Daft's email alert service - Useless?

Demoter

I've had to go incognito with this one to protect my identity. Basically, to cut a long story short, I wanted to make people aware of a fundamental issue with the Daft email alert system. The issue is that alerts are only issued for brand new ads placed on daft.ie and not for existing ads for properties that may have had their asking prices reduced.

So if you have for example an alert set up to notify you when a property under 200k comes up in a particular area, and a previously listed property in that area has its price reduced from 260k to 190k, you will NOT get notified about this property and therefore will be totally unaware that it is now on offer within your price range. This seems a bit crazy, considering the high number of asking price drops occurring in the current market environment.

Note that this is not an attack on Daft versus MyHome etc. I’m not familiar with the MyHome system, so for all I know it might well work the same way. But it just seems crazy that users are being forced to do manual searches all the time rather than being able to rely on what is effectively a useless email alert system.

ted1

It takes two minutes to do a search that could potentially save you more than a years salary. I wouldn(t worry to much about it if I was you.

Demoter

I know what you're saying and I used to be one of those people who'd always do a manual search rather than register with a site just for the simplicity of it. But then I did what I knew at the back of my head was the smart thing and registered to get email alerts for properties I might be interested in so that I'd never have to search again, only to find now that I was not being notified about properties that met my criteria.

I've complained to daft about it but they're not interested... either in fixing the service or actually letting current users know about the limitation.

blah

Demoter wrote: »

I wanted to make people aware of a fundamental issue with the Daft email alert system.

This seems a bit crazy, considering the high number of asking price drops occurring in the current market environment.

... what is effectively a useless email alert system.

Demoter wrote: »

I've complained to daft about it but they're not interested... either in fixing the service or actually letting current users know about the limitation.

I wouldn't say it's a "useless" system, it just doesn't seem to have the feature you want, it doesn't necessarily need to be fixed. It's a pity that daft didn't take on board your feedback but perhaps they would have responded more positively to a "suggestion for improvement" than a "complaint". They're not some faceless, unaccountable government body, they're a private company competing on the open market. If they fail to see an opportunity to get increased business, it's their loss.

But I have a suggestion, how about getting the email address for every Irish property website, big or small, and send them your idea. Tell them you think it would be an "improvement" and that it would "increase revenue". They could also allow people to register for daily or weekly "Price drop" emails with the latest property bargains. Then they all know that their competitors might soon have an advantage.

Or better still, you could set up your own property website using this idea. It wouldn't have to be an operation as big as daft. People would register on a single, simple webpage, submitting their email address. You could use propertybee and daftdrop to scan for price drops and include these in a weekly roundup. If you get a lot of traffic you could make money on that page with Google Ads. You could allow estate agents to contact you directly and give top billing to their property (for a sum)?

Demoter

Blah, I didn't know at first if you were being serious or sarcastic with your reply. But having reread it, all I can say is it's fascinating! You should run for president in this country!

To take your idea further -> if someone created a service which could monitor all Irish property websites (myhome, daft etc.) for properties that met a certain criteria (location, price, house type) and then do a single roundup of them every week or so for you, that would be brilliant. I'm no IT person so wouldn't be up to it myself but if there's someone out there with the expertise and some time on their hands...

bobbyg

Just take a look at Collapso once a week and go into the location you want, it's not exactly what you are looking for but its a decent site.

http://www.collapso.net/index.html

blah

Demoter wrote: »

Blah, I didn't know at first if you were being serious or sarcastic with your reply. But having reread it, all I can say is it's fascinating! You should run for president in this country!

Thanks, when is the next election? :P (Now that's sarcasm!)

Seriously, submit your idea to daftdrop.com, there's an IT guy somewhere on the other end of that contact page. Or else to collapso.net. Or both.

rat_race

Great idea...I'm the author of daftdrop.com. Kinda had something like this in mind for a while, just haven't had a chance, BUT, I've a few free days comig up. Will deffo implement something like this and let you know here!

Whoever mailed me the link to this thread (Ronan), thanks!

rat_race

Demoter wrote: »

I've had to go incognito with this one to protect my identity. Basically, to cut a long story short, I wanted to make people aware of a fundamental issue with the Daft email alert system. The issue is that alerts are only issued for brand new ads placed on daft.ie and not for existing ads for properties that may have had their asking prices reduced.

So if you have for example an alert set up to notify you when a property under 200k comes up in a particular area, and a previously listed property in that area has its price reduced from 260k to 190k, you will NOT get notified about this property and therefore will be totally unaware that it is now on offer within your price range. This seems a bit crazy, considering the high number of asking price drops occurring in the current market environment.

Note that this is not an attack on Daft versus MyHome etc. I’m not familiar with the MyHome system, so for all I know it might well work the same way. But it just seems crazy that users are being forced to do manual searches all the time rather than being able to rely on what is effectively a useless email alert system.

FYI, I just added a feature to www.daftdrop.com which allows you to track price changes (via e-mail notifications) for any houses your interested in.

Sorry for the delay ...

scrgirl

What a great example of innovation and shared ideas in action on boards.ie!