Warning - do not use wolstenholmes solicitors

bin_dun

Most first-time posters seem to get labelled as one of the fraudulent or criminally negligent, but I'll take my chances as this may be helpful to someone!

Regarding using Stirling Law. I found out that my file had been handed over to SL from an answerphone message on my Wolstenholmes' solicitor's assistant's number. As one or two others have, I found SL helpful & they passed my file to DWF speedily once I informed them that I had changed my mind & did not want to use them. Why did I change my mind? Because when I asked them who had appointed them, I was told that they had nothing to do with Wolstenholmes, hated being tarred with the same brush, & had been appointed as agents by the Law Society. Upon checking, the SRA stated that this was untrue & they would contact SL to warn them to stop making the claim. Thus I felt that I could not trust them & appointed a local solicitor to pick up the pieces.

SL may be a very worthy firm but I have no doubt that they accepted my file at Wolstenholmes' instigation - so there is a connection, however strong or tenuous it might be. Secondly, they lied to me.

Hopefully, this post will help some of you make up your mind on whether to risk using them.

isayoldchap

Hi
last week I sent an email to Land Registry.We moved 6/10/09.I have received confirmation that no request to change the Titles has been received.
I guess this mean the Stamp Duty was not paid by Wolstenholmes.
The Inland Revenue (Stamp Duty section)have told me I need the 'Unique Tax Ref
on the form the solicitor would have sent in.This maybe with DWF now.
They have told me I have to wait until I receive a letter from them.

I did get a large cheque from WH and last week I had it confirmed that our house selling agent did get their cash.
The stamp duty was only 2200.00 far less than the other amounts.
LCS have added this to my claim

I have also read on here that the delay could be the sellers solicitor/mortgage.
I may have to investigate further

Catwoman8950

bin_dun wrote: »

Most first-time posters seem to get labelled as one of the fraudulent or criminally negligent, but I'll take my chances as this may be helpful to someone!

Regarding using Stirling Law. I found out that my file had been handed over to SL from an answerphone message on my Wolstenholmes' solicitor's assistant's number. As one or two others have, I found SL helpful & they passed my file to DWF speedily once I informed them that I had changed my mind & did not want to use them. Why did I change my mind? Because when I asked them who had appointed them, I was told that they had nothing to do with Wolstenholmes, hated being tarred with the same brush, & had been appointed as agents by the Law Society. Upon checking, the SRA stated that this was untrue & they would contact SL to warn them to stop making the claim. Thus I felt that I could not trust them & appointed a local solicitor to pick up the pieces.

SL may be a very worthy firm but I have no doubt that they accepted my file at Wolstenholmes' instigation - so there is a connection, however strong or tenuous it might be. Secondly, they lied to me.

Hopefully, this post will help some of you make up your mind on whether to risk using them.

I decided not to take the risk. SL lied to me as well. If you read through some of the posts in this thread, and do your own research, it becomes more and more apparent that there IS a dubious connection between WH and SL. I really hope the SRA gets to the bottom of it all, and soon.

Simply_Me_2

Catwoman8950 wrote: »

I decided not to take the risk. SL lied to me as well. If you read through some of the posts in this thread, and do your own research, it becomes more and more apparent that there IS a dubious connection between WH and SL. I really hope the SRA gets to the bottom of it all, and soon.

What did they lie about to you?

Catwoman8950

Simply_Me wrote: »

What did they lie about to you?

Nothing spectacular but I was told by SL on Monday morning this week that my file had been "hand delivered" to DWF the previous Friday. This was not true. It was unceremoniously "dumped" at DWF late Monday afternoon with no covering note or letter. Fortunately I had warned DWF to look out for it.

One of the reasons I didn't want anything to do with SL is that they had sent me a consent form to sign authorising them to take over the conduct of my file and any associated funds. Just how did they propose to take over "any associated funds" when we all know they have been frozen by the SRA? Just what had been going on between WH and SL in the days before the SRA intervened, I wonder?

Another reason of course is that they had been complicit in accepting my file from WH, which was transferred without my knowledge or consent before the SRA intervened. My guess is that it was done on 15th December and I only found out where my file was on 6th January when SL contacted me out of the blue as if nothing untoward had happened!

Brahan_seer_3

isayoldchap wrote: »

Hi
last week I sent an email to Land Registry.We moved 6/10/09.I have received confirmation that no request to change the Titles has been received.
I guess this mean the Stamp Duty was not paid by Wolstenholmes.
The Inland Revenue (Stamp Duty section)have told me I need the 'Unique Tax Ref
on the form the solicitor would have sent in.This maybe with DWF now.
They have told me I have to wait until I receive a letter from them.

I did get a large cheque from WH and last week I had it confirmed that our house selling agent did get their cash.
The stamp duty was only 2200.00 far less than the other amounts.
LCS have added this to my claim

I have also read on here that the delay could be the sellers solicitor/mortgage.
I may have to investigate further

As the agents have been paid and you received your money the likelihood is that the SDLT return has been filed and the SDLT paid and that your reigistration application is sitting on the file ready to be sent off subject to the Sellers solicitors solicitors sending to Wolstenholmes an END in respect of their clients' discharged mortgage.

