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REAL ESTATE SHOCKER
Reporter: Gordon Harcourt
For years the real estate industry tidied up its dirty laundry in house - complaints were handled by the industry's own professional body, and the penalties would often be a joke.
Now, it's in the open, its part of the justice system, and the penalties can be swingeing.
For the first time cameras have gone inside the new (or newish) Real Estate Agents Disciplinary Tribunal.
What we saw was an absolute shocker - one of the worst cases the Tribunal has seen.
The case of Sophia Khan
Agent Sophia (or Sofia) Khan sold a bloke's house to her own nephew, then immediately sold the house again without telling the first buyer. The profit was about $20,000.
Now you might say that's just clever, but wait till you hear how she pulled off that second deal.
The second buyer had very little in the bank - certainly not a deposit.
No problem for Sophia Khan.
According to the Tribunal, she took the buyer to her own bank, pulled out $27,000 of her own cash, and then went to the buyer's bank.
They put the cash in the buyer's account, got a bank statement - look Ma, $27,000. They then pulled the cash immediately from another branch.
The $27K went back in Sophia Khan's account, the bank statement went in the loan paperwork, and the buyer got a mortgage.
Sophia Khan sorted that mortgage with a broker, at 10.2%.
Two charges of disgraceful misconduct were found; she was kicked out of the industry, and given a whopping fine of $750. Yep, $750.
That's because her misconduct occurred under the old legislation. The maximum fine today is $15,000 and the new legislation also allows for compensation up to $100,000.
Sophia Khan didn't turn up to her own hearing, and didn't respond to my various attempts to contact her.
If you've got a complaint go to the Real Estate Agents Authority. It costs you nothing to complain, and REAA has just introduced a new system to speed up the complaint process.
POTHOLE PROBLEMS
Reporter: Ruwani Perera
Wainuiomata residents are fuming over the state of their shopping centre car park and want the owners to fix it once and for all.
OUCH!
Reporter: Hannah Wallis
Bed time has a lovely ring about it, for all sorts of reasons - it's where we rest, and dream, and catch up on our reading - all that nice stuff.
Unless of course, you have a scary bed. The sort of bed you get into very gingerly, hoping that nothing bad will happen to you in the middle of the night.
Hannah with the bed, that bites.
IT'S ALL IN THE TIMING
Reporter: Ali Mau
This one's all about the little guy keeping the mega-brands honest. Fast food giant, McDonalds, likes to serve you fast - and runs promotions based on speed of service.
Right now 18 New Zealand branches offer the 30 Second Challenge as a permanent promotion in peak times - the deal is, if you don't get your meal within 30 seconds of pulling up to the service window, you get a voucher for a free burger.
But one Hamilton viewer found it doesn't always work as it's supposed to.
Despite signage promoting the offer, we went with Jasmin to three of her regular McDonalds drive through branches, and found none of them were operating the timers - Jasmin tells us they haven't been operating reliably for some time - which means thousands of customers were potentially missing out on their voucher.
McDonalds has investigated and says for a "variety" of reasons,
the timers in three Hamilton stores were not working properly.
Those issues have now been fixed, and the timers in all other
stores New Zealand wide have been checked.
