Making a complaint about estate agent

[ThisSharpNavyRaven]

We recently had the seller of a house we'd offered on turn up at our address asking why we had withdrawn our offer.

Long story short is we were told by agent that there was a higher offer and asked if we would up ours. We didn't want to and then withdrew our original offer as we didn't trust the agent. A few weeks later the owner of the house arrived on our doorstep asking why we withdrew! Turns out the agent hadn't been truthful about what had happened to the vendors and they were trying to get to the bottom of what had happened as we were by far the highest offer. Obviously it was very odd for us, though the vendors were very nice and not aggressive.

It could have been a very different situation. I called the agent to make a verbal complaint about our address being shared (and numbers, the vendor has subsequently messaged us). Apparently our offer email was forwarded in error. Is there anywhere further I can take this? Surely it breaches GDPR?

Thanks :)

There is a Property Ombudsman you can complain to after complaining to the Agency about what happened regarding the lapsed offer and the vendor approaching you.

You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office specifically about any potential data breach.

What happened sounds pretty rotten.

My complaint works be able the unscrupulous practice of the EA, and less able the data issue! It's not hard to find someone when you have a name anyway. But that agent needs investigating for their unethical way of doing business.

@AgreeableDragon totally agree! I had such a bad feeling from him after the conversation regarding our initial offer, and I was vindicated! We made a very good offer and I could tell he was just trying to squeeze a bit more out of us. It was the seller who massively lost out because in hindsight we over-offered and I highly doubt they'll get another offer as high. They were very confused and upset with him.