Remortgage nightmare

Bananabelly

Hi all, I have been lurking for a long time on these boards but this is the first time I have really needed help desperately!
Following Martin's advice, we recently approached a broker to remortgage, a we are coming up to the end of the discounted deal. He was very helpful and recommended a mortgage that suited us, including free legals. All was going along fine and we received a mortgage deed letter that needed to be signed and dated, by myself and my patner, with witnesses, before completion. The problem was, we received it from the solicitor on the 7th March (letter dated the 5th) and they had made the completion date the 9th. Although we did it as soon as we possibly could, of course they didn't get it in time and the mortgage wasn't completed.
We have now received a letter from the solicitors saying we owe them £1500-odd due to interest accruing on the old mortgage and the new mortgage was of course already a set amount. I find this infuriating as we could not possibly have got the signed form back to them on time, and frankly we don't have £1500 lying around! They have made the new completion date the 23rd March, which means we have hardly any time to get this sorted out, or risk missing the date again! To add insult to injury, I rang the number on the letter and that person is away until until Wednesday, and when you ring the other number that person apparently works about 3 hours a day!:mad:
What can I do about this? Can we add the extra to the new mortgage? Can we make the stupid solicitors pay it?
Also a quick question (hopefully) - on the old mortgage end-statement it says 'Anticipated interest from last key date to 9 March 2007' - what is the last key date? I assumed it was the last mortgage payment, but the amount is far more (close to double) what we pay each month.
Thanks so much for any help

ginger_nuts

go back to your mortgage broker ,get them to sort it out.