Estate Agent Problem

The converse of that is agent should have went back to 1st bidder (OP) to see if they would bid against someone else? Surely thats how they get max price for seller ?

In this country, EAs walk like kings and we are expected to be treated badly by EAs and take it and make no comment , despite parting with lots of money on our purchase.

There are good few EAs on the market who don't care about you as a buyer and funny part is there is no repercussions on them, they are not regulated or audited to see if they act in a transparent way.

What in your mind happened to oblige the EA and the owner to now sell exclusively to you? I mean you could say "I'll put another 10k if you call it sale agreed today" but you didn't. you didn't commit. you just asked them to commit. Taking a property off the market is a big signal they're not keen to do that until they know there is a real buyer on the hook. Next time if you're so keen get it confirmed that it's sale agreed and talk deposit.

The only blunder on EA part is not informing you that there was a higher bid. That's stupid, you were obviously interested and eager, you were very likely to keep bidding. In that way, they potentially screwed their client over. And they don't care. An extra 10k is lots to the owner but the % commission off that is nothing to the EA. They just want the chunk. So that's very bad form.

That has happened to me before, I bid on a property via email, they lost track of it, someone bid up and I found out later when I inquired about it they were quite rude and defensive. I forwarded them the emails, they apologized and let me put in a bid even though they were sale agreed. The specific EA in charge of the sale was pissed about it (me coming into their process again) but their office seem to have forced him to reopen it.

From reading their reviews :

"Another useless money making self unregulated set up. Mainly used by letting agents for a fake advertisment on their websites.
They don't assist members of public or third party affected home owners subject to filthy operations by these so called paying 'memberships.'

Some filthy cowboys and landlords you have on your list.
You money making con job!"

" Not fit for purpose, waste of space and taxpayers money"

Should I expand further?

Again, I think you are being hypocritical, your second offer was made on condition that the property be taken off the market (no other bids), but you are irked when another bidder would appear to have bid with a similar condition.

Now you are insinuating that he lied about the need for repairs, surely you could see the issues he was referring to? That also makes the acceptance of the higher bid easier to understand/believe, if the property was going to need a lot of work, the vendor was going to grab any bid that reached level they were aiming for.

You played a game with the EA/vendor, someone played it better, next time don’t put a condition on your bid, and check if you are giving off a vibe that you either don’t know what you are doing or a bit of a flakey bidder. That isn’t an apology for the EA, it’s simple advice, there are a lot more buyers out there than vendors.

What difference would informing buyers of issues with the property make to the scenario you mention?
If the problems are visible to buyers during viewing, might as well be transparent and get it out there rather than have someone go online and accuse the EA to trying to hide it.

Bidders make conditional bids, it happens, the op did it and would have been happy if other bidders were unable to bid, and, would have been happy with the EA doing that if it worked in the op’s favour.

I think most assume vendors who advertise their property for sale, intend to sell.

In your scenario, why would a vendor want to dampen interest if they were trying to find a market value?

Something does add up, there is another bidder, similar to the op, who bid more and had that bid accepted. In a couple of months the op will be able to check the PPR and this may all make sense.

When you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras.

Why would they mark it sale agreed on both daft and the EA website, and the person the op spoke to in the office confirmed it was sale agreed, instead of just taking it down?

There are probably hundreds to different scenarios/reasons which could explain why the op didn’t get the house, but Occam’s Razor applies.

Sale agreed by the executor to one of the beneficiaries perhaps... the EA and the vendor know for sure, the rest of us are speculating. And I'm suggesting a possible scenario which you seem fairly exercised to discount for some reason.

My estate agent passed that message to me when I was selling. I was pretty insulted. Didn't accept offer or take house off the market. Why would a seller in a sellers market take their house off the market at your request without waiting to see if they get any better offers. They might well be buying another house, and need as much as they can get.

OP bid 10k under.

Then OP said I will bid asking if taken off market, so OP showed their hand as asking price Maximum.

Someone else bid more than the OP, no point going back to OP as they gave their ultimatum already, that is the way I read this.

When you phoned the office you were told that EA was in hospital, he's since told you he was ill for a period. So take that at face value, he had bigger problems than you. The owner my have put it on the market to get a value and sold or it might have been a divorce so they used you to set the price and bought out their ex. Anyway they told you they were sick so I think you are looking for wrong where it doesn't exist