Am I wrong?
I have been doing real estate for only a little over a year. Done a few deals. Hosted open house on the weekend and met a couple clients. They came in, we chatted, I asked if they had an agent, they said yes. Agent later arrived at the open house, introduced herself, gave me her card, stayed for about 10min with her clients and then left again. The clients stayed for a total of maybe an hour or so.
After the clients left, they called me and asked me to call them after open house ended. I did, they asked questions about the house, and I answered what I could. They asked about pricing, offers, etc, and I said I'm not their agent so cannot assist them, and they will need to ask their agent.
The next evening really late, they reached out to me and wanted to see if I can put in an offer for them and talk to me about pricing. I asked them if they had a BRBC with the agent they were working with. They said no. They want to work with me, not her. I didn't ask why. I figured it's the client's choice. The next morning, I sent them the BRBC and started working on the offer.
Clients call me telling me that their previous agent is pissed off when she found out they are using me instead of her. Clients told me and told that agent that it's because she has been unresponsive when they asked for help. She has always been hard to reach, takes a long time to respond, and overall, they were not happy with her and do not want to work with her. The agent has showed the client a couple homes and even with the showings, one of it was showed by the agent's daughter, not her. Clients said they told the agent the night before they want to submit an offer on the house and again, the agent took over 12hrs to respond. They didn't want to lose out on putting an offer on this house as they felt time was of the essence so they asked me to represent them since I was a better fit for them and very quick to respond and help them.
The other agent called my team lead who has known her for years, calls other people in our industry, blasts my name around saying I stole her client. My team lead said I messed up and shouldn't have done that and because the other agent is very well known in our city and has been doing this a long time, she's going to basically ruin my reputation for doing this.
I never intended to steal her client. I don't know her, didn't have her card with me, don't even remember her name, never crossed my mind to reach out to her before working with her clients. It never crossed my mind. I know by law, I didn't do anything wrong. But ethically, did I? I asked my brokerage and they said legally I didn't do anything wrong since she didn't have a BRBC with the clients. But ethically, I guess it's not that cool what happened.
I told my team lead I can give her back her clients. It's not a big deal to me as I never intended to "steal" them from her anyway. But the problem is, her clients don't want to work with her. Even if I don't represent them, they don't want to work with her. They told me she is love bombing them, calling, texting nonstop and it's scaring them. And begged me to represent them. I said sorry I can't. So I dropped my client and told them to either go back to her or find someone else. Clients found someone else to represent them. That agent is still going around asking who is representing the clients now and contacting the clients asking them who their new agent is, how they found them, etc. My clients messaged and told me.
What would you have done? Am I wrong? After this experience, I think that if this were to happen again, I would as a courtesy reach out to the agent to let them know their client wants to sign with me before I move forward and I am not trying to do anything unethical. But this whole situation has me feeling conflicted. Thoughts?
TLDR; Clients came to open house. Had an agent but no BRBC signed. Clients contacted me and asked me to represent them. The other agent is mad and calling other industry people blasting me saying I stole her clients. Clients told her they didn't want to work with her because she has been hard to reach, slow to respond, MIA. So that's why they went with me. Agent is still pissed and spreading this around. Clients still want to work with me but due to the situation, I told them I can no longer represent them. Clients refuse to work with the previous agent and went with someone else entirely. Am I wrong?