From Inman News
Dotloop unveils new data privacy guarantee
“Since our acquisition by Zillow Group, there have been some questions from dotloop customers about how their data would now be used,” said Austin Allison, founder and general manager of dotloop, in a statement.
“Data privacy has always been a top priority for us; that has not changed. We are introducing the Dotloop Data Privacy Guarantee to provide increased transparency on this topic, making it very clear that dotloop customers own their data and that their data will not be used for Zillow Group products or services without their permission.”
From what I’m hearing this is a bunch of hooey. Dotloop never wanted to amend or add to their existing privacy policy but was forced to do so if they wanted to keep licensing forms in certain state.
The question of data use, while important in its own right, is a red herring to the even larger issue: that is, Zillow / dotLoop (eventually) advertising mortgage/title/etc. to consumers at just the right time via the transaction platform and interfering with existing industry processes for service selection. Sooner or later Wall St. investors will make sure Zillow must maximize revenue in that area, regardless of anything they might say now. Brokers and agents would be fools to do anything to allow dotLoop to take the dominant position in the transaction that Zillow has in the home search process.
Hi Greg.
Following the acquisition, several customers have raised questions about this topic… and since we value our customers’ input, the ongoing nature of such questions led us to believe that additional transparency on the topic was warranted. So to answer your question: YES, you could say that we “forced” ourselves to listen to our customer’s input. We’ve operated the business in this way from the very beginning and have incredibly strong customer relationships because of it.
Austin
Austin says: “…you could say that we ‘forced’ ourselves to listen to customer input…” You could say that, but why would you? When has the complete truth really ever mattered to dotloop or Zillow? No better snake oil salesman than Austin…