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

Jg01

I'm currently using o Neil solicitors and I feel sorry for anyone else who is!
The property is chain free, although there was a charge on the land registry to be removed.
I put an offer in end of December- I'm still waiting for an exchange of contract.
By far the most annoying part has been a total complete lack of any communication.
My last email from my solicitor was the 8th of April!!!!
This despite numerous calls to his office- this Always goes to his voicemail- I think once I spoke to his secretary - he was 'out'-I leave voicemails, he has NEVER returned any since April!!!
Was it not for the estate agent I would be inclined to think NOTHING was happening!
She has contacted me 3 times in the last week to tell me exchange of contracts is going to happen- he tells her this before me?
It still is on going, he told her today that he and the sellers solicitor simply keep 'missing' each other.
Dreadful service- and I've got to pay for it......

Dizzy_Imp

Oh no...Nationwide insisted that I used their preferred panel solicitors, who are O'Neill Patient. My own conveyancing solicitor had done most of the work but I was forced into changing last week which really annoyed me. Not least as I don't know the firm, but also because my original solicitor won't get a penny (and was already £150 cheaper!) as the purchase has been withdrawn from them. Their T&Cs say they won't charge if the work isn't fully completed by them. O'Neill will get paid for someone else's work!

I will be ringing them tomorrow. Wish me luck.

reginald_kay

i have been trying to exchange on my property for over 2 months. according to Oneill Patient the sellers solicitors need to provide an outstanding document. according to the sellers solicitor, they have never heard of this document, so they are not sure why we cannot exchange. its a case of Oneill Patient being unable to communicate, i never understand what they want when they contact me.

i think Oneill Patient are incompetent and i have changed solicitors half-way through the purchase because they cannot get it done.

mpet

Must be the luck of the draw as to which solicitor you get at O'Neill Patient. We used them for our move last year and had no problems - most of the correspondence was done via e-mail and I always got a pretty timely response to any e-mails I sent.


I've had more problems with local face to face solicitors on previous house moves. As I say - luck of the draw.

tafer2uk

I'm another one giving them the thumbs down, our simple chain free purchase is entering it's fourth month, primarily because they are unable to follow simple instructions. Complaining formally to them and to LMS who appointed them seems to have had little success. Like others we are having to constantly liaise with the estate agent to get updates and also to keep the vendors informed as we are starting to feel guilty about the delay.

bozallen

We were forced to use another solicitor by our mortgage provider and chose O'Neill Patient from the list of approved conveyancers. After I instructed them I saw this thread! It was too late to change by then.

We've now completed our purchase and I'm pleased to report we had absolutely no problems with O'Neill Patient.

Elgin2010

Our buyer is using O'Neill. Supposed to exchange Friday but it didn't happen. Today - quote from my solicitor: "I have finally managed to get through to O’Neill Patient’s after several voicemails and emails to now find that the case handler who is dealing with the matter in the fee-earners absence isn’t qualified to carry out the exchange and had in fact left the matter with a colleague who left the office at 4pm despite the file being handed over to them at 11am this morning.It appears that with the fee-earner absent until tomorrow, the left doesn’t seem to know what the right is doing at O’Neill Patient and as such we have all wasted another day fruitlessly chasing a matter which has now inevitably become apparent that there was no intention on their side of things of proceeding to exchange until the fee-earners return. I can only apologise on their behalf."

ZsaZsa

Just to add my bit, we've recently completed and had a great experience. The solicitor acting for us was super efficient, easy to make contact with by telephone or email, and was also really reassuring while I was working my way through a list of potential, and imaginary (!) scenarios. Maybe it's luck of the draw who you get, but I've no complaints at all

Justin_Bentley

ONeill Patient

You can only take as you find – I’ve just used ONeill Patient for my purchase and sale (free fee purchase via Nationwide) and found them to be excellent and on the ball. Our chain was horrendous (7), but the case handler, Amy Maddocks was organised, pro-active and on the ball, emails were acknowledged quickly and we were always kept informed. Even when Amy was on holiday we never waited more than 24 hours for a reply.
I’m sure the individual case handler impacts how good your service is, and working in financial services I knew the importance of keeping records of everything, sending recorded delivery and scanning documents.
I looked on this site prior to instructing and was very concerned tempted to use one of the more established (and expensive) local (Market Deeping and Stamford) firms. However it was one of these firms along the chain who forgot to send off the searches leading to a delay.
In short, as long as you are on top of your own admin, then I would recommended ONeill Patient – I’m not the sort of person who generally comments on these forums but I was pleased with the service and wanted to balance the comments.

fairy_lights

I completed my house purchase last month using O'Neill Patient.
We could never get through to our case handler (or anyone else for that matter) when we phoned to speak to someone, but she did always respond promptly to emails.
Overall my experience using them wasn't exactly brilliant but it wasn't bad either - they didn't make any mistakes and got the job done but the lack of communication was infuriating at times.