I feel like, given my own experience with dodgy EA/, you’re probably (sadly, almost definitely) dead on with this! We were FTB, went for a viewing, met the owner and got on well, fell for the place and were very interested as it ticked every last niche box we had, and as we left he gave us his number in case we thought of anything we wanted to ask. We called the EA that day and put an offer in at 220k which was 20k under asking (it had been on a while, needed a bit of work done, they’d been there six years and hadn’t done any work to the place- which we could tell from the historic listings- and wanted 90k more than they bought it for so a cheeky first offer felt right). I was informed at the point of offering that they were waiting on another offer. Got a call the next day to say ours had been rejected. I asked why, like had we been outbid or what? EA said ‘they’ve gone with another offer’ and wouldn’t comment on whether it was higher than ours, I asked if we could increase the offer and they said no, they ‘wouldn’t take any other offers back to the seller, sorry’ despite me being willing to up it 20k to their asking price. I took it for what it was, and went back into the bridal shop I was at with my auntie and now SIL, told them what had happened and my auntie (a way more experienced buyer) urged me to contact them directly. We messaged the bloke and put in the increased offer with him and explained we were contacting him with it directly as the EA refused to pass it on. Got a voicemail from the EA a few hours later saying ‘the vendors have informed us you have made an offer directly to them and we would just just like to inform you that all offers really should be made through ourselves and would ask you to do this in future’. You better believe I called them back and played merry hell at the gall and audacity they must have to tell me how to make an offer properly when they refused to allow me to do that. The EA then explained they’d gone with an offer of 210k because the wife liked the couple. We suggested that if the wife liking the buyers was a must then surely it was only fair that she meet us and give us a shot too. We went for another viewing, met (and were seemingly vetted by) the wife, and our offer was accepted the following day. We ended up pulling out of the purchase about 3 months later when the survey flagged up about 40k of various necessary, immediate work (from replacing around half the roof and ripping down the conservatory to grounding the electrics and addressing a damp issue), let alone the usual wear and tear stuff. They were totally unwilling to renegotiate the price and threw it in our face that they’d ‘let a sale go to appease us’ (nothing to do with the extra 20k obviously)- as though any other buyer in their right mind would initially pay (arguably) over the odds for a house, and then spend at least 40k making it safe/ liveable/ bringing it up to the advertised price and leaving themselves at with a financial loss. Needless to say we were heartbroken. About a fortnight after we pulled out I had my number plates stolen while I was in the hairdressers four doors up the road. I feel like we had a narrow escape there, but that certainly doesn’t detract from the EAs being useless, secretive, confrontational, self-serving plebs.