ITC Legal Services - Avoid Them

John_Pierpoint

gem2010 wrote: »

Thank you for the replies. Another disappointing aspect of this is Barclays. Both myself and my parents are lifelong customers but their association with ITC has me seriously considering changing banks although having said that my mother has found problems with a number of the banks in trying to sort out some of her dad's affairs. Is there not one financial institution that have properly trained, compassionate and understanding staff to deal properly with probate issues ? I Will keep the forum updated with our progress if there is any to report !

I've had to close down bank accounts of the deceased at most of them, having done 3 estates in the last 15 years.:
Barclays were by far the worst. I could go on, and on, and on.
[and so can Barclays - they have just written to me about a "dormant" account with a balance of £0 - I wrote to them 18 months ago, returning the cheque book and saying the account was now closed]
The local branch of HSBC was knowledgeable and efficient, but I think it depends on the staff.
In Abbey, I made an appointment to sort out 3 accounts, and went into town:
"Can you come back tomorrow?".
"No my foot is nailed to the floor and I am not going anywhere until this is sorted out"
.
.
.
[I later overheard a winge about "I was hoping to get off early today............."]

2,000 people die every working day in this country, you would think that large financial institutions had well oiled procedures for probate and bankruptcy.

John

PS
The Land Registry on line fee for access to the title is £4 for the writing and £4 for the map, when you do it yourself using your credit/debit card.
Though that is not legal for a conveyance, it is quite good enough for deciding to take on an account for preparation of papers for probate.

angrygirlie

A cheque was sent to ITC to go to my mothers estate. A letter (from ITC) acknowledging the money sent to them stated the cheque was nearly £3,000.00 less than what was actually sent!
As one of the executors sent this money in, can you imagine what suspicions are created amongst other executors when ITC state incorrect figures that they have received. (adds to damaged relationships amongst the family)
Again, no explanation was given to how someone at ITC, writing the letter, can get a sum of money so wrong.

ITC probate specialist!!!!

This was my experience as a client with ITC Legal Services

portlandboy

angrygirlie wrote: »

A cheque was sent to ITC to go to my mothers estate. A letter (from ITC) acknowledging the money sent to them stated the cheque was nearly £3,000.00 less than what was actually sent!
As one of the executors sent this money in, can you imagine what suspicions are created amongst other executors when ITC state incorrect figures that they have received. (adds to damaged relationships amongst the family)
Again, no explanation was given to how someone at ITC, writing the letter, can get a sum of money so wrong.

ITC probate specialist!!!!

This was my experience as a client with ITC Legal Services

Makes you wonder how ITC could make such an unfortunate mistake. Well, I say unfortunate, but it depends on what side you're looking at the "mistake" from

angrygirlie

Not such a big error, but, considering all the bad calculations so far this is yet another mistake with ITC's money figures. (And they have accountants so I despair)

When ITC were refunding some money back to the estate (due to my letters of complaints listing so many embarrassing mistakes they had made over the 18 months of dealing with my mothers estate) they stated how much they were going to refund and divided in by 2 (as there were 2 beneficiaries) and..... they got that wrong!!!! (it would of been an under payment of £10 to the beneficiaries) I had to write back to them with the simple mathematics of division by 2 and gave them the correct amount.

An explanation was given on this occasion......a typing error. So they can give explanations of miscalculations of £10 but they have not been able to give me an explanation to date of how they got the value of my mums estate wrong by over £24,000.00 and why some of the money my mum Willed, was not sent to the correct department. It just does not compute how this company can carry on their business if there were so many mistakes just in my case alone.(and believe me, there are more as these are the problems I had AT THE END WHEN THE ESTATE WAS FINALISED. SO CAN YOU IMAGINE WHAT I HAD TO DEAL WITH FOR THE 18 MONTHS IT TOOK TO GET TO THE END. PLEASE CHECK YOUR PAPERWORK AT ALL LEVELS. I know there are people out there who put their faith in companies dealing with it all and trust all is correct, and this is what worries me

This was my experience as a client to ITC Legal Services

monoloco_2

Hi

Seems my reply didn't post..

I too have been 18 months into the nightmare that is ITC and now will look at this post will much .

I will try this Martin Trees before we go legal - the service has been an utter disgrace! DO NOT USE THEM!

AndrewBDriffield

Hello everyone,

Firstly, thanks to all for establishing and continuing this informative and eye-opening thread.

I have an ongoing case with ITC, and would welcome any opinions and guidance on our situation.

In October 2010, a cousin of mine sadly took his own life. He was a bachelor, with no children, and both his parents and his grandparents had died previously. As far as we know, there was no will. He lived in Wales, and was the last member of that branch of the family - the rest of us are from Yorkshire.

A local relative (I believe a half-cousin of his father) contacted the various banks, etc. and Barclays recommended ITC. A Home Visit was carried out in Wales, and the same relative signed the instruction document, guided by the ITC Rep.

