The last day or so I have been listening to, yes that’s right Leo Laporte, I said LISTENING TO, because you do not READ audio, the audiobook version of Jeff Jarvis’ book “What Would Google Do?”. Even though I have yet to listen to the entire thing, I would still highly recommend this book, It’s an interesting look at the changes companies like Google have brought to the world, thanks to the Internet, like Dell and Starbucks putting up sites for their customers to voice ideas.

Now, compared to Jeff Jarvis, who also blogs on his own site BuzzMachine I am pretty much a nobody blogger, who rarely gets any real comments left on the blog. That said, I have had companies like Belkin actually put two and two together with an issue I had with an iPod case breaking when I fell down the stairs, and made good on it by calling me and offering to send a replacement case as long as I edited my post. Wow, me nobody blogger me, people from Comcast have reached out to me too, once when I had a problem with my wifi and my Xbox 360 due to bad weather though I had not explained that the wifi router was actually above the garage detached from the house. I don’t live there anymore, I live in a condo now.

Now on to the meat of this post, which is my  beef with Mr. Jeff Jarvis.  A few times on This Week in Google and in his own book, he has stated that real estate agents make commission for doing little work.  I challenge you Jeff Jarvis, to come down to Florida and spend a day with my own mother,  or one of the 200 some odd Magnolia Properties agents, who work every single day, from the minute they wake up to the minute they go to bed. I am the IT department for that company, my paycheck was made possible by that company, and so therefore the thing you seem to state as fact, when it’s not, has even made it possible for me to buy your book. All you’ve done is ride around in the car with an agent, you do not see the work they do when you are not around. My mother is what we call a “working broker” not only does she have her own company, but she also has to sell houses herself in order to pay the bills and put food on the table, but she can’t do it all herself, and because she also runs the business, she has office staff that sometimes make appointments for her. My mother has not had a single day off of work for years. She has no real weekends! When she’s in the car, watching TV, eating dinner, doing anything else, she’s working.

Sorry, but I am going to tell you that from experience, of being around the industry as long as I have, living in it, but being slightly separate from it because I am not an agent myself, that you are wrong. I am sorry to even say this to you because I respect your views on the changing economy, and I love how things have changed this day and age.

Also, when you say that discount brokerages now having access to MLS is a good thing, I disagree with you there as well, because they take business away from the hard working agent. I yell at my TV every time a Buy Owner commercial is on. It is not a good thing at all.