ITC Legal Services - Avoid Them

watching_this_thread

alharpo wrote: »

Hi, i have just been reading about the disputes regarding ITC Legal Services and would like to tell you that i am getting no joy from them, my father died Dec 2008 and my sister was named as executor, she went with ITC and since that day i have recieved 1 letter from them naming me as a benificiary. I have to See my sister for any information from this firm as when i ring them they will not disclose any details to me. Probate went through in May this year but still no response. Apparently they are dealing with the sale of the property which has had a sold sign on it since probate but no date for completion. Where do i STAND.

Hi - have just found this ITC thread - hence the user name - I rang ITC last week as I am in the same situation as you - they told me if I was identified on their system by sending in ID to them that I would be able to call them and get updates......

watching_this_thread

Hi all

Thanks for info on this forum - helpful and v worrying. In the same situation as you all - ie absolutely appalling service from ITC.

Firstly - can anyone advise the best way to start complaining to ITC?..............and a name in the Customer Complaints department please?

What's the situation re being able to appoint an estate agent to sell house (& pay the £250 to them - as in contract) - anyone done this?

Is there any way of calling a halt and cancelling service (?!! - sure you've all gone down this avenue) - and where does this leave us re the grant of probate - we are somewhere in stage 3 awaiting the grant of probate

:mad:

portlandboy

watching_this_thread wrote: »

Hi all

Thanks for info on this forum - helpful and v worrying. In the same situation as you all - ie absolutely appalling service from ITC.

Firstly - can anyone advise the best way to start complaining to ITC?..............and a name in the Customer Complaints department please?

What's the situation re being able to appoint an estate agent to sell house (& pay the £250 to them - as in contract) - anyone done this?

Is there any way of calling a halt and cancelling service (?!! - sure you've all gone down this avenue) - and where does this leave us re the grant of probate - we are somewhere in stage 3 awaiting the grant of probate

:mad:

Hi,

I can give you a few pointers:
To start complaining you need to call the freephone number (0800 013 2014) and request a call back from the customer complaints department and demand that they call you within whatever timescale you want, ie an hour or by the end of the day. You would be well advised to get an appointment with you local Citizens' Advice Bureau as well, and tell ITC that you've done so. The CAB do now have a file on record...mine! I am waiting to receive my original documents back from ITC so I can't risk giving out the name you need on here (I did agree to remove it from my previous posts, but it is still on here in a post by "Never-in-doubt" that quotes mine) but if you get no joy from the Customer Complaints dept. you can PM me and I'll send it to you.

Next estate agents: I was toying with the idea of getting ITC to sell the property for me. They used agents in my area through a contract with "Right Moves" to get valuations for sale, and asked me if I was happy with their choice but I never actually sold it in the end. So it is worth asking ITC which agent they would use in your area as it may be the same one that you might choose anyway. And may be just as cheap to let them do it. But you could always get ITC to transfer the property to you and then sell it at your own convienience, but you would be charged the freehold/leasehold transfer charge (still about £250). I did this and now rent the property but might sell it later on.

Finally, yes you can stop the case now. You would have to re-apply for the grant of probate in your own name, even if it has been granted already, as it will be issued in the name of ITC. I think they would bill you for work already carried out but my guess is that you could argue that they were failing to do their job anyway to get the costs down. Even though you are in stage 3 I'd bet you've got months and months (if not a year or more) still to go, so if you are thinking about it, do it sooner rather than later. My case started in April 2008 and the assets were released to me over the last two weeks, so that's 18 months to complete a simple case, one beneficiary, one low-value property and a small amount of liquid assets.

Good luck and please keep us informed via this thread.
Regards,

watching_this_thread

Thanks very much for the reply - really helpful to focus our approach to this asap. Will update the forum as we 'progress' .....

