The complaint that wrote itself

I wasn’t sure whether this should be in this newsletter or Monday’s AI in Surveying edition. But on reflection the stress I have heard first hand from surveyors this last week I felt it best landed here.

Earlier this week I took a morning call from a firm owner. A complaint had landed in their inbox in the early hours of the morning. It was their first ever. It was long, formal, and clearly written by AI. They did not get back to sleep.

A few days later, a second call. A different firm, the same story. This time the owner was describing a steady rise in compliants and queries.

I have heard versions of this for weeks. From firm owners, from surveyors across every discipline, and from people in the professions around us. At a recent event, the conversation turned to how many questions firms now field before they are even instructed. One firm had 25 questions from a prospective client before a quote had gone out. Admin teams are stretched.

It is happening across the property world. Party wall specialists are seeing AI-drafted notices that turn out to be invalid, leaving surveyors to put them right inside fixed-fee work. On the insurance side, the imbalance is stark. A claimant can produce a rebuttal in hours. A proper defence can take weeks.

Estate and letting agents are dealing with the same thing. Propertymark has issued guidance to its members on AI-generated complaints. The Property Ombudsman reported a 50% rise in tenant complaints in the first half of this year, and said AI was part of the reason.

The legal system is feeling it too. Employment tribunal claims rose 39% in the year to March, and the backlog rose to 64,000 cases. The Master of the Rolls has warned that the courts need to prepare for a surge in AI-generated claims. At an AI briefing I ran this month, I shared figures showing parking appeals in London up 24%, with 45% of them AI-assisted.

What has changed

The cost of querying, complaining and claiming has collapsed. A client disputes a valuation. A contractor challenges a final account. A tenant contests a schedule of dilapidations. A neighbour questions a party wall award. Each can paste the document into thier AI chatbot and, within minutes, have a formal challenge running to twenty, thirty, fifty points.

In many cases, the complaint has written itself. The person sending it has not read the report properly. Some have barely read their own complaint. The tool that drafted it had no idea what the scope of instruction was, what information was available at the time, or what the assumptions and limitations said.

So I want to say this plainly. If complaints are rising in your firm, the most likely cause is how easy complaining has become. Almost everyone I speak to is seeing it, even if very few are saying so in public.

This is here to stay

For the last few years, I have said the same thing at events, on the podcast and in this newsletter. Even if your firm does not use AI, it will affect you.

This is what that looks like in practice. You may have no AI in your workflow at all. Your clients do. So do the other side’s advisers, their insurers and their lawyers. The complaint arrives in your inbox either way.

This will not ease off. The tools are getting better and easier to use every month, and more people are discovering what they can do with them. The volume of AI-assisted queries, complaints and claims will keep rising, across every profession that deals with clients.

What you can do about it

• Pick up the phone. This is the best advice I have heard all year, from a surveyor who runs a respectable firm. When a complaint arrives, they call the person. If the complaint was written by AI, it usually becomes clear very quickly that the client has not read the report. You get to the real issue in ten minutes instead of spending hours drafting a written reply. Stay honest, factual and calm. Make a note of the call, confirm the key points in writing afterwards, and follow your complaints procedure.
• Explain what the tool got wrong. The AI was not on site. It did not see the instruction, the correspondence or the information you had at the time. It does not understand professional judgement. Most people have no idea of these limits until someone tells them.
• You do not have to reply at 4am. Acknowledge the complaint within the timescales your procedure sets. Then take a breath. Speed does not make a response better.
• Separate the signal from the noise. Some AI-assisted complaints raise genuine points. Sort each point into one of three groups: covered in the report, outside the scope of the instruction, or worth a proper look. That keeps you fair and it keeps you calm.
• Build a knowledge base. Every complaint and every awkward query is material. Use AI securely, on a business account where your data is not used for training, and in line with your data protection obligations and the RICS standard on AI. Feed it your services, your standard responses and how you work. Get it to interview you. Over time it learns your approach, and you stop starting from scratch. Uploading a report alongside a complaint lets you check each point against what was written in minutes. A person still reviews every response before it goes out. But this will help take the emotion out of it.
• Train your team. Admin staff taking calls need the same knowledge base and the confidence to use it. The 15-question enquiry is far less draining when the answers are already written.
• Fix the front door. Many pre-instruction questions are the same questions. Clear information on your website and in your terms of engagement about what each service covers, what it does not, and how you work will answer a lot of them before the phone rings.
• Tell clients what AI cannot know. A short line on your website or with your reports: if you use AI to review this document, here is what it will not understand.
• Keep a log, and talk to your insurer early. Record each complaint and the hours it takes. That record is evidence for fee reviews, for insurer conversations, and for your own peace of mind.
• Look after yourself and your team. Do not take it personally. The volume reflects a change in the world.
  The firms that cope best will be the ones that accept this is the new normal and build their systems now, while they have the time to do it well.

The bigger picture

This is one part of a wider shift in how AI is reaching the profession. The first Litmus report, Faster than we can explain: what surveying is actually doing with AI, sets out what senior practitioners across surveying are seeing, using and worrying about. It is independent and free to read.

https://www.surveyors-uk.com/litmus-report-edition-1-september-2026/

If you are seeing a rise in complaints or queries in your firm you are not alone. I know thats little comfort with something so stressful. Always happy to have a chat.

Nina