RICS Reviews 62

Dishonest and unprofessional. We spend all our savings on an house that had an issue with the boundary wall without knowing that. The only thing in the report regarding the boundary wall was "further repair may be identified on closer inspection". After two weeks of living there the wall collapsed into the neighbours propriety. To fix it we had been quoted feom 35K to 50K!! When we call Albert Wellington to question his inspection and contribute towards the repairing of the wall, he told us that his company did their deuty of care.

The organisation as a whole is awful. It's an awful representation of their members. They treat members and staff like trash and management is a shambles.

Do not work with or for RICS. Do not mistake a RICS membership as some kind of accolade.

Absolutely awful company with little to no care and values.

Scandal after scandal and can't sort themselves out.

It is a complete myth, in my experience and opinion, that RICS upholds any values or standards. They are only interested in member subscriptions, approx £500/yr per member and more if you’re also a registered valuer. Without their members, they have no income.

The public is brainwashed and even educational establishments lead students to falsely believe RICS qualifications are the “gold” standard and a sign of integrity. No, that’s just what RICS state, it’s a sales pitch, it has no authority.

I have seen that when RICS is presented with widespread fraud by member firms they simply do everything they can to find excuses and avoid holding anyone accountable. If they close down a firm, they lose thousands in membership fees etc.

If you’re a student, don’t bother qualifying, your two years of APC is a waste of time and here’s why…

If you were to lie and pretend to be RICS qualified for years without anyone questioning you - and believe me there are many who do - there is actually nothing RICS can do to hold you accountable. You can do as many fake valuations etc as you like and the worst that will happen is RICS May send you a letter asking you to cease.

Most people just see the “Royal Institution” and think it has some authority. Nope. Diddly squat. There’s more authority in your little finger.

So why not make hay, call yourself a chartered surveyor and fear the letter, if it ever arrives… I’m sure it must be frightening.

We had a survey from an RICS chartered organisation. The surveyor photographed the property but failed to survey 25% of it.

The Principal Surveyor revisited and admitted failings but refused to take responsibility. They said our only option was to arbitrate.

RICS were unhelpful. It felt like their existence is only to protect the membership and reputation.

One example: I used an RICS-published article as evidence to prove my case. RICS contacted me to say that this 'was no longer their opinion' and took the article offline immediately.

When buying a property, you'd be better off using a camera and measuring tape, paying for a damp survey, electrical certificate, roofing inspection and demanding the heating is serviced.

I have encountered people who are "RICS qualified" with this orgnasationon a number of occasions in relation to different building projects that i have been involved with. Each time "RICS" is written across the "report" in bold ink, and each time I read the report at the end- I am dissapointed.
Thier undertsanding of buildings is not much more than my 9 year old daughter and thier ability to write even a summry report is close to worth-less.
From comments elsewhere, the RICS organsation should be banned. My advice - Use a qualified Civil Engineer to do the report instead.

The RICS is still one of the most globally competitive surveying associations around. It has a very rich history that cannot be rubbished by anyone.

A pointless organisation full of snowflakes.

They issued a fake surveyor, someone who had been pretending to be RICS qualified for over 25 years, with a cease and desist but, they refused to make this public knowledge.

Can you imagine how many people have been cheated by this fake surveyor and how much fraud must have gone on and all RICS do is send the guy a letter.

They should have reported him and the firm involved to the Police!

Terrible unprofessional organisation. RICS are not professional standards or regulator at all, they are a disaster in every way possible, charge extortionate fees for nothing, never respond to emails, impossible to speak with anyone on phone, rude and disrespectful and if you complain about their appalling service they make life difficult. I had to submit a county court claim against these crooks as they cancelled a DRS course for no reason and refused to refund books I purchased unless they received the books back which I never even bought from them, they respond to the county claim with nothing but deceitful malicious lies and then they ignored emails and phone calls to resolve and dont want to speak with you about it. Avoid them if you can.

Wretched organisation in every way conceivable. They treat their members like dirt and see them only as cash cows. They also bully anyone that says anything negative about their unforgivable behaviour. Membership is a complete rip-off. I would strongly recommend going elsewhere (anywhere). Zero value for money and leaves you with a very bitter taste in your mouth. Also their “regulation” department do absolutely nothing even when their members are patently committing fraud - they don’t even bother responding to you! Hideous institution that should be abolished completely. The “qualification” is next to worthless due to years of falling standards. Think VERY carefully before joining.

I contacted the RICS after a surveyor wrote a report for a client that was fabricated and with no back up evidence in the report to justify the claims made. We contacted the Surveyor first to ask him to please explain his findings as there was no evidence provided in the report for these findings. He refused to converse as we were not his "Clients" we then contacted the RICS to ask them to investigate the matter as we felt the surveyor was basicaly writing what ever his client wanted without any factual evidence to support the report . The RICs responded saying they couldnt act as we were not the "Clients" ?surely they have a responsibilty to govern their members conduct? or are they happy to just take the annual fee and let the Surveyors govern themselves? It would seem so, the worst so called professional organisation I,ve ever dealt with in a lifetime of work in the Construction Industry. We are third Generation builders established in 1930 so we do speak from some experience. The RICS need to have a good look at themselves and start to monitor what their members do and write, how else can anyone have any faith in this organisation if they just turn a blind eye all the time. An absolute disgrace they should hold their heads in shame.

