Holy row over cut-price Church listing
Published 13 Jan 2012 09:30
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PROPERTY hunters almost got the bargain of a lifetime this week when a historic village church was placed on the market for £1.
But the bargain buy turned out to be a computer mistake - with both the Church of Scotland and selling agents ESPC acting quickly to take down the listing.
Walkerburn Church, on Galashiels Road, has been for sale since December 14 but this week The Church of Scotland's Law Department noticed that potential buyers could be misled by the price it stated it was going for - 'Offers invited £1'.
Hopes of a bargain-buy were overruled when the Church team in charge of advertising said they weren't to blame for the error.
A spokesperson for the Law Department of the Church of Scotland told the Peeblesshire News: "It was an error and is the fault of ESPC. I have complained about the matter.
"We self-register on the Edinburgh Property centre and there is a fault on their system which we did not realise at the time we placed the advert."
They continued: "The system defaulted which was never picked up in the first place and therefore it was a printing error by the ESPC. It was a mistake outwith our control."
The Church of Scotland team notified the property company as soon as they realised the blunder - but the ambiguous advert wasn't taken down from the ESPC website until Monday of this week.
The property website leaves it up to the seller to post up information about it themselves.
Neil Harrison, Marketing Manager for ESPC told the Peeblesshire News: "The Church of Scotland wanted a price-on-application basis but unfortunately our website doesn't allow you to do that so you need a value next to it.
"We are currently making changes to our system which will allow the church to market the property the way it requires."
Walkerburn Church of Scotland went up for sale on December 14 last year with a closing date of January 27..
The property has been temporarily withdrawn from the ESPC website, a decision made by seller the Church of Scotland.
The advertisement will now appear in the ESPC magazine.
This article appeared in Peeblesshire News 13 Jan 12
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