Why can't my solicitor use BACS to refund my deposit?

InsideInsurance

scarletjim wrote: »

What is the charge for a Faster Payment?

For personal customers there is no charge for using the service via online or telephone banking. For business customers there is no additional charge, please refer to your Service Charge tariff for full details. For payments created in the branch you will be advised of any charge before you commit to making the payment.

The important word is highlighted above

There is no additional charge for using Faster Payment over using BACS that isnt to say there is no charge for using BACS

As said however, what the bank charges is a fairly mute point - I just wanted to correct others that said the transfer was free.

More or less anyone can charge what they want for providing products or services. For example at a previous company our insurer sold us the top level breakdown insurance for circa £50 for UK or UK + EU. We sold it to our customers for ~£100 for UK or ~£130 for UK + EU even though we were paying the same wholesale price.

The solicitors should have either given you a rate card or at least explained the basis of how any charges would be calculated. Likewise you should ask for it if you didnt receive it

scarletjim

Andystriker wrote: »

It is a cost to the Solicitor charged to him by his bank. He would have put this cost in the document he gave you when you became his client. Any searches that he has done for you, will also be payable by you. He is not ripping you off and he is not ignoring your best interests.

You are asking him to do something that his bank will charge him to do. He is passing the cost onto you.

If you don't want to pay it, then ask him for a cheque.

But this is missing the point I think. If she had said to me that she suggests I give her the deposit money now, but if there are any issues then remember you will have to pay to get it back, then I wouldn't have done it. It would have been in my best interests for her to remind me of this, especially as I said I would pay it to her by BACS because that is free - you think she would have the sense at that point to 'remind' me (?) that it would not be free to refund it if tht became necessary.

Maybe I'm alone in wanting to offer that level of customer service, maybe for everyone else it's ok to jot something in the small print many months ago then shrug when the customer gets caught out (and if there's no benefit for my solicitor, they would have lost nothing by giving me such a reminder). Iagre with II that people can charge what they like, and I agree I should have read the smallprint accordingly (only 6 hours before I was due to fly off on hols, and 5 months after I received the original paperwork..!!) - I just think it stinks from a customer service perspective.

InsideInsurance

scarletjim wrote: »

I just think it stinks from a customer service perspective.

In some industries you get a lot of repeat business and therefore it is worth sacrificing income today to secure income for tomorrow - hence Tesco's sells several of its Value range at a loss.

In other industries it is believed that repeat business is minimal or there is no customer loyalty etc etc and therefore you must secure all the revenue possible today at the lowest operational cost because once you've completed the sale/ service you'll never see them again.

Customer service does have a price attached to it (either a cost or lost revenue) and ultimately a commercial enterprise has to chose if that price is worth paying or not.

scarletjim

So her adding a sentence to remind me about banking charges to the email which she had to send anyway has a cost to the solicitor? It would have taken about 30 seconds to type that!

Yorkie1

Frankly I think you are being unreasonable.

I don't know the statistics but I doubt that this situation is common. You yourself call it 'special'. How many different, special, unique / uncommon situations would you expect the solicitor to second-guess 6 months in advance and warn you about in the initial client care letter? There must be an almost infinite number of scenarios.

After all, you didn't think to ask them either.

I suspect it will also have been covered in the quote which will have set out charges such as bank transfers.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing ...

Andystriker

You said you were expecting to exchange contracts a couple of weeks ago so you sent the money to your Solicitor as you knew you were on holiday.

And if you knew there was a CHAPS fee by the bank for returning the money you would not have done it, risking not exchanging contracts.

I find it hard to believe that if you were serious about buying the property, you would have risked losing the purchase by not letting your Solicitor have cleared funds to enable them to proceed.

The fact is, you were told in the Client Care letter, that any Bank transfer done by the Solicitor would involve a fee charged by the bank. It's not your Solicitors fault if you chose not to read that letter.

If you never had a client care letter, then you have a complaint, and should go back to the Solicitor and say things like SRA to them. However I would be amazed if you did not get the letter.

We can argue and you can moan as much as you like, but if you want the money by Bank Transfer then the Solicitor is right to pass the charge from his bank onto you.

Final tip,

Any documents you get from your Solicitor, Read them. Then read them again, and if you don't understand them, ask your Solicitor.

Gromitt

scarletjim wrote: »

So her adding a sentence to remind me about banking charges to the email which she had to send anyway has a cost to the solicitor? It would have taken about 30 seconds to type that!

If someone expensive (like a solicitor) kept telling me things I already knew, then I'd be reporting them for unfair practices, considering they are charging me by the hour.

Lets assume the solicitor is charged out to you at £100/hour. If it took her a minute to type the additional sentence, that would cost you an additional £1.66. So yes, there's a cost (unless of course there's a fix cost per email, the last solicitor I used said an email was £15 as long as it took less than 10 minutes, and chargeable in 10 minute intervals after that)

InsideInsurance

Gromitt wrote: »

Lets assume the solicitor is charged out to you at £100/hour. If it took her a minute to type the additional sentence, that would cost you an additional £1.66. So yes, there's a cost (unless of course there's a fix cost per email, the last solicitor I used said an email was £15 as long as it took less than 10 minutes, and chargeable in 10 minute intervals after that)

If they only charged £100/hr theyd be very busy and soon be upping their rates!

Many solicitors do charge flat fees for things like emails, letters, telephone calls etc both for sending and receiving unless they are excessively long. Stops getting into silly discussions over if it really did take them 11 minutes 12 seconds to read your email, get the file, check something, write the reply, reread the reply, press send, file a copy in the file, put the file back etc

scarletjim

Well, obviously general opinion on here says I'm being unreasonable so in a way I'm glad, at least I'm not being taken for a mug.

Just to clarify something - whilst on holiday, I could have done the transfer of money just as easily from there, I just thought I might as well get it out of the way before that so I could relax given that the exchange was supposedly no more than a couple of days away, and when the solicitor asked for it, I never realised that there would be a charge if I later needed it returned.

But ok, if that's the way these things work then fair enough. Thanks for everyone's input - at least I'm less angry about it now.

tifnstav

I just don't see why you are even bothering to get your money back, unless you no longer intend to buy the house?

Surely once things get sorted out further up the chain you'll just have to pay the money back to the solicitor again?

How much interest are you realistically going to achieve on it? Would it be more than you'll earn with your solicitor? They have to pay you any interest over £20 which it earns anyway under the de minimis rule.