We don’t need no stinkin’ beta test!
I’m still on the rampage. That’s because my MLS is broken.
There is a popular saying that goes something like, “143% of home buyers start their search on the Internet.” Well, if you currently have your home listed for sale in San Diego, I wouldn’t be calling the moving truck any time soon.
In a comment on my last rant, the tech savvy and ever eloquent Galen Ward wrote the following:
Tempo5 sounds like a can of suck. Add the fact that their IDX went down for 5+ days and you can imagine why no one was answering the phones.
Now, being one who appreciates artful prose, I was focused on the “can of suck” part. I missed the forest for the tree stumps. Actually, I had suspected a couple of days ago that if I couldn’t access listing date in my own MLS system, the IDX (data exchange) feeds to other sites might be compromised. I made a quick trip to my own web site search feature and saw that the data looked fine: No funky entry fields, a populated map, and so forth. How naive am I? (That was rhetorical, so let’s move on, please).
It was this morning, nine exciting, fun-filled days after the big coming out party of Tempo5, that the words a buyer client uttered yesterday starting reverberating in my dense skull. “There haven’t been any new listings in a week.” Now, at the time, I thought she made this statement much like my children say, “There is nothing to eat in this house,” meaning, “There is nothing that interests me.” Au contraire. What she meant was there haven’t been any new listings showing up on the sites she uses for her search — None, nada, zip.
In my unofficial survey this morning, I confirmed that no home listed since D-Day appears on Trulia, Realtor.com, Prudential’s web site, or even my own web site with the most-awesome search feature compliments of Diverse Solutions. I found a few newer listings on a site which shall remain nameless (it starts with an “R” and ends in “edfin”), but I ran out of steam before I confirmed their offering was complete.
What does this mean? Well, for starters, Zillow should start a full-on promotional blitz of Tempo5 nationwide in order to solidify their global dominance. Because I can (and do) manually enter our listings there, my sellers are represented. Ditto Craigslist, and the half-dozen or so random sites which are fed my property flyers via Postlets. If your data is coming straight out of Sandicor, however, you (and my clients) are screwed.
Sandicor, if you are listening, please fix my MLS! I am frustrated, my appraisers are frustrated, and my clients are getting p*ssed off. If it is the IDX recipient who is responsible for making some changes to properly process your newly formatted feed, then work with them! You might think that you have bigger fish to fry than assist third-party for-profit sites get our data right, but even Realtor.com is effected. Remember them? They are the site promoted as the “Realtor’s” site, the one to whom I pay (insert very big four-digit number) a year for the privilege of “enhancing” my listings. Just having my listings represented would be an enhancement this week.
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{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
Jay Thompson
06.06.08 at 11:34 am
Wow. There isn’t a good enough word in the lexicon to describe how much this sucks.
As one who will be experiencing an MLS change-over in a couple of months, I’ll admit, it scares me. But fortunately for us, Tempo is going away and I have the utmost confidence in FlexMLS hitting the ground running.
I would be *livid*. Might be time to storm the MLS office and have an old fashioned protest.
BawldGuy Talking
06.06.08 at 11:45 am
These are the same fools who proactively cut out all Mac users for access. And since 80% of all real estate in the country is bought by Mac users, that’s a real problem.
The Phoenix change over, at least from what I hear, will re-include all the previously dissed Macophiles.
Repeat: Most Realtor connected service providers couldn’t organize a one man picnic if they were spotted the caterer.
Kris Berg
06.06.08 at 11:47 am
You have NO idea. I have thought of staging a protest, but I really have no clue about how to begin. Does one have the “Death to Sandicor” t-shirts printed first, or should I start by booking the bus to transport the angry mob to the protest site?
Kris Berg
06.06.08 at 11:48 am
BG - We were ranting at the same time, so I missed your comment. Which reminds me, do I need to cater my protest, or will the angry mob be OK with brown bagging it?
Jakob
06.06.08 at 1:02 pm
Why don’t you and Jim Klinge get together and build your own MLS system. Seriously. If things are as bad as they say you will have no problem attracting followers. Why keep paying into a broken system?
Jakob
06.06.08 at 4:26 pm
Quoting Jim from his blog.
