Warning - do not use wolstenholmes solicitors

mjmal51

Catwoman8950 wrote: »

Not WH related, but could someone explain what indemnity insurance is in the context of selling a house? I am in the process of selling my late mother's house in my capacity as Executor of her Estate. The house insurance policy (buildings & contents), which is now in my name as Executor, is valid until 30th April 2010. I'm hoping to complete the sale in February. Will I have to pay indemnity insurance or is it covered by the house insurance policy? My new solicitor hasn't mentioned anything about indemnity insurance. As I live abroad, I'm not au fait with the ins and outs of selling a house in the U.K.

The buyer may ask the seller to provide indemnity insurance for many different things, work done without building regs, no planning permission document, leasehold that is not absolute. If the buyer does not ask you for it then it is not an issue.
Explanation
http://www.diyconveyance.co.uk/do-i-need-indemnity-insurance.html

Catwoman8950

mjmal51 wrote: »

The buyer may ask the seller to provide indemnity insurance for many different things, work done without building regs, no planning permission document, leasehold that is not absolute. If the buyer does not ask you for it then it is not an issue.
Explanation
http://www.diyconveyance.co.uk/do-i-need-indemnity-insurance.html

Thanks for the link. All is clear now

gemini24

Having spent yesterday evening posting on review site Ciao about mine and my daughter’s dreadful experience with Home-Solicitors and reading this thread, I thought you would like to know that Home-Solicitors have their own Facebook page.

I am very happy to report Gavin Wall posted 17 hours ago that he had suffered an IBS attack at 3am, in a freezing cold house and ran out of toilet paper! I’m guessing, he ran out because he’d had to use lots of it to clear up the sh*t he and his useless firm have caused us and many others.

Laura Wilson, employee, says HS need more staff and lots of them and does anyone know any conveyancers looking for a job?

Why post on Facebook Laura? Just ask Gavin. He will know lots from his days at Wolstenholmes. If Gavin isn’t around, ask Imran Hussain though he won’t be able to help around the office much due to being suspended from practice.

I truly hope I may have contributed to Gavin Wall’s IBS as I have had several heated discussions/communications with him and his incompetent partner, Darren Rich this week, resulting in us de-instructing them today.

They have failed to complete on a very simple purchase with no chain since being instructed in October 09. It’s taken us three months to get Darren to understand which is the front and which is the back of the house to be purchased!!

Since instructing Home-Solicitors, I seemed to have developed GICS (Getting Irritable with Conveyancer Syndrome) though I can feel it getting better since the de-instruction.

I feel it may be a long time before Gavin’s IBS gets any better.

DON’T get well soon Gavin.

Oh, by the way Gavin, on www.linkedin.com, you have listed your legal work experience. You say you worked for Eversheds from July 07 to Sept 08 and your next is at Home-Solicitors from July 09 to present.

Many years ago I was advised to look for gaps on CVs. It usually meant someone was hiding something. So where were you from Sept 08 to July 09? Somewhere beginning with W perhaps?

Librachick

I have just completed on my house in England.......with another solicitor.

So to all these lovely people, who keep quoting "you get what you pay for", I have just paid over £900 to sell a house for under £120,000 and I did all the work. The solicitor, was an !!!!! Worse than wostenholmes, IMHO.

I am in the process of buying new house, and it galls me that I have to use a bloody solicitor again, they are money grabbing bast**ds, I HATE THEM ALL......

And then I have to read that you solicitors who come on here stating "you get what you pay for". (Sorry, hope to not offend Horrified Sol, I don't know you, but you might be okay).

Confused.com

Librachick

mjmal51 wrote: »

After complaining to the LCS in Dec I was assigned a caseworker who has now closed the file(!) as the complaint has been noted. I wrongly assumed the files would stay open until a satisfactory conclusion.

I tried today to get the official answer from the caseworker re. to whom and when to apply for compensation and got this below


"As explained, I think the best approach is to have matters concluded, then to make claims to both the SRA and LCS. There is sometimes an overlap between what we would consider paying as a financial effects flowing form the poor service and what the Comp Fund will consider in terms of lost monies.

