O'Neill Patient Solicitors - Anyone had to deal with them?

ValHaller

Experienced_Buyer/Seller wrote: »

It seems to me that the majority of the posters on this forum complaining about O'Neill Patient aren't even their clients. It's quite obvious that when experiencing difficulties on their own sales or purchases, the easiest thing to do is to vent spleen in an anonymous internet forum against the easiest target who you know the least about.

I've used this firm on a number of occassions, both to buy and sell property, using more than one of their lawyers, and each time the experience has been smooth, informative and proactive. Yes, there were transactions which didn't move at the speed I would have liked, or which didn't complete within my desired timescales, but at each stage I was told why, who was being waited for and what was being done to progress things.

At no point did I consider it to be the right thing to do to go onto the internet and complain about the firm acting for my buyer or seller. If I wanted to make displeasure felt, I would speak to my buyer or seller directly to find out the truth, and in most cases it was always my buyer or seller's lawyer who was trying to cover their own backs by blaming mine, safe in the knowledge that it would be hard to prove that wrong.

I for one would recommend O'Neill Patient. :T

If there is one thing which would really put me off a company, it is (self?) promoting drivel like the above. Plainly this is a created for purpose ID solely for the purpose of pimping One ill Patient. It is more off putting that the complaints from Angry people.

OK, now I have said this, expect a few token random posts on the DIY or Consumer Affairs forums.

Frustrated_customer_2

My advice AVOID THEM IF YOU CAN!
We are in the process of buying our first house. 'Quite straight forward' everybody said: us nothing to sell, sellers nothing to buy! Paradise to state agents eyes.

Well, O'Neil Patient have done everything in their power to mess the process up, from sending the welcome package form to a wrong email, not answering our calls for the first 2 months, not warning us that enquiring about the house in the council re building regs would revoke the indemnity insurance to finally find out our solicitor has gone on holidays on the day after a failed exchange/completion date without let in us know in advance!

Think, do you want that on top of the stresfull process of buying a house?
They have no understanding what so ever of managing expectation or professionalism!

Rhettmoir

6 months, no chain, funds available......nothing

More like a call centre than a solicitors, lets see what they have messed up:

Lost paperwork - check

No details of house on system 1 day after having a conversation about the sale - check

Person in charge of sale not having the emails he sent the week before on his system, so I had to read them out over the phone - check

Money paid to them but had emails asking for the money a month later - check

Multiple messages left on voicemail with no return calls- check

Would love to work for these guys, could turn up drunk or high and still get paid.

Avoid like the plague

cheatthecheatingcheaters

Experienced_Buyer/Seller wrote: »

It seems to me that the majority of the posters on this forum complaining about O'Neill Patient aren't even their clients. It's quite obvious that when experiencing difficulties on their own sales or purchases, the easiest thing to do is to vent spleen in an anonymous internet forum against the easiest target who you know the least about.

I've used this firm on a number of occassions, both to buy and sell property, using more than one of their lawyers, and each time the experience has been smooth, informative and proactive. Yes, there were transactions which didn't move at the speed I would have liked, or which didn't complete within my desired timescales, but at each stage I was told why, who was being waited for and what was being done to progress things.

At no point did I consider it to be the right thing to do to go onto the internet and complain about the firm acting for my buyer or seller. If I wanted to make displeasure felt, I would speak to my buyer or seller directly to find out the truth, and in most cases it was always my buyer or seller's lawyer who was trying to cover their own backs by blaming mine, safe in the knowledge that it would be hard to prove that wrong.

I for one would recommend O'Neill Patient. :T

...What a crock of !!!!!!. Who are you? I am not anonymous. My name is Adam Bennett. Go on, sue me you piece of crap. You people almost ruined the sale of my house. Our buyer was beside himself and said he regretted using you and that he had never seen anything go so bad, for so long. Our solicitor and our agent were incensed by the complete pack of bungling that dragged on a process that should have taken a month at most, into three months. We had no chain either end, the buyer had cash, we provided all the necessary documents to our solicitor the day after the offer was accepted.

No, O'Neill were not my solicitor. But I know the fellow who used you, as he bought my house. He was embarrassed at how badly it went and disgusted that he had to pay you for such a shoddy performance. Thanks to the ridiculous amount of time you wasted on this simple, simple conveyancing, we have had to put off buying our new home, had more hassle than necessary relocating funds overseas without being present in the UK, and also missed being able to make an offer on a house we really wanted to buy. More importantly, the sale almost fell through through no fault of either the buyer or seller.