They have the worst system via their stupid site. Don't even try to register on their site, you will lose your time.

Certainly doesn’t represent its members, but it will censure, threaten and burden them while letting it’s intended profession fall away to other trades. Useless and parasitic.

My professional body. A constant source of frustration and disappointment; too many anecdotes to mention.

Sort it out please, you have been reviewed to death, you know what’s wrong

In brief and in my experience the RICS are a woefully incompetent and negligent organisation who do little to hold crooked members to account.

I complained about a member firm and provided pages and pages of evidence detailing their falsified and non-compliant valuation reports and other documents used in court proceedings.

The first RICS complaint handler took 3 months to review and dismissed the complaint despite the evidence. They had no understanding of the basic RICS rules to which a member must adhere.

An investigation by a manager into how this RICS employee handled my complaint and the evidence confirmed the RICS employee required further training and had failed to do their job properly.

Things then got much worse.

My complaint about the regulated member led to an investigation by a “Lead Investigator” who then took the word of the regulated member over and above the written evidence. By way of just one example, none of the valuation reports by the regulated member were signed by an RICS member and yet the regulated member told the RICS they were countersigned. The RICS ignored the physical copies of the reports proving there was no counter signature and simply took the word of the regulated member. By doing so, the RICS dismissed my complaint.

The matter remains “live” and I am pressing for a through internal investigation into how not one but, two RICS employees have failed to do their job and currently allowed a regulated member to tell them bare faced lies!

I also hope the Estates Gazette and press will take notice.

Being a member of the RICS evidently means very little when their own regulator does not understand their own rules and takes no action against regulated firms abusing their status, a status the members of the public who pay their fees should be able to trust.

RICS standards aren't worth anything to the general public. I had a surveyor who missed nearly £50,000 of work. When I complained a partner in the firm came to view their mistakes and said they would get back to me. I never heard from them again as they hid behind their lawyers. RICS felt this was fine as they had sent me a piece of paper with their complaints procedure on it. The fact that they knew they had made errors and refused to issue their conclusions from the second visit as promised was irrelevant according to RICS. I suggest that anyone getting a survey from a RICS regulated surveyor gets additional insurance in case of their negligence.

Unfortunately I must agree with the majority of the reviewers who appear to be very critical of this organisation.
RICS attempts to be all things to all people but while they may stress their role as a Regulator my experience is they are only interested in defending their Members interests and are totally indifferent to the general publics complaints.
I'll keep it brief. I complained to a RICS member firm who clearly were not interested in the problems created by an inaccurate survey which cost me a considerable amount of money to prove the firm wrong and I lost the sale of my property through her actions. I then forwarded my complaint to RICS who replied suggesting I seek legal advice, which as they aware is cost prohibitive.
If you look at the RICS website they are basically a marketing organisation, with membership voluntary and they appear much more interested in promoting their services than upholding members standards and actions.
All in all, a very bad experience.

RICS advertise their Neighbour Dispute Resolution Service (NDRS) as a significantly cheaper option to pursuing a boundary dispute in court. This is not my experience. The surveyor that RICS appointed produced a report that was inaccurate and contained text that conflicted with the plans. I complained to the surveyor, who denied there was a problem, and went on to produce another plan which moved the position of a tree so that the conflict no longer existed. I complained to RICS. They said that they could not comment on the work of one of their members, but there was nothing to prevent me taking the surveyor to court. I commissioned an DGPS engineering survey, which confirmed that he had swapped the measurements of the bottom widths of the two gardens. I filed a small claim against the surveyors company, which after many months was found in my favour. During this time the surveying company denied that there was a problem with the report and stated that by commissioning a second survey, there were now two opinions. I think that it is unacceptable that a professional body like RICS has no oversight of its members and a process that it advertises. I should not have had to go to court to get a simple error corrected. Why should an observation such as the text of a report contradicting a plan in a report be a matter of opinion? Would I recommend the RICS Neighbour Dispute Resolution Service - No. It did not save me money, it created an erroneous report which I had to challenge. If (god forbid) I had another boundary dispute I would commission a GPS survey of the boundary and get that compared to the Land Registry plans and mediate with my neighbours through solicitors.

I emailed Bics, a division of RICS about one of their members using 2019 pricing data rather than their latest 2021 data. The web site said I'd get a reply in 3 days. Almost 4 weeks later I'm still waiting; the only response to date is an email saying my email was being passed on to another department. I'm still waiting despite chaser emails and phone calls.

My surveyor totally failed to note a major defect on a homebuyers survey. When I raised my concerns, he was totally dismissive.
Raised the issue with RICS, who told me that they would not be investigating my complaint.
Not sure what the purpose of this organisation is, as it does not serve the general publics interests.

Survey booked in for 4th June, received phonecall 21st May to say been done and once I received report if had any queries could contact surveyor direct (Paul Scott).
Then received the written report 22nd May. Over the moon with the efficient service and very explanatory report. Paul very helpful when I rang with a little query.
Defiantly recommend this company.