Countrywide Property Lawyers - are they as bad as I've read?

graduate2007

We used CPL in July to buy our house, after being persuaded to do so by the Countrywide mortgage advisor in the Bairstow Eves branch we were buying through. Our first home, and being a repossession property, we were pretty wary and inexperienced, but did have some good advice surrounding us. We looked around at other lawyers and mortgages, and to cut a long story short decided to proceed with Countrywide services. The primary reason for this was because the property was a repossession and had a 6 week completion deadline, so it made sense to have everything under one umbrella, with one place to go to. Rather than detailing everything that went on (since we had a very similar experience to others here), I´ll list out some pros and cons:

Cons:
Much more expensive than many of the independents we looked at
Don´t ever expect to speak to an actual lawyer, apart from the 5 minutes when you exchange contracts. As others have posted, all calls and emails are answered by call centre staff, who always have to check finer details with the lawyer.
Many of the staff don´t know what they are talking about. We had some questions on the details in the contract, and it sounded like they were reading from a script. When pushed to explain further, they had no idea.
Expect them to lose documents/tell you wrong information/ take half a day to open post.
Unless you get a little argumentative with them, don´t expect much progress.
Ask them to check, double check, and then clarify exactly what you need to be doing. We had some money transferred for deposit from an account in a different name, which they then wouldn´t accept because it wasn´t in either of our names. This was despite me telling them when we first instructed them the name of the account, and even paying for them to do additional money laundering checks on the account. We were then charged to transfer the money back the account, and a week later charged again by the bank for a transfer from the same account, once CPL had got their act together.
Don´t believe the ¨available 7 days a week¨ rubbish. if you call at a weekend, you speak to the weekend team who have no idea what has been going on all week, and so can only read from the computer screen. And god help you if one of the weekday team forget to put an update into the system. Then it gets TOTALLY frustrating.

Pros:
If you have problems go back to Bairstow Eves/Countrywide Mortgage Services and argue that they were the ones that recommended them, you could have gone with a local lawyer who were much cheaper, and tell them the problems you are facing. For us, this made CPL much more responsive once BE had been on the phone. If your BE office is useless, then good luck.

In summary, I would not use CPL again, nor would I recommend them to any friends or family. Use at your peril.

mogwai1

:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:
DO NOT USE THEM !!!!!!!
we were also pursuaded to use Cr*p Wriggling Pathetic Lawyers and we are regretting it they seem totally incompetent and tell lies then deny it.they are the reason moving is stressfull and i am dredding my phone bill the other day i spent 45mins on hold!!!!!
if i can stop one person using them i will feel some sense of relief.

DaveW007

I unfortunately used them in 2005 when I was buying & selling a house.

I had so many problems with them. Lie after lie. I ended up taking them to court after the completion went through. CPL admitted liability and settled out of court in the end.

I'm shocked to see that they are still trading.

Ignite

This bunch of jokers must be the worst bunch of property lawyers (I notice that they can't use the term solicitors!) in the country. They are acting for the vendors on a property we are purchasing and we are having real problems with Countrywide. They have only just replied to enquiries our solicitor sent them at the end of October, and still have failed to properly answer enquiries from mid October. In their latest letter, they claim not to have access to the Land Registry to obtain documents. Have they had their access revoked for any reason? They are even suggesting that we, the buyers do all of their legwork in checking out some of the points.

I don't know if we are dealing with a particularly bad team within the company or if this is their normal dire service. Any thoughts?

DaveW007

Ignite wrote: »

This bunch of jokers must be the worst bunch of property lawyers (I notice that they can't use the term solicitors!) in the country. They are acting for the vendors on a property we are purchasing and we are having real problems with Countrywide. They have only just replied to enquiries our solicitor sent them at the end of October, and still have failed to properly answer enquiries from mid October. In their latest letter, they claim not to have access to the Land Registry to obtain documents. Have they had their access revoked for any reason? They are even suggesting that we, the buyers do all of their legwork in checking out some of the points.

I don't know if we are dealing with a particularly bad team within the company or if this is their normal dire service. Any thoughts?

Sounds like their normal dire service.

I had to do a lot of the leg work myself too.

If you go to https://www.ciao.co.uk and type Countrywide Property Lawyers into the search box on the site you can see loads of reviews over the last few years.

cubinacave

Ignite wrote: »

This bunch of jokers must be the worst bunch of property lawyers (I notice that they can't use the term solicitors!) in the country. They are acting for the vendors on a property we are purchasing and we are having real problems with Countrywide. They have only just replied to enquiries our solicitor sent them at the end of October, and still have failed to properly answer enquiries from mid October. In their latest letter, they claim not to have access to the Land Registry to obtain documents. Have they had their access revoked for any reason? They are even suggesting that we, the buyers do all of their legwork in checking out some of the points.

I don't know if we are dealing with a particularly bad team within the company or if this is their normal dire service. Any thoughts?