None of that matters to you creeps though, you have your lousy £500 or whatever you charged our buyer. Now let's see how long it takes you to get another new username and reply to this with a "Well I had nothing but great service from the professional team at O'Neill Patient, so those people making complaints must be somehow morally corrupt or inept personages of lesser intellect than I" post. Go on. You know you will do it, but everyone here will see through it.

How do you creeps sleep at night?

Hatemyjob

We are using these jokers to sell our property. We were due to exchange and were told it wouldn't be an issue and everyone on the chain was ready. However it turns out these !!! clowns hadn't bothered to check with our buyers solicitor to see if they were ready to exchange.

We have had to do more chasing of other parties than they have which quite frankly isn't my job.

We were also told on numerous occasions that something would be "done on Monday", until we just found out that our solicitor doesn't even work Mondays.

We have now missed our completion date and will have to push the date back by at least 2 weeks.

Furious does not cover it.

Carefulspender

They are not very good actually.

marcathomas

We had a really simple no-chain purchase to make.
Everything was moving quickly.....THen stalled as O'Neill Patient said they were waiting for leasehold info from the freeholders.

TWO MONTHS later, despite reminders from our estate agent and solictors, they were still waiting. I phone up the council and O'Neill Patient had only made a request a few days agao, but they still hadn't made any payment.

So still waiting on these jokers.... and in the meantime were going to have to move twice, pay storage, temporary accomodation...

JUst a complete joke!

Avoid, and if you find out a seller/buyer is using them, request they change..... If they dont... Youre going to have to check on them every step of the way!

marcathomas

marcathomas wrote: »

We had a really simple no-chain purchase to make.
Everything was moving quickly.....THen stalled as O'Neill Patient said they were waiting for leasehold info from the freeholders.

TWO MONTHS later, despite reminders from our estate agent and solictors, they were still waiting. I phone up the council and O'Neill Patient had only made a request a few days agao, but they still hadn't made any payment.

So still waiting on these jokers.... and in the meantime were going to have to move twice, pay storage, temporary accomodation...

JUst a complete joke!

Avoid, and if you find out a seller/buyer is using them, request they change..... If they dont... Youre going to have to check on them every step of the way!

As a little update.... The seller and I got all the info O'Neill Patient didnt bother getting, and are in a position to exchange. However, for three days O'Neill Patient have not answered their telephone from the seller or my solicitor, and have not responded to voicemails or emails.

How can these people still be in business?

thymely

Hi,

Could you anyone please advise the email address and direct dial phone number of a partner/solicitor/the MD of O'Neill Patient as we, our solicitor, our buyers, theirs and our estate agents are having severe problems contacting them? Our buyers are first time buyers and using O'Neill Patient.

We're on the verge of our losing the house that we're buying and several thousand pounds in fees as exchange and completion dates have been pushed back again and again over 6 weeks by O'Neill Patient and no one can get hold of them. We, our buyers, the estate agents and our solicitors have also been fed a lot of incorrect information and the latest in a long line of problems is that yesterday O'Neill Patient sent our buyers mortgage money back to the lender. We were due to exchange yesterday. The impression we're getting is that O'Neill Patient have never conveyanced before, although posts on this thread suggest that they've been in business for at least 3 years.

Our home phone and internet was cut off on 6th March as the exchange and completion date fell through with hours to spare and we couldn't cancel the disconnection. We've been living out of boxes for weeks.

We and our buyers will be complaining to The Legal Ombudsman if this is not sorted out soon, but more than that, if we can't exchange on the house and we lose it (vendor advised that his house was going back on the market if exchange didn't go ahead this week), I don't think we'll be able to afford to move at all as the lost fees represent over a year's savings.

Any info/advice gratefully received. Please PM me if you have direct contact details for a solicitor at O'Neill Patient.

Thanks,
thymely

billyish

Thymely,


I feel your pain as my partner and I endured a similar experience last year. O'Neill were our buyer's solicitors and they were painfully slow in answering any correspondence - to such an extent that our estate agent wrote a letter of complaint to them. Also, they never bothered to get the Licence to Assign from their client so when we came to exchange the process was delayed. And when we came to complete we found out that the money for completion they'd been holding onto to complete had to go back to the bank because they'd held onto it for too long which delayed the completion date by a number of days. Meanwhile their client had to move out of their rented flat as they'd given a month's notice (thinking that they'd be moved in by the time their notice ran out) and had to move into their relative's house which was so far from their 2 young kids new school that the kids had to miss the 1st 2 weeks of their new school. They also held onto their client's money for the deposit for 2 months - yes you heard right, 2 months holding almost £15k of their client's money !!
I've written 2 letters of complaint to them - 1 recorded - but no response to date. So I'm going to write to the Legal Ombudsman. Good luck with contacting them