Iggybanks

portlandboy wrote: »

Hi All,
Please see this as a warning...
I think (or used to think) that I am of average intelligence and would know if I was being caught out by a dodgy company. Well I've been caught by these - ITC Legal Services.
My father died in April '08 and the local registrar gave me a leaflet regarding the probate service among other bereavement booklets. It was advertising ITC Legal Services who would visit me in my home, talk me through the probate system and give me the options of either applying by myself or getting them to do it.
I was down (obviously) and had just left hospital (and waiting to go back in again) so I opted for them to take the load off me. They were to be cheaper than solicitors or banks and stated that the "industry average for the service was 6-9 months". I gave them power to work on my behalf. That meant that I had no power to change anything they did.
They have sent me personal letters belonging to other clients, had other clients papers in my file, called me asking why I had questioned valuations (which I never had done) and have taken, to date 17 months to do the work they said should take 6-9 months to complete.
During the home visit their rep asked me what I estimated the value of his property was to check that there was sufficient funds available for them to carry out the work. I guessed at a figure of £150,000, not knowing that a property next door was for sale for £139,000.
Following this, about 6 months later they sent 3 estate agents to value the property. They all put in values of £95,000 to £100,000. ITC have now stated that they have to use my (unprofessional, untrained) guess of £150,000 as it was at the time of death!! So they get more money out of it.
They are not cheap, they give you minutes, not days, to decide whether to use them or not, they don't give you the info you need to do the process yourself, they are not professional in their work and they do rip you off.
Please be warned. They carry out many types of legal work, but I've only experienced this one, thankfully.

I too have fallen foul of this company and would recommend that they are avoided at all costs. The below is a precis of a letter of complaint I sent to their CEO. Sad to report that no one at the company has had the courtesy to reply. I am now in the process of appointing a solicitor to try and prompt action.

"I would like to bring to your attention the appalling lack of care and diligence with which your staff have dealt with the above case and request your personal intervention to expedite a resolution with regards to completing the final administration of the estate.

In common with many other of your clients we were attracted to use your services by your website and re-assured by the link to the Bereavement Advice Centre and the information given out by the Isle of Man registrar. As I live in the Isle of Man and the estate to be wound up was based in the UK I believed it made sense to use an organisation which was geared up to conduct its business by phone and mail rather than a local solicitor. How wrong I was. My experience has been one frustration after another and I find your set up is one which just engenders a lack of care from your staff with no-one prepared or able to take personal responsibility for the resolution of issues."

My chief complaint is that 6 months after probate was granted they have still not transferred title on my mother's house. It took them nearly 4 months to get a settlement figure (of £3). They have had the form of assent to send to the land registry for 5 weeks and still haven't actioned it. It has taken chasing by me to even get to this stage.

"Your staff are telling me that it will be up to another 3 months from the point at which the registration is completed by the Land Registry before you complete your processes.

My grievance is that your company wasted the best part of nearly 4 months by failing to follow up with the Bradford & Bingley to ensure the case progressed on a timely basis. The paperwork continues to rot on someone’s desk. I am not interested in who hasn’t taken the necessary actions I am only concerned with ensuring a resolution.

I am not an unreasonable man. I work as a manager in an Investment Administration area – I realise things do go wrong. However I am also fully aware that the true benchmark of a company’s quality is how it responds in these situations and how it acts to resolve issues and ensure that future service compensates for past errors and restores client confidence. This concept appears to be beyond your staff. The ridiculuously excessive delay with the Bradford & Bingley was unacceptable in itself - all the more so as it was completely unnecessary as highlighted by how quickly MP was able to resolve it when he chose to do so. To now find that vital paperwork has been held up another 5 weeks defies belief.

The death of both of my parents within a 12 month period has been deeply painful for me. The stress of the situation is now been exacerbated by the incompetence and negligence of your organisation and its agents.

I am keen to ensure I do not have the further stress of worrying about an empty property during the winter and indeed have a cash buyer lined up for the property. This sale is now potentially at risk due to the time taken so far to NOT complete the execution of the estate. To take potentially 9 months or more to move from Grant of Probate to resolution is as unacceptable as it is unprofessional. Your staff seem to take positive pleasure in advising that as an unregulated business there is no course or redress outside of yourself or the courts and I believe therein lies the rub.