I first received a letter from ITC in April requesting mine and my Father's birth certificates together with his death certificate. At the date of death, there was myself (a son of the deceased's Uncle) and two Aunts, both of whom have since died, leaving two of my other cousins as joint beneficiaries with me.

In the Summer, ITC wrote again and enclosed a Power of Attorney. They had realised that the local relative wasn't a beneficiary and could not instruct them to apply for Probate. I asked them to send an estimate of their likely fees, and was quoted £5,340 including VAT but excluding Third Party Fees and property-related expenses. I would guess that the final bill would be around £7,000 if not more.

I also obtained a quote from our usual solicitor who estimated £500 including VAT, less than 10% of ITC's initial figure! I declined to sign the PoA, and ITC have been dragging their heels ever since.

After more than a year, ITC admit that they are still only at Stage 1 of the process, and are unable to continue without a signed PoA. It may be that having realised their mistake they are reluctant to commit any more resources to our case knowing they perhaps will not be able to charge us for the unauthorised work they've already done. This seems to consist of having shuffled the information gathered at the initial Home Visit, collected one or two ID documents from the other beneficiaries, confirmed with just one stakeholder (Halifax) the account balances at date of death, and having sent out perhaps a dozen or so letters across the three beneficiaries. I only received their Terms & Conditions when the PoA pack arrived at the end of July!

I've today had a meeting with the other two beneficiaries, and we've posed the following questions to our Case Manager:

1. Are ITC willing to substantially reduce their estimated cost towards the comparative quote from the local solicitor?
2. Can ITC state when they expect the estate to be finalised - our solicitor is amazed it's already taken more than a year, and his own estimate was 2-3 months from start to finish?
3. Do ITC believe they are entitled to bill us for their work in the past year when they haven't had a signed authority from any of the beneficiaries to act on our behalf (our solicitor says they don't have a leg to stand on, but I'd appreciate a second and third opinion)?

I've not heard back from them as yet, and presume our questions are having to be put to their senior management. It may well be that they have never found themselves a year into a case with no authorisation to act, and are hoping to quietly obtain the missing signature and carry on as if nothing has happened.

Personally, I would like to get rid of ITC altogether and allow our usual solicitor to act on our behalf. I'm sure he would be far cheaper and far quicker than ITC could ever be. The other beneficiaries are interested in this alternative to ITC, but are concerned that ITC will expect payment for the work they've done and that might make changing to our local solicitor less worthwhile.

If anyone has had a similar experience, or has any advice or guidance having read our story, I'd be very grateful to hear it. Please feel free to PM me if you'd rather not post onto the thread.

Thanks for reading this far,

Andrew

STEVEH_2

Does anyone have an email addr where i can contact Martin Trees direct ?

centretap

Fuzzy_dunlop wrote: »

Does anyone know why HBOSBAC.NET redirects to ITC Legal services website?

The domain name is registered to Mr Trees

As is HBOSBAC.ORG according to http://www.123-reg.co.uk/order?action=whois&page=whois&domain=hbosbac.org

There is an email address there that someone was asking about too

batman321

STEVEH wrote: »

Does anyone have an email addr where i can contact Martin Trees direct ?

[EMAIL="martin.trees@itclegal.co.uk"]martin.trees@itclegal.co.uk[/EMAIL]

angrygirlie

AndrewBDriffield wrote: »

Hello everyone,

Firstly, thanks to all for establishing and continuing this informative and eye-opening thread.

I have an ongoing case with ITC, and would welcome any opinions and guidance on our situation.




In the Summer, ITC wrote again and enclosed a Power of Attorney. They had realised that the local relative wasn't a beneficiary and could not instruct them to apply for Probate.





Personally, I would like to get rid of ITC altogether and allow our usual solicitor to act on our behalf.

If anyone has had a similar experience, or has any advice or guidance having read our story, I'd be very grateful to hear it. Please feel free to PM me if you'd rather not post onto the thread.

Thanks for reading this far,

Andrew

Hello Andrew.

Welcome to the forum and thanks for sharing your experience. I recommend that (after my horror story with this company), at all costs, do not even consider using ITC by asking them to match their price to your local solicitor. The emotional battering, the long drawn out process will not be worth it. If you read back to Portlandboys' post #426 you may get some idea on how to approach ITC on no longer using them and billing. On the forum there are some fountain of wisdom posters so without doubt, you will get some great advice about what to do as I cannot advise on 'getting out'

There are 3 directors

Martin Trees (chief executive)
Grant McKerron (chairman)
Charles Urquhart (Business Development (Partnerships)

Charles Urquharts phone number is advertised on their website on the Corporate partnerships tab.

I say go straight to the top.

Keep us posted on any developments. Mention to ITC that you are aware of this forum!!!!!!