Whilst we can consider solicitor costs for completing matters, we would not necessarily entertain the solicitors costs in bringing the complaints to our attention or that of the SRA"

This seems to be different again to the SRA guidelines and the info gathered by anotherproblem. Are they deliberately trying to stress us out further?

Same here. I was told, my case was now closed (LCS)! I would receive a letter in the post in the next few days (been over 2 weeks now) to explain what to do next!

But, I need my file from WH/SL/DWF to to take anything forward.

I am sooooooo angry, there is no help out there for us idiots, who go for the cheap option!!! NOT SO............................... I would like someone to tell me who went with WH for £99??

confused.com

Dobloyerdosh

gemini24 wrote: »

Gavin has been a busy chap. Just found a press release from July 09 saying that Gavin Wall was heading up a new conveyancing firm called Best Conveyancing Quotes and backed by Wolstenholmes.

So does what happened to BCQ? More searching for me I think.

UPDATE: (Took me all of 5 minutes to found out about BCQ.) Now seem to be trading as bestconveyancingsolicitors.co.uk.

Should you wish to contact them, conveniently the tel. no. is the same as BCQ's. Guess what, they say they have history going back to 1818 - same as Wolstenholmes - what a coincidence!

They are offering a free will with every transaction at the moment. Quite handy because the stress you will encounter using this lot will possibly shorten your life expectancy greatly.

Perhaps next month's special offer will be fortune telling mixed with a bit of magic. Cross their palms with silver and, whoosh, it vanishes, never to be seen again!!!!!

Home solicitors claimed they had no connection with Wolstenholmes, they even told our estate agent that. Will Gavin Wall now admit thay are liars, just like his backers were.

gemini24

On a serious note, my concern is that many of you who have to start over again with conveyancing, unwittingly fall straight back in to the hands any of the shower previously involved in Wolstenholmes.

It may be you do your homework and satisfy yourselves your chosen conveyancer has no connections, but the other parties involved in any chain might have instructed them, particularly as they are trading under more than one company name.

I was about to send off £30K to them this week so thank heavens I found out about the connection before and not after. I would be beside myself with worry if the money had been sent so consider myself to have had a very lucky escape.

My heart goes out to all of you embroiled in this mess and hope you are still sane at the end of it, however long that may be.

anotherproblem

gemini24 wrote: »

On a serious note, my concern is that many of you who have to start over gain with conveyancing, unwittingly fall straight back in to the hands any of the shower previously involved in Wolstenholmes.

It may be you do your homework and satisfy yourselves your chosen conveyancer has no connections, but the other parties involved in any chain might have instructed them, particularly as they are trading under more than one company name.

I was about to send off £30K to them this week so thank heavens I found out about the connection before and not after. I would be beside myself with worry if the money had been sent so consider myself to have had a very lucky escape.

My heart goes out to all of you embroiled in this mess and hope you are still sane at the end of it, however long that may be.

But surely thats what the SRA are there for to prevent this ever happening again - so I ask yet again what are they doing about it!!! And it's another reason that it should have been more widely publicised as well.

gemini24

I've had no involvement with the SRA -yet, although I did tell them last week my daughter was considering reporting them to the Law Society.

Perhaps its a question that needs to be urgently asked of SRA, requiring an equally urgent answer. I do not feel qualified to be asking such a question, it should ideally come from someone far more affected.

Having read the thread in full, the media have mostly treated it as a local problem. I'm based in the South, many miles from Manchester. With current technology it does not matter what distance is involved.

I'm happy to spread the word the best I can by posting on sites such as this and perhaps trying to get the info into as many relevant threads as I can. It won't stop them but, hopefully, it might cost them a few clients.

Dobloyerdosh

The SRA way of dealing with things seems a bit long winded. As we have all realised by now that files that were with Wolstenholmes are now the property of individual clients why didn't DWF just send them to the individuals concerned and let them decide what they wanted to do instead of this stupid "prove who you are or you don't get your file" attitude. With so many files and so many people supposedly working on them it makes me wonder how much DWF are going to make out of this nice little earner by dragging this job out as long as possible while people are tearing their hair out trying to sort out this mess.