How to Handle a Vendor Who Complains About Lack of Updates

Why this happens

A vendor complaint about lack of updates almost always traces back to the same root cause covered elsewhere in this guide: an information gap that the vendor filled with worry before you filled it with facts. It’s rarely about a single missed call — it’s usually a pattern of updates arriving late, inconsistently, or not at all, until the vendor’s patience runs out and they say something.

This isn’t only an anecdotal pattern. The Property Ombudsman’s March 2026 review of the past year puts it this way:

“Poor communication remains the most common underlying reason for disputes with failures to provide clear information or respond promptly to concerns often causing disputes to escalate unnecessarily.”

The same TPO release reports 58% more complaints between November 2025 and February 2026 than in the same months a year earlier, so a slipping update habit is a growing risk rather than a shrinking one.

The immediate response

When a vendor raises it directly, the instinct to get defensive or over-explain is worth resisting. A short, direct acknowledgement works better than a long justification:

“You’re right, and I’m sorry — we should have been in touch more consistently. Here’s where things actually stand: [current report]. Going forward, you’ll hear from us every [cadence], even on weeks where there’s not much to report.”

This does three things in a few sentences: acknowledges the gap without being defensive, immediately closes it with real information, and commits to a specific, checkable cadence rather than a vague promise to “do better.”

Log it as well as answering it. Section 14b of The Property Ombudsman’s Code of Practice for Residential Estate Agents requires member agents to record all complaints — verbal as well as written — at the time they are made. A grumble on a phone call counts, even when you resolve it in the same call, and a recorded pattern of small communication complaints across several vendors is exactly the signal worth seeing before one of them turns into a formal complaint.

Fixing the underlying cadence

A one-off apology doesn’t fix a pattern — the vendor needs to actually see the new cadence hold for a few cycles before trust rebuilds. Pick a specific interval (see how often to update a vendor) and stick to it without exception for this vendor in particular, even during weeks with little to report — a missed update immediately after a complaint does far more damage than a missed update would have done before one.

Rebuilding trust

Trust after a complaint rebuilds through consistency, not through a single grand gesture. A few things help specifically:

• Slightly over-communicate for the first few cycles. A vendor who’s just complained is watching more closely than usual — a couple of extra, brief updates in the weeks immediately after reassures them the change is real, not a one-off response to being called out.
• Make the next update genuinely useful, not just prompt. Arriving on time with a thin, low-detail update doesn’t fully address a complaint about quality of communication, not just frequency — use the vendor report template to make sure it’s substantive.
• Don’t over-promise. Committing to daily updates to smooth things over, then failing to sustain it, does more damage than committing to a realistic weekly cadence and holding to it reliably.

When it’s a symptom of a bigger problem

Occasionally a communication complaint is really a proxy for a different frustration — a listing that isn’t performing, a vendor questioning whether the price is right, or general anxiety about the sale not progressing. If updates improve but the vendor’s underlying dissatisfaction doesn’t, it’s worth directly asking whether communication is the actual issue, or whether there’s a harder conversation (often the price) that the vendor is raising indirectly by complaining about updates instead. See how to tell a vendor their asking price is too high if that turns out to be the real issue underneath.

A worked example

A vendor emails, clearly frustrated: “It’s been over two weeks and I’ve heard nothing — is anyone still working on this?” The negotiator responds within the hour: “You’re completely right to raise this, and I’m sorry — here’s exactly where things stand: 3 viewings since we last spoke, average rating 4/5, no offers yet but one viewer asked about a second look. From here, you’ll get an update every Friday without fail, even if it’s just a short one.” The negotiator follows through for the next four weeks without missing one, including a genuinely short “quiet week” update in week three. By week five, the vendor’s tone in emails has visibly relaxed — the complaint didn’t need a grand gesture to resolve, just consistent proof that the gap had actually closed.

What not to do

• Don’t blame the market or other pressures as the primary explanation. Even if partly true, it reads as an excuse rather than an acknowledgement, and doesn’t address the actual gap the vendor experienced.
• Don’t let the improved cadence quietly slip back to normal after a few weeks. A relapse after a complaint is remembered far more sharply than the original gap was.
• Don’t wait for the next scheduled update to respond to a complaint. Acknowledge it immediately, even briefly, and follow with the fuller update shortly after.

If it becomes a formal complaint

Most communication complaints are settled in the conversation. If one isn’t, the process stops being informal and starts running to fixed deadlines. Under sections 14a-14f of the TPO Code of Practice, member agents must maintain a written in-house complaints procedure that’s available in every office and on the website; acknowledge a written complaint in writing within 3 working days; send a formal written outcome within 15 working days of receiving it, handled by a senior member of staff or designated complaint handler not directly involved in the transaction; and, once a final view has been issued, tell the complainant how to refer the matter to the Ombudsman — a referral they then have 12 months to make.

Redress scheme membership isn’t optional either: registering with a government-approved scheme is a legal requirement for residential estate agents, and agents who don’t join can be fined up to £5,000. None of this is likely to be triggered by a missed weekly update — but knowing the clock exists is a good reason to resolve a communication complaint properly while it’s still an informal one.

Where this fits

For the cadence and format this response is built around, see how often to update a vendor and the vendor report template. For the full picture on avoiding this situation in the first place, see our complete guide to vendor communication and reporting.

ViewingFeedback makes a consistent cadence easier to sustain even under pressure — a report builds itself from collected feedback, so a reliable weekly update doesn’t depend on finding time to write one from scratch during a busy week.