Advice Needed: Post Completion: Solicitor issues

Jareth

Good Morning,

In reply to Red Squirrel - We never received £250 incentive or this was never noted on the statements, and this was not included on any of the financial statements received via our solicitor. We did at the very beginning pay the developer £500 reservation fee and this was reflected on our statement so we were fully aware we had paid that money but still the £250 incentive we have apparently had deducted from our bill was not present on the statements.

My argument is that although nobody is perfect and people make mistakes, we are paying for a service and do expect the highest possible service available. It is also the fact this is now post completion, we have fully moved in the property for a few weeks now, money changed hands, keys collected etc and we then receive an email saying: Sorry, we've made a mistake you now need to pay us £250 as this was apparently wrong applied. I feel it's tough for the developers solicitor as we are now in completion and it's a done deal if that makes sense. They have had over 6 months during contact with our solicitor to realise an incentive should never had been applied.

Also an important factor to note, is that the incentive is for using the developers solicitors which we did not. Our the solicitor has been in contact with the developers solicitor for over 6 months and during this time, nobody has noticed that an incentive should never have been applied. Even when collecting the keys to the property from the developer we briefly explained the grief we have had with our solicitor and the developer even said we should have used their solicitor... so completely aware we were not using their solicitor right up to collecting the keys for the property.

We have been in conversation with a few conveyancers who do agree with our situation and do state that the developer must ensure their financial statements are accurate before completion and that they have had ample amount of time to correct this error.

Mistakes happen. That's a fact of life. I'm yet to meet anyone that's perfect in performing their daily work. Solicitors won't simply write off monies owing because people complain. Not the people to cross either. As they know exactly how to recover the debt. Suggest you send 5 post dated cheques for £47 in settlement.

- This does seem a good idea, thank you.

As I understand it,the Deopment solicitors say it's been applied to the OPs bill.
They say they haven't had it applied to their bill
So the builders solicitors has pocketed this money somewhere and is attempting to get the OP to pay back 250 that they never received.
Correct?

It's hard to explain so thanks everyone for their patience, I would say Taff is in a way correct. On our breakdown of costs there is no £250 incentive but there is the £500 reservation fee that we paid to them so why is the incentive not stated and now they're saying we owe them £250 wrongly applied but there is no evidence to suggest this was ever deducted from our bill.

Sorry if this is all very confusing.

silvercar

Sounds like the developer's solicitors offered a deal whereby if you used them for your purchase (as well as acting for the developers as the sellers), you would get a discount of £250 off the total legal fees. As you did not use them, you should not have had the discount that they then applied to the developer's legal costs.

If you weren't buying a new build, then the sellers normally pay their own legal fees. I don't know if developers expect you to pay their costs or not, but this is where the discount would have been (wrongly) applied.

I would reply that you didn't engage the developers solicitors, so if they applied a discount in error they should take it up with their client ie the developer!

FutureGirl

How much should the bill have been?

How much did you pay to them?