Russell Quirk's latest endeavor meets some bad press before launch

The founder and CEO of the now defunct estate agency, Emoov, has started a new endeavor.

The Mail on Sunday reported that Russell Quirk had set up a comparison website - Conveyancer Comparison - with a former director of Emoov, Graham MacKim. However, the newspaper suggests it has hit a problem involving review service Trustpilot.

The Mail on Sunday says: “A series of five-star testimonials have been posted on the new website and on review site Trustpilot claiming to be from customers. But all seven reviews appear to carry the names of family or friends, including Quirk's wife Karolina.”

It continues: “The posts have since been removed by Trustpilot. The review site said it had issued a 'cease and desist' legal letter to the company, warning it not to post any more 'fabricated reviews' and to remove any links to Trustpilot on its website.”

The Mail on Sunday article cites Quirk as saying that the comparison site had not been launched, that the reviews displayed were test examples which would have been removed when the service had launched, and that in any case he had no day to day involvement in the site.

Trustpilot told the MoS that the reviews were against its policy because only operating businesses were allowed to host reviews.

Separately, Quirk told Estate Agent Today yesterday about the preparation for the launch of the site, saying: “Testing includes linking via Trustpilot to 'pipe' reviews from their website to ours via an API. To do this, there needs to be visible reviews on our dedicated Trustpilot page."

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