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

eagle

Another day, another story to tell with these morons.

They are buyer solicitors for my flat sale as well and we are sat waiting to exchange today, about to lose the house we are buying due to their incompetence in not answering emails and insisting we answer more questions which they have had answers to almost 90 days before!!

Seriously, how are these clowns still in business and how come they haven't been struck off yet? With all these posts here, I find it hard to believe that they haven't been reported already.

devon007

Regrettably Lime Kiln, as residential conveyancer, I find the OP to be the norm rather than the rule. I will give you a for instance. I received a leasehold contract pack from your firm on 23rd May. Raised searches on the Bank Holiday Monday. Finally finished reading the entire pack on 1st June and immediately emailed because the Deed of Variation (clearly show on the Register Entries) had not been supplied - how can I report to my client on Lease terms when I don't know what the variations are?? The Lease plan had been incorrectly/incompletely copied (it did not show the flat at all!!!), and had no colourings, there was no Sellers leasehold information form, and so on.
THREE TIMES since then your company has sent me a computer generated letter asking me to raise enquiries and THREE TIMES I have re-sent the email asking for the missing documents - NO RESPONSE WHATSOEVER. Until today - when the Seller withdrew the property from my client due to "THE DELAYS"!!! Does he know the delays are down to you and not me?


My client is furious to put it mildly - he has expended valuation fees, mortgage product fees, search fees - and because of the above is now greatly out of pocket.


I wish I could say this was a one off, but in my experience of the "conveyancing shops" recommended by Estate Agents, it's the norm. It is quantity over quality sadly.


35 years of residential conveyancing experience tells me there has never ever been such a time for shoddy conveyancing as there is now. You're not alone, however, there is a growing list of companies whose names make me grown as I know I will experience delays, incomplete information, and general unwarranted aggravation when their names come up on the opposite side to me. Roll on retirement!

Lime_Kiln wrote: »

I am the Managing Partner at O'Neill Patient where we pride ourselves on getting it right and giving a great service, most of the time.
Occasionally we may get it wrong. If we do, we try to sort it ASAP.

Your experience is the exception, not the rule.

I hope the issues you report on in your forum exchange have now been resolved, but if they haven't, please contact me.

We currently process over 3,500 residential sales and purchases and remortgages every month, so that makes us a large conveyancing business.

If you look up our website, the testimonials are genuine.

In this case, if you go to our website you will find my name (Robin Higham) and contact details.

We genuinely care.

Nile_Griffith

Having already lost out on one house purchase due to the incompetencies of the conveyancing company we where determined not to let it happen again. With our buyer still in place and their funds secured we found an alternative property with vacant occupancy and no upward chain. Better still we are buying for less than we are selling. So we asked of our financial advisor of a company that would carry out the conveyancing in a professional and timely manner........... Thats where it all went wrong.

All of the previous posts raising comments about O'Neil Patient ring true with our own experience. Lost paperwork. Factual inaccuracies, a blatant inability to deal with anything within a reasonable timeframe. Our impression is that of a company who are quite happy to insult our intelligence with the flimsiest of excuses as to why or why not something has been done. Having being in contact with one of their more senior staff and suffering the usual corporate verbal smoke and mirrors, defending the abilities of their staff and being assured of their own personal oversight and diligence in the completion of our transaction. I can with a fair hand state that O'Neil patient are a company best overlooked when sourcing a conveyancing company.

Possibly one of the finest examples of their ineptitude, was to be told that amongst many things that they where waiting on from our vendor's solicitors was sight of the certificate of building regulations compliance. We took great pleasure in informing them that we had a photocopy of said certificate. When asked by them if we could forward a copy on to O'Neil Patient's offices, we informed them that they had sent the copy to us as part of the survey pack.

It has become a daily chore to have to phone and email O'Neil. It is our belief that unless your case notes are on the top of the pile that morning, then it is most likely that they will not get looked at until such times as a complaint is raised. Their attention to detail is woeful and even when presented with requested information they seem unable to extract from that information the details they require, finding it easier to wait for a call of complaint and continue with the excuses (of which they must have written numerous volumes). A good example of this was a complaint on their part that they had not received our deposit. Now why would we require a deposit as we are selling at a higher price than we are purchasing with no lender required.

Most of all we dislike being "held over a barrel" By this company. That they knowingly trade on the fact that to dispense with their services some two months in, would mean having to start the process all over again with another firm.

Please avoid this firm at all costs.

elm

I bought a house last year using O'Neill Patient (recommended by our financial adviser) and very nearly changed solicitors after reading this thread and also being given a horror story by the estate agent. I felt it was only fair to come back and say that I had no problems with them. There was the odd fee for searches etc. that we felt was unnecessary, but I reckon we would have had a similar issue with other solicitors, as they all seem to want to extract as much money out of you as possible...

I'm now just starting the process of selling my old house, so am using them again (they've promised me 10% off for returning to them, although I've not seen evidence of this on my paperwork as yet, so may have to remind them), so fingers crossed it all goes smoothly this time. I'll be back here if it doesn't!

fairy_lights

I'm currently buying my first house and am using O'Neill Patient. Our mortgage advisor said they would be fine to use as our purchase should be fairly straightforward and they work out a lot cheaper than any local solicitors. I'm starting to have doubts after reading this thread though

elm

I've just taken my rose tinted glasses off for a second and remembered that it wasn't entirely smooth-sailing at the beginning. We originally put in an offer on another house, which fell through within a couple of weeks as the sellers pulled out. I called O'Neill Patient and let them know and told them to stop proceedings. They then kept bombarding us with calls from what appeared to be a call centre, chasing us for our paperwork. Both us and our financial adviser repeatedly told them that there was no sale to progress, but they kept calling. In the end, the financial adviser called them and got quite angry with them, which seemed to work! I did seriously consider finding another solicitor when we bought our current house, but gave the benefit of the doubt and thankfully everything was ok...

@fairylights, fingers crossed everything goes ok for you!

Dan-Dan

ValHaller wrote: »

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.

Whatever happened to Val , he was a very helpful poster

KonArtis

I wish I'd seen this thread before using them.

They were recommended by Halifax so I naively assumed they would be reputable. It was all going very well until I was sent a completion statement that didn't vaguely match the original quote. This included them missing off an original discount with several extra costs. One of these was a cost for completion within one week, although I had supplied them with all the documentation they needed 2 weeks in advance. When I had the gall to raise these discrepancies, I was blamed not not reading their original letter.

I eventually gave in and overpaid, but they had already sent me an amended statement for the price it should have been. When I asked if I would get this back, I was assured "any surplus would be paid by cheque ". I received a letter, stating the surplus was attached in cheque, except it still didn't balance. It turns out the "surplus" was the cash back they were due to pay me anyway from the Halifax mortgage, masked as surplus to shut me up.

Please, heed the warnings of this thread. It seems as if they have still yet to learn any lessons and won't hesitate to take advantage of people in what's already a really stressful period.

plm106

Terrible service, they don't return calls, don't understand basic processes and give incorrect information. Most don't seem to be qualified solicitors or even conveyancers.

Jg01

I'm currently in the process of buying a property with the post office and chain free,6 months next week I'm still waiting to exchange contracts!
Best bit is, no matter how many emails I send to my solicitor, or voicemails I leave asking him to phone me back the last contact was the 18th of April!!!!
If it was not for the estate agent(who he can be bothered to talk to) I'd think NOTHING was happening!