question about realtor commission, should this bother me?

[Joanne Green]

I am selling my house and I have an accepted offer.  My realtor team is mother/son and what happened was my buyer did not have a realtor so he is using the son-- who was on my team-- but is now also the buyer's agent.  Commission paid was agreed to be 5%, sale of house is over 1 million.  When I asked for a discount on the commission I was told that the brokerage (not my realtor but the brokerage she works for) does not allow it.  Well this kind of bothered me because from what I can tell on the internet (I know, can't believe everything you read) its pretty common practice to provide a discount under these circumstances.  And to add to this, it looks like now the son is going to represent my buyer in the sale of his home (reminder the son met my buyer through this transaction) and the son may also represent another buyer who had previously submitted an offer to buy my house, again having met her through this transaction.  I really like my realtor but this is making me resentful.   Is this how most realtors in Los Angeles would handle this? 

[Will Barnard]

As you have now learned, you should negotiate into your listing agreement such discount to the total commission if the list agent reps both sides. In this case, you actually didn't, just because the son is at your same brokerage is irrelevant. 

That said, for them to state that their broker does not allow it sounds suspect. I do know that some brokerages do not want to give the appearance or impression of being one of the "discount brokerages" but to think that a regular full service brokerage would not allow an agent to provide a client with a discount for multiple listings or other circumstances which could warrant a discount would not be good as many agents would likely not be willing to hang their license there if that was actually the case. Sounds more like good cop bad cop with the agent blaming the brokerage to not give a discount.