“I have news for Sandicor. Somebody like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Zillow or Redfin is going to come along and clean your clock. They are going to do a much better job at giving us what we need; a simple, easy-to-use system that will also be open to the public. The agents will adapt to the best system and thrive, and Sandicor will be out of business.
The agents don’t need Sandicor, Sandicor needs the agents. Start preparing those job applications, it won’t be long now.”
This isn’t rocket science….
Don Reedy
06.07.08 at 8:07 am
Kris,
Ditto. I sent an email to Ray Ewing, President of Sandicor, and the four other members of the Sandicor executive committee. I was sooooooooooo angry at this whole fiasco, but wanted to do something to ease MY OWN PAIN.
I ranted a little, but then asked that Ewing and his staff issue at least a written apology to every real estate agent in his prison camp for actions that violate the Geneva Convention. Remember that Ray Ewing is quoted in the San Diego Union as saying that Realtors are not spending any extra time dealing with the Tempo 5 release.
This, as you know and write, is an almost unbelievable rollout. These guys are making any of the old Microsoft issues seem petty. And, we depend on, rely on, make our living on the data that just two weeks ago we had at our fingertips. Now I can find a home with an elevator, but I can’t get information on garages! Yesterday I could not logon to the system, and at 4:45 PM called Sandicor for help. Got a recorded message saying “no one here, and we will return on Monday.” Guess no one there knows real estate is a 7-day per week profession.
I haven’t done a protest since I was in college, but I have just gone through my old memorabilia and dusted off my headbands and bullhorns.
JoeBlow
06.11.08 at 8:01 am
You are all blaming the wrong organization. Tempo 5 is developed by Marketlinx and pushed on its customers such as Sandicor. Marketlinx customers are told that the only way to get new features and improvements is to convert to Tempo 5.
Don Reedy
06.11.08 at 8:16 am
Joe,
No, blame, when applicable, goes to the person who slaps me in the face with the wet fish.
In this case, no matter what the rationale, the wet fish was provided by Marketlinx, but it’s Sandicor that decided to buy that fish and hit me upside the face with it.
It’s simple, and it’s sad, that a group of professionals has to be “blaming” anyone for this, since any amount of beta testing and actual user input prior to the rollout would have disclosed the problems.
By the way. Joe, “pushed on its customers” has a long, long history that always means failure, in any industry, at any time, and thus for me, I’ll take “pull” technology over “push” all the time.
Brian Long
06.11.08 at 11:24 am
Hello Kris,
I too am a Prudential agent and was quite surprised at our recent office meeting. See everyone was jumping up and down about how terrible this new system is in chorus. However, the place was almost silent when I brought up the fact that any agent with licensed IDX search on their website was in a world of hurt. Like you, no one thought of this. In a pat my own back moment, I figured tihs one out immediately, contact my provider and was told 8 business day. I went on a preemptive email campaign explaining what was occuring and am now trying to reconnect with about 68 clients.
See while there is plenty wrong with 5, SANDICOR did not give the code necessary for IDX providrers to match their software with the new program. Because this is money on the table, the inconveniences pale in comparison to what is easily the worst violation to my business.
In a time of nothing but negative press and the pressures on all of us in a ‘downward trending market’ SANDICOR broke my pipeline. See, I am fairly certain that several clients in my pipeline had to verify my explanation and went to other sites ‘jst to check. The problem, like Kris discovered, is that homes would come up. Just not new homes and how were these potential clients to know that until AFTER they signed up? Now I have to sound like a whiny agent and seemingly boo hoo to clients and try to explain again what is still happening. Some of my user searches automatically kicked in, while others I had to go and reinput AFTER not seeing updates for a few days and then verifying with the tempo system.
Change like sh@! happens. I can deal. But SANDICOR violated the very reason they are there.
Justin LaJoie
06.11.08 at 11:26 am
Hey everyone - If you have a Diverse Solutions IDX, like Kris, I want to give you an update. After days of struggling with what I suspect is an overloaded MarketLinx RETS server we have successfully cut over to the new RETS feed. All properties now have the large photos and are 100% up to date. In addition, next week we will start updating every 15 min until then it will be daily. We want to keep an eye on it for a little bit first since the RETS server seemed so unstable there for awhile.