Well, at least you've got their letter stating what's not done. Our vendor uses Countrywide lawyer and since our offer was accepted on 25/10, our solicitor has been waiting to receive the draft contract from them. The ES (Bairstow Eves) kept assuring us that being no chain on either side, the purchase would come through quickly. 6 weeks gone, still waiting for the draft contract. (Got to say, our solicitor is on the lazy side as well. She only chased them up after I rang her to ask about the progress and kept saying that she couldn't do anything before receiving the draft contract. Hello~ you've been saying the same thing for 6 weeks. Can't you do more than sending another fax to chase up the draft contract?) I'm really annoyed now because we're hoping to complete before Christmas and do some decoration when my hubby and I are both off for 2 weeks after Christmas. If we can't complete before 23/12, the solicitor's office won't open until 04/01/2010. :mad: And we'll have to arrange time off for decoration and moving, etc. It's quite frustrating when I have to ring everybody every week only to find out there is still no progress whatsoever. I'm kind of thinking that we're going to be stuck at this stage forever.

planning303

I thought i'd join in on the CWL bashing!

My experience of CWL was them recommending to me that i took out a 35 year mortgage when i could clearly afford the 25 year version.

I pointed out to him that the monthly payment wasn;t the problem but more finding the deposit money. he suggested that i got a loan to cover it (conviently he had a friend who worked at a bank that he could recommend)

Ignite

cubinacave wrote: »

Well, at least you've got their letter stating what's not done. Our vendor uses Countrywide lawyer and since our offer was accepted on 25/10, our solicitor has been waiting to receive the draft contract from them. The ES (Bairstow Eves) kept assuring us that being no chain on either side, the purchase would come through quickly. 6 weeks gone, still waiting for the draft contract. (Got to say, our solicitor is on the lazy side as well. She only chased them up after I rang her to ask about the progress and kept saying that she couldn't do anything before receiving the draft contract. Hello~ you've been saying the same thing for 6 weeks. Can't you do more than sending another fax to chase up the draft contract?) I'm really annoyed now because we're hoping to complete before Christmas and do some decoration when my hubby and I are both off for 2 weeks after Christmas. If we can't complete before 23/12, the solicitor's office won't open until 04/01/2010. :mad: And we'll have to arrange time off for decoration and moving, etc. It's quite frustrating when I have to ring everybody every week only to find out there is still no progress whatsoever. I'm kind of thinking that we're going to be stuck at this stage forever.

Send the Estate Agents a very stern letter. After all, they recommended CPL. Use statements like "We will have to consider our position...." etc and make it known that you are very unhappy with the situation. At the end of the day, Bairstow Eves are part of Countrywide and it is parts of the same company doing both jobs. Make it very clear that the conduct of CPL may result in the sale being lost. CC the letter to the vendors (yep, you have their address), and write a nicer covering letter to them if you really want the property. This worked in our case.

cubinacave

Ignite wrote: »

Send the Estate Agents a very stern letter. After all, they recommended CPL. Use statements like "We will have to consider our position...." etc and make it known that you are very unhappy with the situation. At the end of the day, Bairstow Eves are part of Countrywide and it is parts of the same company doing both jobs. Make it very clear that the conduct of CPL may result in the sale being lost. CC the letter to the vendors (yep, you have their address), and write a nicer covering letter to them if you really want the property. This worked in our case.

Thanks for your advice, Ignite. Unfortunately we don't have the seller's address. My seller had bought a bungalow and moved out of the house we are buying before we viewed it. Thus, I've never seen or talked to the seller. Our queries were mostly answered by the ES. Anyway, after another "I can't do anything without the draft contract." conversation with my solicitor. I went ballistic and questioned her how come she couldn't pick up the phone and talk to CWP lawyer to find out what the hold-up was. She said she didn't have their phone number and she could do nothing more than sending out another letter. That infuriated me! Told her to ring the ES and find out the phone number of CPW lawyer (should have pointed out that she should have done that weeks ago, but I was too furious at that moment.) and hang up. Then I rang the ES and got the phone number of CWP lawyer and Ref. no. of our case. Gave the info to my solicitor and made another call to the team leader of my solicitor's firm. She's on the phone so I left a message in her voice mail to question the inaction of their team in the past 7 weeks. 5 minutes later, got a call from the team leader saying that she was on the phone with the CWP lawyer and explained that the CWP couldn't draw the draft contract because they couldn't download the Land Registry info of the property and was waiting for the seller to send the title deed across. Funny that no one ever told the seller to do so until I called the ES last week! And CWP just received the title deed this morning and they'll draw the draft contract now. And the team leader will personally follow this up on Monday. sigh...why do I have to get angry to get them moving?

Ignite

What a joke CWP are. Anybody can download Land Registry info. I can, as can anybody else, get property info for any property that is registered there in England. The property info is also in the HIP. I've had this excuse. You cubinacave have had this excuse. What is it CWP? Have you had a court order banning you from getting info from the Land Registry? Are you too tight to get this info? £8 is not a lot! You get enough money from your clients!