Hi there, what a shame I used this app. Surprise surprise I cannot contact Open Rent directly. Today I have had a succession of phone calls from people who open rent have shared my personal information with, for the purpose of upselling. I suffer from chronic illness so each one of these calls has woken me up. How do I stop my personal data from being shared? I will never use this app again, and will encourage anyone I meet to take the same stance. Jennifer
I’ve rented many properties as a Landlord via Openrent & have never had any third party contact me, that have suggested they have had my details from Openrent.
I think you are a tenant, so I don’t know what marketing opt in’s etc you have to choose from.
When you say you can’t contact Openrent. Have you tried the ‘contact us’ page on the Help pages? I’ve always had prompt replies from them when I have sent a message.
I have never had that problem with OR after 4 years.
As per all of my screen captures, I was telephoned by ‘move in,’ or whatever it is called twice Monday, with a voicemail in-between. I told them that I was not interested on Monday. I have had two phone calls this morning, and now another one at 18:04. That means they phoned me outside of office hours. So I phoned back immediately and they are ‘now closed.’ I have had to block this number. This is entirely unacceptable. I gave no permission to share my phone number. I have received FIVE phone calls now and one voicemail. I am receiving on average two phone calls a day. I have received THREE phone calls since I asked them politely to lose my personal phone number and to stop contacting me. I am going to report this.
How can you be sure it was Openrent who passed it on?
@Daz is this the case, does OR sell or pass on customer data to third parties for the purpose of selling or otherwise?
Who was now closed? What did the voice message say. eg “Thanks for calling [???], we are now closed”
IN order words: Which company is calling you?
Hi, I am a tenant. I signed on Sunday. Today I have had two phone calls from this number: [redacted]. I decided to phone back with my number with held and I was greeted with ‘hi, this is ‘move it.’ So I asked, where exactly did you get my private and personal phone number?’ The lady answered and told me that ‘openrent gave it to her.’ I will investigate deeper but if it is the case that this happened without my consent, unless I missed something in small print, I will report it. Simple. If openrent is not registered with the property ombudsman, I can report it elsewhere. I really am extremely unhappy about it all. I am struggling with a flair up of long COVID and I was called twice today. If I was a drug dealer then I could accept phone call, voicemail message, phone call. Anyway, she stated that she could help me with moving my energy provider, moving my internet, insuring my house. I can actually manage all of that myself as I am sure is the case for the vast majority of people who are adulting. I really do not like my private information being made public.
This sounds like our tenant concierge / switching service which tenants can optionally use. Sounds like in this case it was chosen by mistake. It is presented to tenants after tenancy set-up for eligible properties (eg. Bills not included). The full details are here:
For the most part, it’s a great service for both tenants and landlords as it helps makes sure council tax, utilities, etc are all switched into the correct name in a timely manner - something many tenants and landlords can find a big headache when I goes wrong or is missed.
Feedback is generally extremely positive, but I appreciate if you misunderstood what you were choosing this could be a surprise. I believe we’re working on a flow that removes any need for phone calls, but even so, the callers should all be extremely polite and can opt you out if it’s not a service you want. If this wasn’t what you experienced do let me know.
Our privacy policy is public and fairly comprehensive on our general handling of personal data which we take extremely seriously. This specific case being an optional service all tenants can freely choose (or not) at no cost to them.
I have received FIVE phone calls now and one voicemail
On this point specifically I will bring that up with the team as this doesn’t sound right or appropriate. If you have in fact already told the team you didn’t want this service then you 100% shouldn’t receive any further contact. I’ll investigate what has happened here and wholeheartedly apologise if that is really the case.
Hi @Jennifer29 -
I asked the team to look into this and they told me that yes they tried to contact you multiple times, but at no point could they get through. They have no record of a conversation between yourself and the team, let alone a conversation where you asked the team you weren’t interested in this service. This was looked into based on the phone number on your account.
To help us investigate this further we’ll need to know a bit more about what phone numbers were used, and the direction of the calls - this should hopefully be in your call history, and ideally is something you could share with us. I’m wondering if you called back from a different phone number or withheld and somehow your request wasn’t linked up properly? We’re keen to get to the bottom of this, so you can respond in this thread or by contacting our team directly referencing this thread here:
Either way, your account was noted as wanting no further communication, and you won’t be contacted again.
Thanks again for helping us here,
Daz.
Is it possible to “opt out” of these type of calls when a tenant signs up?
Yes, tenants can opt in or not as part of Rent Now, as per my earlier response: