A 'News' item was recently posted on SPI by Mark Sucklin about an interview with a woman from Your Viva.
In response some plain and simple questions were asked about things like: how it differs from old Viva, what is their average commission rate, do they still hear of 'B' money deals, why do they advertise the same homes in some cases at higher prices than they are advertised on other portals, is this due to their higher commission?, etc etc
Mark Sucklin then posted a rather angry knock back reply saying he would not allow such 'News' items to be answered in that way. Naturally others posted, I saw one reply saying as 'it had been brought into the public domain' this should be answered by Viva.
I then went on assignment with a leading UK national broadsheet for a few days regarding Spanish property, and on my return, I noticed others had clearly posted but ALL replies were now deleted.
This is unacceptable by Sucklin, who is now censoring replies to his own items but also posts on the forums pages whilst at the same time he is gearing up a commercially led website now. SPI is no longer the leading site for honest Spanish property advice, naive buyers and sellers could easily fall foul of misleading or inadequate facts.
I know full well that really knowledgeable posters on that site such as Logan and other sover the years have left due to his journalistic and unreasonable control of his site. The site as it was known has died a death and is now focused only on promoting of Spanish property.
I will say that if Sucklin continues with this practice I will have to bring it to the attention of my UK broadsheet.
A property website should be unbiased, and topics and news which are neither libellous nor slanderous should be available for open and honest discussion, in other words Mr Sucklin if you post 'News' items and forum topics you should allow these to be dabated without exerting total control.