples include deliberate misdescriptions, like a loft converted blatantly ignoring building regulations being described as a ‚habitable room‘. Or accidental ones, describing single glazed windows as being double-glazed. Or seller information that hasn’t been verified, like the (non)availability of parking in front of a property. And whatever else may have been poorly communicated, people are starting to do something about it.

But now it’s time to give Christopher Hamer, the Property Ombudsman, and everyone else working with him a bit of respite and some time to catch their breath, because complaints are never taken lightly in his department and dealing with them can be quite a lengthy process. And it’s also time to clean up the popular image high street agencies have inflicted upon themselves for such a long time. But how to do that?

It’s time for traditional estate agents to take a leaf out of an online agency’s book. Let’s use eMoov as an example. Essentially an online agency, eMoov is staffed by people with thorough training in every aspect of estate agency – and that includes an intimate knowledge of the Property Misdescriptions Act 1991. You can talk to eMoov staff every day of the week, from 2am to 8pm, about anything to do with selling your home, from the state of the property market in general to specific answers about where to find the best mortgage.

They’ll also liase with people who want to view your property … receive offers from them … negotiate with them for you … correspond with all parties when the deal is done … and all for a fraction of that you’d be charged by a traditional high street estate agency – and with a lot less room for any communication errors. No cause for complaint there, then.

Going to High Street estate agents means paying high estate agents fees. Using eMoov, the UK’s leading online estate agents instead will get your housesold by displaying it to 170 million internet visitors each month. No extortionate commissions, no percentage fees, no sole agency tie ins. Just loads of fixed, low cost estate agents fees which might even make you start to like estate agents again. Well, some of them.