You will be familiar with the web forum ‘Money Saving Expert’ and particularly the posts of ‘Portland Boy’ with regards to his experiences of your company. Indeed his advice to avoid your company is the third listed search on Google for ITC Legal Services. I feel that if your company will not and does not take the necessary action to facilitate a speedy resolution of this case to make up for the delays caused by your administration then I will have to expend my energies into ensuring that other potential clients are warned off from your service. I only had one set of parents so I can’t threaten not to use your services again but I can ensure that as many people as possible hear about the problems you have caused me.

Often in considering complaints myself I apply something I call the ‘Watchdog test’. How does the story come across in the public domain. Currently I feel you fail this test miserably – unregulated business promoted through ‘bogus’ charity fails the bereaved.

portlandboy

Hi Iggybanks,
What can I say? A man after my own heart indeed. I never wrote to him (the CEO) but if I had I reckon it would have been nearly word for word. Interesting that you mention "Watchdog" though, as I did contact them some time back but with no further response. Maybe it's time to do it again. If we all do it at the same time it might have a more noticable effect?
As you may or may not have seen, ITC have been contracted to close down deceased customer accounts for Barclay's Bank and automatically receive ALL of the personal details that go with this. They then use the info to cold call family/executors to try to get them to let ITC take on the probate work. I'm expecting a lot more people to get caught by this tricky little move.

Iggybanks

Hello there Portlandboy

Well unsuprisingly no response from the elusive Mr Trees. I got a standard formal acknowledgement with a 20 day timeline to investigate my case so I don't hold out any hope on that one. The general air of complacency lives on.

I made one final phone call to a manager who had been helpful in resolving the B&B issue and he actually took my call. He appears to have got things moving again agreeing that their service has been 'unacceptable'. Now it only remains for the paperwork to get lost at the land registry. At the moment I have no choice other than to trust him to resolve issues. In the meantime I would urge any other readers not to use this company.

portlandboy

Iggybanks wrote: »

Now it only remains for the paperwork to get lost at the land registry.

If you get the number of the land registry office where the property is located they can let you know exactly when they received and processed the papers. ITC told me it could take 6 weeks to get the assention forms back from my land registry office but when I called the LRO they stated that they try to process and return the forms on the same day that they receive them! (ITC had in fact not instucted their solicitors to send the forms to LR until I queried why things were not happening, which held the case up by another month). Once the LR received the assent form they processed it within one hour and sent it out return post.
Did you get to speak to Martin Trees or some other bozo?

PS. ITC told me on Monday 19th that my original documents have been sent to me via Royal Mail Recorded Delivery. Now it's Wednesday and they've not arrived yet. I wonder who they sent them to??
[TEXT DELETED BY ABUSE TEAM].

Update: 22/10.09
The documents arrived today just before ITC called me back with the tracking number. Even though they're on strike, the Royal Mail is quicker than ITC!!

teresaevans_2

ITC Legal Services in partnership with the National Association of Funeral Directors established the Bereavement Advice Centre who also point the bereaved making enquiries about probate to ITC. I have heard so does Barclays Bank.
It is reported in the Law Society Gazette, that 'Solicitors alarmed at links between the Bereavement Advice Centre and probate firm'

portlandboy

teresaevans wrote: »

ITC Legal Services in partnership with the National Association of Funeral Directors established the Bereavement Advice Centre who also point the bereaved making enquiries about probate to ITC. I have heard so does Barclays Bank.
It is reported in the Law Society Gazette, that 'Solicitors alarmed at links between the Bereavement Advice Centre and probate firm'

Here's the link relating to your post:
http://lawgazette.co.uk/news/probate-services-company-itc-signs-deal-barclays


and a link to the ITC/Barclays thread on MSE:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1970115