Is anyone else being pushed into choosing Reeds Rains conveyancing services?

Parkerfly

Just an update for anyone following this thread.

I got an online quote from the same solicitors of £462, originally quoted at over £800 for the same service, when I got the original "we have been instructed to act on your behalf" email that was instigated by Reeds Rains.

chesneyoctopus

I expect that the difference between the two fees is the referral fee payable to the agents!

Parkerfly

chesneyoctopus wrote: »

I expect that the difference between the two fees is the referral fee payable to the agents!

According to the email, the solicitor pays RR £250 plus vat on completion, and that comes out of the solicitors own internal marketing budget. :laugh:

milkyways

Our solicitor said the most agents can take as a referral is £300, and £300 + VAT is what our agent takes if you use their solicitor. It was described as 'horrendous greed' by our solicitor. When I told him how much Reeds Rains take as a fee, he just couldn't believe that they were also trying so hard to sell other products to us. Although without saying too much, he described Reeds Rains as one with a bit of a bad rep.

To add insult to injury we are receiving no contact from our agent, no follow up calls as promised. They never ring back when they say they will. So this fantastic service you are promised for their massive fee is just to get you to sign the contract with them.

The week before last our agent said he would ring once a week until exchange of contracts, to make sure everything is going through smoothly. They should be in contact with both us and our buyer, but this just is not happening.

It will take luck for this sale to go through smoothly. The agent should be working for their fee right up to completion, I feel they just wait for it to happen.

We so want Reeds Rains to do a good job for us now, so we can give them a good review. Despite all the things that have annoyed us, they can still do a good job and keep us in the loop, but you have to wonder if they can even be bothered.

milkyways

RR are still not communicating with us, no updates as promised, not so much as a courtesy call to see how things are going.

They are bitterly letting us down, they are not chasing things up for us. I just cannot understand what they actually do for the fee they would get on completion.

We were promised weekly updates until exchange, I can only see them calling once/if exchange happens to make sure they suck up till they get their money.

It is vulgar practise to not return calls, not update, not communicate full stop.

I often drive past the RR shop and I can see our negotiator just sitting there. Whilst they do nothing, our sale could fall through! I doubt they would know until we would have to tell them.

They have put sold on our board, are doing nothing to gain interest in our property should it fall through, it is annoying how they take everything for granted. We are polite to them, only ask for updates, yet they still leave us in the dark.

Stupid this is because if the sale does fall through, they only get a penny from us if they can find us another buyer within the 12 weeks.

I do not rate them at all. :mad: Estate agents really need to change, internet agent next time, it can't be any worse...really it can't!

kingstreet

FWIW when I start a new case, I ask the client if they have a solicitor in mind. If they don't, I obtain quotes for them from three firms and allow them to choose.

None of the firms I would approach pay us any referral fee.

I guess it depends on what you're in it for...?

National estate agents are trying to get;-

selling fee - vendor
conveyancing referral fee - vendor
mortgage arrangement fee - vendor
mortgage commission - vendor
insurance commission - vendor
mortgage arrangement fee - purchaser
conveyancing referral fee - purchaser
mortgage commission - purchaser
insurance commission - purchaser
survey business - purchaser
survey business - vendor.

Plenty to go at there...

My clients have been coming back to me for my 28 years in the business. Some firms are "one hit wonders" who would have little chance of repeat or referral business.

C'est la vie.

milkyways

It is incredible how much more money they want to make from you! It never used to be this way. Our solicitor mentioned other estate agents and that they don't take such a large commission, if any commission at all.

RR seem to be peed off with the fact we didn't go with their solicitor, even saying 'we have no control now' what control do they need? Our solicitor keeps us up to date every step of the way, answer queries in a heartbeat, always ring back within minutes and are only too happy to help.

RR do not even give courtesy calls to ask us how everything is going, we are disgusted with them and are thinking about making a complaint if they fail to communicate for another two weeks.

They put a sold sign on our board as soon as the offer had been accepted, they upgraded our ad to premium listing free of charge to promote their business and sold sign. They lied and said the premium ad had been there from the start, I know this not to be true because I have checked our ad daily since we first went on Rightmove and Zoopla.

We are being lied to and used as advertising since we accepted an offer...I don't even believe this buyer of ours is going to purchase our property, I think it will fall through and RR have just used us for weeks to get more properties on their books.

I think they need to be fully investigated, if they pee us off anymore I will write a letter of complaint to their head office, find out exactly when the premium listing was put on our ad at Rightmove and might even write to Watchdog and ask if we can expose RR when they do a program about estate agents.

To add to all this they tried to push us into their conveyancing by signing us up without our permission, they definitely do lie to us, we have recorded every conversation we have had with them from day one...we will catch them out if they want to play games with the marketing and selling of our home. You don't play games with people's lives like this and get away with it so easily!

People are ripped off by estate agents like you can be ripped off by any dodgy company out there, or cowboy builder. Why the hell do these people keep getting away with it? Perhaps because no one wants to fight them? We will if they let us down till the bitter end.

Parkerfly

Thanks for the update. It sounds like a trauma for you. I`ll post any updates if I have any. Hope it all does go through for you.

milkyways

It is more of a niggle than a trauma to be honest. I'm laughing about it again now after my little rant...we did always expect an offer to be easy come easy go, most first offers fall through. We are not getting our hopes up or allowing ourselves to become excited about the potential move.

We have been very careful not to allow this to cost us too. :rotfl:

We don't trust estate agents through negative experience in the past, they all lie, we expected that. It is the selling aspect and then not an ounce of courtesy once you have a buyer. They forget your property exists, think of it as sold and only concentrate on ones which don't yet have buyers.

Now what are they going to do if our sale falls through? This is where I am more annoyed that we chose RR, because I expect it will by diddly squat until we have to find another agent.

We'll look on the bright side whatever happens, we still love our home and will enjoy it till the day we sell or get in the position where we can rent it out and buy another house. We just don't like estate agents being able to get away with such bad practice.

But karma is a killer, online agents are going to take over somewhat. Selling is all they will have left and a few people 'like us' stupid enough to believe a high street agent with a large fee will do a better job.

I probably feel a little silly for hoping RR would be different, I actually wanted them to be the agent who sells our property and restores our faith in estate agents.

Thank you parkerfly for wishing us well with the sale. If it does all goes through, I'll update and say RR aren't so bad....

Johanna_Millhouse

Hi newbie here, please be gentle. We are will reeds rains and they also tried to sell us a mortgage and solicitor services, we declined this but it was quite difficult. They never stopped mentioning it every time we spoke, it actually annoyed us so much we made sure we used someone else. Now we seem to be stuck in a selling chain with no signs of it moving forward. Can it be possible that they use you for advertising? We also have a sold sign on our board and 8 weeks have passed with no other interest in our property,,, obviously cause it looks sold. I can't get to speak to the manager most of the time because he is out of the office and when i do speak to him he just fobs me off. After reading this thread i'm wondering if the buyer is real, or reeds rains have found a cunning way to advertise sold property to get them more houses to market. 8 weeks and no word from our buyers, not even solicitor can get hold of any info,,, deeply suspicious. I wish we had chosen another agent because we will havve to pay well over 3k on completion yet they dont even do you the courtesy of letting you know how things are going. I sypathise with other here who are in the same boat as we are, just hope we all dont come back here after our slow "buyers" back out of sale! I know we'l be off to another agents after the disappointment . Never let an agent put sold on a board again til it is sold. Good luck everyone,,, i think we'l all need it.
P>S> Reeds rains still mention conveyancing when we ring and say if we chose there solicitor we might have more contact????? !!!!!!!