To be bloody well pissed off with estate agents (or at least the ones I've dealt with!)

[chicletteeth]

Just that.
I am a woman! I run our household. My husband works and I don't; I've recently given up to take care of our three young DC (not that that should matter but to some it will).
We are selling our house and buying another and I am in every dealing with our sale, purchae, survey, mortgage, solicitors etc....
I don't mind this - to some extent since giving up work, it gives me something else to do.

However, when getting agents in to value our house prior to putting it on the market, a direct question as to how much there fees were, was deflected saying we need to speak to the man of the house!
This happened three times! They all insisted on speaking to my husband first who then said "err, my wife is dealing with this, speak to her, she can sort it out thanks"

Then today, I rang up to arrange a viewing of a house we are interested in only to be asked what mine and OHs initials are to which I responded A and B Chicletteeth (a being me since he asked me)

So he then said so you are Mrs. B Chicletteeth then?

No, I'm bloody well not - and why would you think that unless you are 60+ years old (he wasn't)

This may seem petty and I have in the past dealt with this from patients who say can I speak to my real doctor (i.e. you're too young/blonde/ etc...)! But WTF andwhy oh why does this still happen?
I'm annoyed, my husband in agreement that this is wierd behaviour from the estate agents (all male ) but has this happened to any of you and does it piss you off?

Ah, sadly that one is out for me as DH is Russian and we spend far too much time trying to convince people that yes, he has actually more or less mastered the English language after living here for nearly 20 years.

I have to admit a teeny bit of my wants to emulate my late granny's approach and bark down the phone to cold callers who have strong accents that I can't understand a word they're saying ... but I can't quite bring myself to do it!

(Sorry, wandering off the point here, it's clearly time for bed!)

'I have the greatest comeback line for anybody now if they need to speak to "The man of the house".'

I give the phone to my 2-year-old son and let him hold it and carry on his idea of a conversation.

Argh my blood is boiling OP! I hate hate hate stuff like this. Especially as I earn more than DP if anyone insisted on speaking to the man and assumed he was in charge or earnt all the money or made all the decisions I'd go off my fucking rocker... Even if I was a SAHM I'd lose the plot that sort of sexism is unacceptable. Arrrrgh. Haha my poor blood pressure...!

I once had a double glazing salesman turn up for an appt but refuse to come into the house because my dh wasn't home. When he called DH to rebook, DH told him he didn't deal with anyone who treated his wife with such disrespect. Is still 1953 in double glazing world, too.

We're going through the same house buying/selling thing at the moment (hopefully going to move next week but still no exchange and no date for completion due to messing about by just about everyone except us). I'm a SAHM so I've been dealing with all the appointments and conversations with agents and solicitors etc and I haven't had this problem at all. I've had a couple say "maybe you'd like to talk it over with your husband" but that's possibly reasonable, since they'd need agreement with both of us and I'd expect it to be the same if they were just dealing with him.

The only person I've had Mrs

I'm the one organising the sale and purchase and dealing with all the organisations and paperwork. My two contacts at the EA are female and the solicitors are female, which may help in this case, but nobody has made any assumptions yet. You must have some very old-fashioned Estate Agents!

I am completely at this, how dare they think that it is acceptable to behave in this way, feckers.

Thinking back, when DH and I bought our house, as first time buyers, I did the leg work of finding houses, sorting viewings etc. and they were all a bit sniffy with me then. I assumed it was because of my natural fresh faced youth but maybe I was flattering myself, and it was more because of my having girl parts.

Not come across this at all with estate agents, but then they seem to be mostly women round here.

Car salesmen on the other hand, they would always address the OH, he knows nothing about cars and doesn't even have a driving licence

I'd be furious too!
I have dealt with C&W and didn't have the same issue, and also undertook all aspects of selling and buying (involving several EA companies) so maybe it's individuals who are the problem in your area rather than it being an industry thing?
However, I did have this attitude from a kitchen company and was so bloody furious that I rang their head office and told them exactly why I would NEVER be dealing with them again. I got some bullshit about it being the man = main earner who makes decisions in 99% of cases . However the worst thing for me was that this crap was being peddled by a WOMAN

Stillfrazled, I had a similar issue with a company I wanted to get a quote from for some work to be done in the back garden.
He was very insistent DH was present for the appointment, I patiently explained to him that it was not possible since he was away from home 7am - 7pm during the week and we were busy the following weekend. Eventually he did agree to see me but kept asking me "Are you sure your DH has agreed to this?"
I got really stroppy with him in the end and snapped "Of course he is I think he would noticed if I spent £2000 on the garden!"
Needless to say I went with another company!

Meant to add, I also got it with the bank when looking at mortgages, all questions addressed to DH, by 17 year old in suit. Right up until the point he asked for my DH's wage slips/proof of earnings, and I also offered mine... the look of slow dawning realisation that we were on a par income wise, and that I too had an 'exciting' financy sounding job was priceless and almost worth the 30 minutes of silent fuming before hand.

And how we both chuckle in a well known 'never knowingly undersold' retailer, when buying a washing machine and iron that DH would be the main user of, when they address all questions to me [clueless].

But it shouldn't have come to that. If I hadn't been able to get my small moment of victory joy with the bank, he wouldn't have realised he'd done anything wrong. And frankly, even if I had been a SAHM, a household's income is joint, and how a couple chose to make decisions about spending it and who can decide on housing and the like is no-one else's' concern, and they should blooming well assume. Asses.

