conveyancing-warehouse

abartl22

I sent my ID documents to them in the post and had them back next day. Again nothing missing. Will ring them today to see if I need to do anything else. So far so good

OrangeSofa

My experience of CW is quite appalling. The final bill was nearly double that of the initial quote. I was told I would be assigned a solicitor who would deal with all enquiries promptly and instead I was given a trainee who was so overloaded, emails were being sent at 06:00 and 21:00. Each enquiry took 3-4 days to process. My estate agent and the agent handling the house we bought were critical of CW and the people we bought from said their solicitor had never seen anything quite like the enquiries he had received from CW.

All-in-all, we consider that CW were shockingly bad. When I called to speak to a partner I was told they don't speak to clients about complaints - I would have to write. As this was in the final throws of exchange we abandoned that idea as it would only serve to delay an already extremely slow firm down even more. In times when house moves are apparently not at their peak - this firm were struggling to cope which is a poor sign.

When you pay the figures you pay for conveyancing you'd at least expect some prompt action and a personal service - neither of which we got from CW. Their instant quote tool is way off the mark and within days of starting the process, new charges started to creep in. Our trainee didn't listen to instruction and missed important information; kept pushing services we didn't need or want; was very slow; sent important documents for signature so late special journeys were required to ensure they were delivered back in time; irritated all other parties in the transaction and as such, we would never use them again nor would we recommend them. To be honest - we would go as far as to say we'd recommend specifically AGAINST using them. You have been warned.......

TheColonel_3

As a retired Conveyancer I do feel compelled to comment on the experience that you appear to have had with this firm which would appear indicative of the type of criticism we are all required to put up with.

Increasing Bills - Sadly the fact of the matter is that very few clients are upfront about complications with their transactions. Instead they do their best to obtain a low fixed fee from you and then after signing the retainer we hear: “By the way you need to rush this. I need to exchange contracts next week“ or “Its actually an unregistered leasehold title”. Solicitors can not double their bills without valid reason.

Unnecessary Enquires – It would never cease to amaze us how a typical lay client with no conveyancing knowledge whatsoever suddenly becomes better able than a conveyancing solicitor with 30 years experience to raise enquires. The other problem we have is that when buying a property for a client we often raise enquiries whith the Vendor’s Solicitors that were not raised at the time they purchased the property for their client. Rather than look incompetent the Vendor’s Solicitor when asked by his client why they did not pick up on it doesn’t usually say “Yes I should have done, I have been negligent.” Instead they say “the enquiry is completely unnecessary.”

Emails Outside of Office Hours – The person dealing with your file has emailed you at 6.00am and 9.00pm. It really is incompressible how this can be considered a complaint. It shows that they are committed to progressing your transaction. Solicitors are in a no win situation. Had the solicitor only emailed you between 9-5 then no doubt you would have had something to say about it!

The Partners would not speak to me – When my train to the office was delayed Richard Branson wouldn’t take my call.

I am pleased to say that I am now out of the rat race but pity anybody trying to make a living as a Conveyancer.

SmoothTalker

I too have heard some good and bad reviews about this company. Having bought and sold about 14 properties in my time and dealt with many solicitors. I obtained a very reasonable quote from this company and decided to use them. Prior to instructing I gave them a call and discussed the nature of the transaction with them. They told me that there would be a "leasehold title" fee as the property was a flat. They also said that I could complete my own SDLT return if I did not want to pay them to complete it.

Grovis

No Experience with Cw but would definitely only use a local firm.

The reason being you might find you need your Mortgage Deed witnessed by a Solicitor (some lenders are demanding this). The one I am using and paying is a 5 hour car trip away because it was panelled out as part of a package I took out.

So now not only do I have major get out of work headaches/co-ordinate time off with my partner to get this done, I also have to fork out more money to another solicitor to witness. By the time we make a suitable appointment to do this, the completion date we wanted rolls back another week. Great.

rent_and_buy

ive used them and they were great i only used them for a remortgage and the fee was what they quoted, looks like ill be using them again as we have found a house, the communincation was great from them and all the stuff we had to send was sent back promptly.

Its like anything why pay top price when people can do the same job sat behind a desk miles away, some people might want to see them face to face, if thats worth paying 100s of pounds more for, then you have got more money than sense.

SmoothTalker

Just remembered that I was supposed to give my review of Conveyancing Warehouse following the transaction that I started back in June. To be perfectly honest I really had no problem with them. I would not rate the service as ‘excellent’ but they certainly were no worse than many traditional high street solicitors who have charged me more than three times the Conveyancing Warehouse bill.

My purchase completed within six weeks and the bill was roughly what I expected. There were times when I phoned and could not speak to the Solicitor dealing with the case but I did usually get called back shortly after. Having said that a number of my queries related to matters that were not particularly complex so I was happy to discuss them with the assistant.

To summarise I was quite happy with them. You may try to find a better solicitor by paying a bit more, but by doing so you could certainly end up with much worse!

Obukit

Just to add to this, we've recently completed a transaction through Conveyancing Warehouse, after reading positive reviews on here. We were really pleased with the service - the whole transaction was finished in seven weeks despite the postal strikes delaying everything - this was almost entirely due to CW turning round everything we sent to them the same day.

They were very efficient, sending us everything by email to keep things moving, and if you called with any queries, you spoke straight to the solicitor or assistant without any "Press 1 for this" rubbish, and our total bill including Chancel Insurance and a few other extras was less than our local solicitor wanted just as their fee!

The only thing you need to be careful of is that there is no hand-holding at all, unless you query something they will go ahead and do it, e.g. they proposed a completion date which my fiance said was "good", not realising she was agreeing to something that we would be contractually obliged to do - so be careful. Ensure if one of you understands the process it's them they have as the primary contact!

The other thing I would say is unless you're doing a complicated transaction (lease etc.) do the SDLT return yourself - you'll save £55+VAT, and it's quite easy to complete if you ask HMRC St. Austell office to send you SDLT6 guidance notes, which is free of charge. It took me about 45 minutes, including double checking everything - you can get most of the details from the estate agent.

All in all, I would definitely recommend Conveyancing Warehouse and would use them again myself - I'm sure they're not the best solicitors, but they're so cheap and in the end you still own a house at the end no matter what you pay, so you might as well save the £500 - much needed if you're scraping everything together for a deposit anyway!

timmyt

Enough said, but so many of you will use them and yet your clever neighbours will use a local solicitor and really get value for money.

Insist on a solicitor or very senior conveyancer.

In fact look at the recent post on the Law Society Gazette website blogs from someone giving a bullet checklist about how to spot a bad conveyancer

whysitonlytuesday

My experience with conveyancing warehouse has been awful and is still ongoing.
I accepted an offer for my house on the 8th Nov 2010, I instructed Roberts solicitors who appointed me a solicitor to deal with the sale of my house and the purchase of the new one, my buyers wanted to exchange on the 3rd Dec and complete on the 17th Dec and I was told by my solicitor that as only a short chain was involved this should be possible, I left them to deal with it, but making sure I returned everything promptly through the post or via email. I called my solicitor on the 27th November for an update to discover that as yet she hadnt sent off for the searches, which can take a week or more and are usually done shortly after the offer is accepted but even worse she had been sending everything to the wrong solicitor, so my purchaser had recieved none of the documentation that they should have in order to proceed, now I have been told that exchange before xmas is unlikely because 'its early days' and there is to much to do. I'm so cross but if I change solicitors now it will set it all back again and if I complain at this stage my useless solicitor might become even more useless, as if this process isnt stressfull enough, I would never ever use Roberts solicitors again.