Wolstenholmes!!!! Beware!!!

paulwbaines

I'm far from surprised, we bought a house in May this year through them and we finally completed the purchase in August! We had no house to sell, in my opinion they were completely incompetent! Unable to get any answer from them on many many occasions, failure to keep us informed, unanswered emails were only some of the issues we had with them! even the solicitor who was in charge of complaints failed to act or even respond!

Terrible service, a very poor ambassador for the legal profession. :rolleyes:

Cardash

RRPhantom wrote: »

I am afraid that you have been very foolish, and now you are paying the price.

Shame on you for such smug comments which are not helpful and cause more upset those of us who have been stung.How far do you personally take your “ you deserve it approach” ? If a low cost airline ( g-d forbid ) went down would the passengers deserve it for finding a cheap deal ? Are people not well advised to shop around for a cheap deal and legitimately expect not to be cheated ?I cant help but wonder if you have ever been cheated only to be told you afterwards that you were a mug ?!?I called Fridays yesterday and spoke to a gentleman who offered some very constructive advice and took me through the next steps and has alleviated some of my concerns. I did ask about their pricing match and was told their fees are in fact higher but that they would recover the difference directly from the SRA. I am more than happy for the Law Society to pay the difference given that I feel that as a regulator they should have been more on top of Wolstenholmes.

danielanthony

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/8435780.stm

Looks like something has been done

rfsp

yes i agree with Catwoman895.... all please ignore RRPhantom...

RobS77

What a complete mess this is- unfortunately though, the poster does make a reasonable point. The firm appears to have been basically a bulk conveyancer, doing as many transactions as possible on the cheap, which does mean that the customer service will suffer accordingly. I work in the law, and it is true that like most things in life, you get what you pay for: someone you pay £200 to is not going to do as thorough a job as someone who charges £400.

rosehip

I think it is unfair to criticise those who used Wolstenholmes on the basis that they must have been trying to do things on the cheap. This is tantamount to saying that anyone who doesn't shop at Waitrose deserves to get food poisoning. Presumably Wolstenholmes had all the requisite licences from the FSA or whatever the solicitors' equivalent is and so people would have used them in good faith. I'm no expert in this field but this seems a very serious issue - I've never heard of such a major conveyancing firm being suspended in this manner before and I find it strange, and worrying, that there is so little in the mainstream media about the suspension of W and the predicament of those who have lost/have money frozen with the firm. I do feel for those people and hope that they get amply compensated very soon.

wuckfit

paulwbaines wrote: »

I'm far from surprised, we bought a house in May this year through them and we finally completed the purchase in August! We had no house to sell, in my opinion they were completely incompetent! Unable to get any answer from them on many many occasions, failure to keep us informed, unanswered emails were only some of the issues we had with them! even the solicitor who was in charge of complaints failed to act or even respond!

Terrible service, a very poor ambassador for the legal profession. :rolleyes:

From what I've read, you're probably in for a shock in the near future when you discover that they haven't actually completed all the work. Been reading stories of unpaid stamp duty, land registry entries not completed.

wuckfit

rosehip wrote: »

I think it is unfair to criticise those who used Wolstenholmes on the basis that they must have been trying to do things on the cheap. This is tantamount to saying that anyone who doesn't shop at Waitrose deserves to get food poisoning. Presumably Wolstenholmes had all the requisite licences from the FSA or whatever the solicitors' equivalent is and so people would have used them in good faith. I'm no expert in this field but this seems a very serious issue - I've never heard of such a major conveyancing firm being suspended in this manner before and I find it strange, and worrying, that there is so little in the mainstream media about the suspension of W and the predicament of those who have lost/have money frozen with the firm. I do feel for those people and hope that they get amply compensated very soon.

My understanding of the saga is that Wolstenholmes was run by two very respected solicitors who retired, but held a minority stake in the firm. gradually the majority owner brought in new managment, and eventually shut the two previous gentlemen out, around mid 2008. Pretty soon after, things started crashing around everyone's ears, resulting in the SRA finally taking action to close them down, with around £4m of clients' money frozen.

My bet is that the individuals who took over Wolstenholmes will do the same thing all over again in the future, offering the same unsustainable crazy-internet-pricing conveyencing business model. It will sucker some people in, and before you know it we'll be right back here where we started.

It doesn't matter what the sphere of business, there's always somebody out there prepared to do it for half the money at a quarter of the quality.

rosehip

The question is why did the SRA take so long to act and did they delay acting until just before Christmas in order to bury bad news? It doesn't inspire much confidence in this "self-regulatory" regime. This goes to the very heart of the house-buying process in this country and I don't understand why the Mail and the Sun aren't shouting it from the rooftops but maybe they've had a D-Notice slapped on them.

Librachick

RRPhantom wrote: »

Do me a favour.

Everyone who chose Wolstenhomes did so on price.

Do all these people buy the cheapest shoes? Get their cars serviced at the cheapest garages?

Probably not. But then they entrust such a valiuable and personally important transaction to some solicitors they have never heard off for £99.

What do you imagine the outcome might be?

Dear Mr UNHELPFUL

Have you had any dealings with WH? Where did you get £99 price from? I would be very interested in knowing who got a quote of £99.

I did mine through them, because I live in Scotland and solicitors won't touch the English system, vice versa. So since I was selling in England, it did not matter that if I used someone local to the house. So I went with an online company, after reading comments and had been a reputable company since 1818, this was from their website. Not thinking to look on a forum to see if they were good or not. I thought a solicitor registered with the SRA I could trust.

So if you can't say anything nice, shut your mouth and keep your totally insensitive comments to yourself.