OpenRent advises against sharing your personal details and a big yellow message pops up if you start typing your number so is it right for a landlord to request this and cancel a viewing if you explain that you are just following the site’s recommendation?
He made it seem like I was not a person to be trusted just because I have followed OpenRent’s recommendation and not shared my phone number with a stranger. I understand that I am a complete stranger to him too but I did not ask for anything other than a viewing of the property advertised. Has anyone else encountered this?
I can see landlords raising the same issue in the reverse some months ago and they didn’t like it either
Ultimately, Openrent is a platform to match Landlords with Prospective tenants. They wont always ‘get on’, and sometimes a LL may not like a tenant, and sometimes a prospective tenant may not have a good first impression of a LL, or like their own personalised application procedure, which the LL can customise to meet their own preferences.
Its life…move on.
You want what someone else has.Sharing a phone number to communicate isn’t exactly sharing sensitive information. A lot of time wasters and many LL vet tenant before viewing on the phone.
Just apply common sense and never hand over any money in advance of viewing or being totally satisfied.
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I always like to talk to an applicant by phone in the first instance and ask a few questions before deciding on a viewing. You could ask the landlord to give you their number and then call them yourself with caller id withheld.
If a withheld number comes up on my phone I do not answer it
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It could be the police or local authority?
Thank you all for giving your views.
I was at another viewing on Sunday, an open one, and someone asked the LL for their number which, given her facial expression, really put her out but she very politely turned the request down and asked the person to message her through OR instead. I was ready to give the number to this other LL but as I was typing it a warning from OR appeared and made me worry and remember that other LL so I checked with OR before replying to him and two emails later I was advised to proceed as per the OR recommendations. It is the first time I have been asked for my number on the site so it worried me a little and the potential LL was not at all understanding. There is nothing I can do on that, perhaps OR need to be a bit clearer on this.
There are a lot of time wasters on the LL side too
I use 2 different phones for security
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Yes there are. Another reason for tenants speaking on the phone before viewing. It’s a chance for them to check out the landlord.
Landlords may be reluctant to give out number as they can get hounded by unreasonable potential tenants. Most landlords do not hound tenants, they don’t need to.
Different strokes for different folks
Imagine you arrange a viewing and on the day for whatever reason the ll cannot make it how would he communicate that to you?
Or if he has a viewing prior to yours and finds the idea tenant and needs to cancel your viewing
Maybe the ll has been let down before and eants to send a text or whattsap to potentia tenants to remind them of the viewing
try looking at it from ll view
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