Justin LaJoie - CEO
Diverse Solutions
Kris Berg
06.11.08 at 11:42 am
Brian - I have absolutely nothing to add. Spot on.
Justin - You are my hero this morning. To anyone listening, this is just one of the reasons why we love Diverse Solutions - Great customer service. Thank you, guys!
Mil Flanging
06.11.08 at 3:09 pm
Diverse Solutions is 8 days late.
The Sandicor RETS feed went stale Tuesday May 27th, most of the major IDX / RETS players had their new feeds reconfigured and running accurately the following Tuesday evening - June 3rd.
I’m surprised the CEO of the company is commenting to that effect.
Kris Berg
06.11.08 at 3:31 pm
Mil -
The listings are still not up on Realtor.com, so I will have to disagree.
Taylor
06.11.08 at 4:15 pm
FYI, i have contacted Realtor.Com, and they have the updated data from Sandicor’s conversion and they have just not updated it as of yet. They hope to have it updated in the next few days, however they cannot provide me with an exact date.
Super E-Pro
06.14.08 at 9:30 am
SANDICORSUCKS.COM - this domain is available
Anyone want to set it up, start an online petition blog and
e-mail the info and link to every agent in San Diego??
It’s time for a class action lawsuit from all SD agents
Ray Ewing is still in denial of what a stupid decision they made
I e-mailed him and Sandicor right from the beginning
Tempo 3 was fine, Tempo 5 is a boondoggle
Implementation was a poorly planned fiasco
Now they are trying training, training, triaining
Problem is you can try to train as many agents as possible and
then they will all be good at a bad system
And who pays for all this?? Follow the money, who made alot
of money for this stupid idea!!! I’m super tech savvy, and the
webmaster for a very busy and successful San Diego Real Estate
website, and this system is hard for me, never mind most agents
who have basic tech skills:
- Tempo 5 is overly complicated and slow, a bad system
- Sandicor was hoodwinked by Marketlinx
- The people at Sandicor who made this decision should be fired!!
Fred
06.15.08 at 8:30 pm
I am an appraiser and was looking around to see what opinions are out there about T5….. I wasn’t surprised… I am reasonably tech-savvy and used to work with progammers in the electronics mfg industry. What T5 represents to me is some sloppy programming, and what it really looks like is the IMRMLS in Riverside. I used to think, “wow, at least we don’t have the IMRMLS here in San Diego……” Well, now we do. T5 is an awful clumsy piece of #$*& next to T3. And I don’t say that because I resist change… T5 does not improve my work and/or make it easier…. More keystrokes and entries are required to do anything. Anyone tried getting an Activity Report? Tonight I am hand-entering comps into an appraisal report because over the weekend the jerks at Sandicor apparently changed the access parameters and now a program we use to autopopulate reports can’t get anything out of T5. So now tomorrow I get to inform clients that usually I could have had their reports done, but they will have to wait now because of T5.
If I had the time I would work on a SANDICORSUCKS.COM site - I think just about everyone in SD that works in real estate needs to be able to rant somewhere about this………….
Galen
06.18.08 at 9:44 am
You know, this problem has been solved about 1,000 times, give or take a lot, in the past. When you introduce a new system, you beta test it, you launch it and keep the old system on, and you give clear communication to everyone involved when they will lose their access to the old system. This way you get people to kick the tires of the new system, you have a backup system when bugs inevitably appear, and users migrate over in an orderly fashion.
New listings are online again. How is this for dumb on the IDX front: a programmer can write a query asking for all of the listings without the sold status and they get about 4,000. Then ask for all the listings that are active and they get around 19,000. Bizarre!
Kris Berg
06.18.08 at 4:43 pm
Galen,
Not surprising. I just ran a CMA for a seller, and the information is so jumbled, unreliable, and visibly wrong in many cases, I am embarrassed to give it to him. Every day brings a new challenge and a new bug uncovered plus many, many white screens of death. Urrrr.