Generally when a letter comes to us, addressed to both of us, it is to Mr A and Mrs J Takethisone... so it does seem to be the standard thing to do from an admin point of view.

I worked as admin for a branch of estate agents in the South West who as a group are very big. We had a standard layout for contact details that automatically printed letters to Mr....and Mrs....XXXX so we had to get the right name or initial into the box or we'd have letters automatically printing to Mr Jane and Mrs John XXX and people would ring up to call us stupid if we sent them by mistake.

It was also a pain that it assumed everyone was married (and to someone of the opposite sex) because convincing the software otherwise was all but impossible and involved a manual edit of everything we sent to some people every single time we sent it.

But if we were only given (different) initials for the couple and we had to ask who was who we always asked the person giving them if they were the first initial (so would have said to you "are you A" rather than assumed you were B.

But never, never, ask for the man of the house. That's really appalling.

Next time you get asked that question just reply "why, when you are already speaking to the woman in charge?" or (my favourite) just simply say "no" and leave it at that. It's amazing how flustered people get over one little word.

But one reason they might want the "man of the house" is because they need both of your signatures to sell your house.

It's scary how many times I have seen one half of a married couple book a valuation and try to get a house on the market before their unsuspecting partner finds out and agents have to be careful. People do it because they want to leave their relationship but sometimes they tell their solicitor and estate agent before they tell their partner!

So they like to speak to both parties and are often under pressure to get people signed up right away. They don't want to give you time to see another agent or think about things, they want to go back to the office with a new instruction and many agents actually get trained in how to go about that. Asking for "the man of the house" probably isn't a part of that training (and shouldn't be, it's so Stepford) but speaking to both parties is. It's not enough for your to tell your husband what the fee was, the guy wants his chance to work on him too and convince him why they are the best agents to use.

I thought I would share my experience of the 'Mr & Mrs A Devere' thing.

I got a letter like this. From whom? Bloody [insert very left wing london borough] Social Services Team

I was on the phone questioning them gently as to why they would send a letter addressed in this way.

I was particulary annoyed as, like the OP, I had been the one dealing with just about everything. They had only spoken to OH about twice!

If you are so offended by the initials thing, why didn't you just keep your own surname too? Perhaps we should make it official, that from now on women keep their surnames, and do as the Spanish do, all women from the age of 18 are now Senora (Mrs) whether they are married or not, Senorita (miss) is not used.

TBH to me that is a bit of a non issue in comparison with the blatant sexism of the whole 'man of the house' comment. Grrr, that would put my teeth on edge.

But it is offensive.

It is saying you are not important enough to have a name.

TBperfectlyH I took my OH's name because my name caused me no end of bullying, trouble and pisstaking all my unmarried life.

I quite like my first name though and get pissed off when its wiped off an envelope because I happen to be married to a man.

I renovate houses for a living and get this all the time! Not from agents or builders who know me but any new ones!!! Atm I am having some wood panelling done in d/s loo new builder as a small job and usual guy too busy and at the last minute I decided not to panel the ceiling but to plaster it. Asked guy for price to plaster it as it needed to be done before paint and he gave me a price I said OK do it and he wanted to wait for dp to ok it!!!!! Why? In the end I had to say I will get someone else to do it and you can come back and finish the panelling when its done. He soon changed his tune! I also said I didn't want skirting as the room is too small and got some beading to trim it. Said guy waited til dp was home and I heard him ask Are you sure no skirting? Didn't want to put trim on til you had seen it! Dp told him to ask me as it is my project. The worst thing is this guy is young

To be fair to some men, if I was a male double-glazing or kitchen salesman I would be careful about the arrangements for being alone in a house with a woman. Suzy Lamplugh, anyone?

OP, which online EA did you use. I started a thread about that topic here

My DH is an estate agent and he prefers to deal direct with the woman of the household because, he says, they 'talk more sense, are more realistic about prices and are usually in charge of things anyway.'

donna - Why would a male estate agent need to be careful about being alone in a house with a woman? Suzy Lamplugh did not kill off lone male estate agents.

I had this when we sold our last house. I had to point out very clearly that even though me and DH were married the house was in my name only so there was really no point in talking to DH.

And as for the bloody council tax - I set the council tax payment up, filled out the form, arranged the direct debit, etc, etc. Letters come addressed just to my DH, not even Mr and Mrs vivalebeaver.

Erm, SP, I wouldn't want the chance for someone to accuse me of anything.

I remember when I was still married we had stopped at a motorway service station and were approached by the AA man as we walked in. He completly ignored me and turned to my then husband and asked if he had AA cover. Ex replied that thank you but it was a company car and already covered. To which the AA man responded "and what about the little women's run around?"

Now at that point I actually earnt slightly more than my ex and had a Merc company car myself. Luckily my ex spotted my reaction (fury!) and managed to quickly whisk me away before I had a chance to share my thoughs with the AA man!

Back in 1991 in response to a hand written requisition form I was treated to "oh sorry, I assumed all women could type". Wasn't even from an old guy!
Now I have more confidence to respond to these but honestly......!!!

donna123 are you serious? Do you know of any cases of a woman falsely accusing an estate agent of impropriety or worse following an appointment. Suzy lamplugh was murdered

I do know of plumbers who refuse to go to certain addresses because they are scared of the come-on that they know they will get there!