Century 21 Post-Earthquake Commercial
Century 21 has a new commercial airing on Japanese TV, in which real estate agents from around the world send messages of support to Japan:
It’s a very nice commercial. However, before people out there accuse me of providing Century 21 with free advertising, I feel I should bring up the fact that they don’t exactly have a great reputation for treating foreign customers with respect.
Here’s what one Japan Probe reader (sublight) had to say about them:
Century 21, however, gets special mention for their two-hour “we don’t want to help you, but we don’t want to say we don’t want to help you, so we’re going to be as unhelpful as possible until you leave” dance. They were friendly enough when my Japanese wife had called the day before to ask if an apartment was available to see, but the moment they saw me, the smiles dropped (this was at the Ikejiri-Ohashi branch in Tokyo). Suddenly, there was a ‘problem’ with the apartment and they couldn’t show it just yet. While we waited (for over an hour), they didn’t give us any other listings to look at, and instead spent all their time with other couples.
After realizing we weren’t leaving (it had taken us an hour to get there, and we had all day), one agent said, “well, we can show the place, but we can’t go inside.” I said “fine, we’ll look at the outside.” “But it’s raining and we can’t use the office car.” “That’s fine, I have an umbrella. You’ll walk there with us.” So we walked over and stood in the pouring rain staring at the outside wall for about 15 minutes before heading back. When we got back to the realtor’s office, he positioned himself in the doorway and quickly said “well, sorry we couldn’t help you thanks for coming goodbye.”
[this was in 2000 and I'd been living in Japan for 5 years by then, so my Japanese was fairly solid. Also, I wasn't going with a friend but the person who'd be living in the apartment with me and paying half the rent.
As for a guarantor, I was working full-time with NEC as a project coordinator then, and they were guaranteeing me.]
Another foreign resident of Japan (Eric) was treated a bit worse:
The only problem I ever had with renting an apartment was with Century 21. Went inside, and they immediately crossed their arms and gave me the “batsu”. Wow…. such friendly folks.
If anyone else out there has had a particularly positive or negative experience with Century 21 in Japan, please let us know in the comments thread of this post!
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