Dave
06.20.08 at 6:55 pm
Your wish is my command. I registered sandicorsucks.com and will be setting up a sharepoint site for us to rant. In addition, with any rant needs to be constructive output. As a developer and IT manager for Real Estate companies, I’m willing to provide my infrastructure and time to help gather input, complete a needs assessment and host a OPEN system developed by us. Join me in starting a grass roots system created by agents! Dave
Mack McMillan
06.26.08 at 11:30 pm
Sounds like SANDICOR is not getting much love here (understandably).
As for blame for this debacle there is plenty to go around. The transition from the IDX format to RETS was a train wreck by any reasonable person’s point of view.
In defense of our competitor, Diverse Solutions, SANDICOR was less than responsive to programmers taking weeks to answer emails, return calls or even give proper login credentials to the data. And Justin was being kind when he described the data server as “unstable”.
The client server application furnished by Marketlinx was quirky and of little use not to mention the fact that it only works on Windows. And VieleRETS was unable to maintain a connection to the data server without some serious recoding and writing a custom interface. In short due to non compliance data retrieval was very difficult.
I guess someone forgot to mention to Marketlinx that the rationale behind RETS was to standardize language used by the programmers. You would also think that any company trading stock publicly would know that there are other OS besides Windows.
Our San Diego clients were extremely upset with SANDICOR for turning off the IDX feed BEFORE all the bugs in the new system were worked out. One has to wonder why the rush to turn off the IDX feed and why it was not left on for a few more weeks. What would it have hurt to have both feeds? It would have made a lot more sense for SANDICOR to furnish csv mapping to their IDX Vendors matching their original format and continue the IDX feed during a transition period.
The situation was even more tedious with our system inasmuch as we have a far larger backend (Client Resource Manager) for lead management than most systems offer. So in addition to doing all the normal front end stuff that you see on the MLS we had a full import of existing leads, notes, calendars, appointments and Virtual Floor Duty Calendars and so on. Needless to say it made for an extremely long weekend.
My greatest fear is that with the approaching deadline for the mandate by NAR that all MLS offer RETS we will see more Boards replicate the mistakes made by SANDICOR in their haste for compliance. Much like taxes we tend to put things of this nature off till the last minute and then rush (fumble) through it to beat the deadline.
While RETS is not new there is very little documentation currently available for REALTORS® or Vendors to assist in transitioning from IDX to RETS.
The good news is that the worst should be behind us all and hopefully some valuable lessons were learned. The bad news is that an industry that already suffers from credibility issues and that is currently in a slump just took another hit unnecessarily.
K.M. “Mack” McMillan - VP
The Brokers Edge, Inc.
Kris Berg
06.27.08 at 7:06 am
Wow, Mack. You give me too much credit. I understand about every fifth word.
I am attending a meeting this morning with other SDAR agents who have been asked to provide comments on the new system and the lingering bugs. Should be a long morning.
Don Reedy
06.27.08 at 7:18 am
Kris,
Just a quick note, and then perhaps later (in your spare time!!) you can respond.
We had a Sandicor rep at our office two days ago. She indicated the only way to get changes was through NSDCAR or SDAR. Will you let all of us know after your meeting who we can turn to, how the process will work, so that we can stop finger pointing and start solving this mess?
Thanks so much for all you do!
BawldGuy Talking
06.27.08 at 9:34 am
Kris — What are the expectations you carry with you into that meeting?
Mack McMillan
06.27.08 at 9:49 am
I would hope that in the meeting plans could be formulated for better implementation of future upgrades.
Kris, my apologies for a long-winded post. I had a lot to get off my chest on the SANDICOR subject. If you are interested in further explanation feel free to email me.
K.M. “Mack” McMillan - VP
The Brokers Edge, Inc.
Kris Berg
06.28.08 at 11:12 am
BG - None, and I am never disappointed.
Mack - No apologies. I appreciate it! I may be taking you up on your offer.
Don - SDAR (or your association) is the contact. I am writing a position paper in case you would like to email me with your comments.
Al Rosson
07.05.08 at 1:24 pm
Hey Kris,
How did your meeting go with SANDICOR? Are you making any progress on your position paper outlining the SDAR transition from IDX to RETS? If so will it be posted here?
Thanks,