I suggest that your or your new solicitors should contact your sellers solicitors to ascertain the position.

Where anyone has still been unable to trace their file the solicitors who acted for the other side should be able to provide copies of relevant documents from their file and co-operate generally and in my view should be willing to do this free of charge as the profession has come in for enough hammering over the Wolstenholmes debacle already.

RRPhantom

Google44 wrote: »

Hi again

I will fill up the claim form to SRA but wonder how much to claim for. The completion was at 28. August 2009. I've done no searches at all so AFAIK the only thing from the list WH have done is transfer the money to buyer (I hope so as exchange did happen).

They have taken the stamp duty and all other charges in total of 2754.

As I payed by check and transfer I cannot claim it back of the bank. Should I claim for the all amount? Needless to say it is going to cost much more now to hire someone else. Wonder if I can pay myself for the duty and land registry to cut the cost and keep it within the money WH has taken of me.

Thanks

You do realise that the SRA are going to completely bail you out, don't you.

So... you're not out of pocket.

How much can you claim?

Stick down a million pounds.

Why not.

A million pounds!

Just think.

You'll be rich!

homelessmat

Quick update on my position, for those interested. On Monday evening I had it confirmed by DWF that they had catalogued all files that they had taken possession of from WH and mine was not amongst them. DWF are now trying to track it down from one of the other parties (presumably Stirling Law being the hot favourite) that WH may have transferred it to. In the interim I have asked my new solicitor to try to re-create the file from information available from my estate agents, mortgage lender and the seller's solicitors. Unfortunately they also need to re-do the searches as they have to give assurances to the lender that these have been done (even though WH previously advised my mortgage lender they had, my new solicitors obviously can't take their word for it given all that has gone on). Once this has been done, then completion can happen. The searches, I'm told, will take 1-2 weeks. Hopefully my file will be located before the searches come back and completion can then happen, otherwise it looks like a further couple of weeks sleeping rough

Brahan_seer_3

homelessmat wrote: »

Quick update on my position, for those interested. On Monday evening I had it confirmed by DWF that they had catalogued all files that they had taken possession of from WH and mine was not amongst them. DWF are now trying to track it down from one of the other parties (presumably Stirling Law being the hot favourite) that WH may have transferred it to. In the interim I have asked my new solicitor to try to re-create the file from information available from my estate agents, mortgage lender and the seller's solicitors. Unfortunately they also need to re-do the searches as they have to give assurances to the lender that these have been done (even though WH previously advised my mortgage lender they had, my new solicitors obviously can't take their word for it given all that has gone on). Once this has been done, then completion can happen. The searches, I'm told, will take 1-2 weeks. Hopefully my file will be located before the searches come back and completion can then happen, otherwise it looks like a further couple of weeks sleeping rough

If the searches have already been done once then the search providers may be able to reproduce them. Does anyone know which search provider Wolstenholmes used? eg Searchflow. Can any former employees tell us?

Simply_Me_2

The power of this forum I assume...Abbey or rather Santander have decided to honour my mortgage at the same rate as I had previously been given, yippee!!

What a day I've had..my compensation file has been allocated to a caseworker and is being given top priority given the amount of money involved and my circumstances. So hopefully will hear about the release of my money soon.

But get this DWF sent me a letter containing an authorisation form to have my file released as they had managed to locate my file, menawhile new solicitors write to me stating that I had previously instructed DWF and before they passed the file over they wanted their fees settled. Well you can imagine...I called new solcitors to ask what they were on about as no one had mentioned anything about fees previously and anyway I didn't instruct DWF they were instructed by the SRA as intervening agents. So I called DWF who said it was standard procedure to ask new solicitors for an undertaking to honour any outstanding fees owed to Wolstenholmes. Oh my God talk about adding salt to injury no one absolutely no one can tell me where my £41k is, I have been without this money for almost 1 calendar month now, not sleeping, not eating, soon to be homeless and they want an undertaking about fees owed to Wolstenholmes. You can imagine my rage. DWF explained that the SRA instructed them to request this and new solicitors are not obliged to give such an undertaking I said good because they wouldn't be giving it nor would I be authorising them to give it. I asked DWF and SRA to have a bit of sensitivity and if they persisted in this policy then they would have more calls from more iritated people. They also were not prepared to give me an undertaking as to when I might have my £41k back, funny that!

So anyone who is asked or their solicitors are asked to give an undertaking to recover any fees owed to Wolstenholmes (and that's assuming Wolstenholmes did any work) say NO! You are not obliged to give or authorise such an undertaking.

The SRA did say that they were going to make things clearer to all involved in respect of the undertaking. But why do we need to keep explaining that this is an unprecedented situation and a copy and paste job is not sufficient, there needs to be some sensitivity in handling people who are already on the verge of a mental breakdown.