How to find out who's liable for our losses

davidmcn

Tahlullah wrote: »

Send a letter for a Subject Access Request (SAR). Enclose a postal order for £10 and ensure you tell them that you expect a response within the legislated 40 day time frame.

You don't even need to do this where it's your own solicitor's file - effectively it's your file, you're entitled to a copy of the whole thing, not just the parts of it concerning you as a data subject.

stator

Indeed, just ask for a copy of your file. But they will probably charge you for it, as they always do.

TeaCosy

Thanks everyone for your advice.

We will indeed ask for a copy of our file and if they ask for a high charge then maybe go down the SAR route.

TeaCosy

Tahlullah wrote: »

The purpose of the SAR is it allows you to ask for copies of all correspondence which concerns you or mentions you. So in this instance, the file for your buyer would be included in the SAR. If you only ask for your file, that is all you will get and you may not see any information regarding communication between the solicitors about you.

The SAR is wider and only costs £10. Go for that over just asking for your file.

Thanks Tallulah, that makes total sense. SAR it is then. Request will be going in the post tonight.

Nicki

Talullah is talking rubbish. As the client you can ask the solicitor for the whole of your file which includes correspondence to and from third parties. You can't ask the buyers solicitor for their file using a SAR because that's protected by lawyer client privilege. Anyway all your interested in is what the buyer or their solicitor said to your solicitor and that will be on your own file.

As you'd have gone ahead anyway even if the risk had been explained in advance though how is this your solicitors fault? Sometimes these things happen and you end up eating the cost. Our last purchase we were due to exchange and complete on the same day with a cash buyer the day before a BH weekend. Her money didn't arrive until the following Thursday (unbeknownst to us she was borrowing part of the money from her brother) so we had storage and hotel costs for nearly a whole week plus stress on top. Yes we were as annoyed then as you are now but 7 years later we're over it!

TeaCosy

Nicki wrote: »

Talullah is talking rubbish. As the client you can ask the solicitor for the whole of your file which includes correspondence to and from third parties. You can't ask the buyers solicitor for their file using a SAR because that's protected by lawyer client privilege. Anyway all your interested in is what the buyer or their solicitor said to your solicitor and that will be on your own file.

As you'd have gone ahead anyway even if the risk had been explained in advance though how is this your solicitors fault? Sometimes these things happen and you end up eating the cost. Our last purchase we were due to exchange and complete on the same day with a cash buyer the day before a BH weekend. Her money didn't arrive until the following Thursday (unbeknownst to us she was borrowing part of the money from her brother) so we had storage and hotel costs for nearly a whole week plus stress on top. Yes we were as annoyed then as you are now but 7 years later we're over it!

Your situation was different as the delay was caused by your buyer.

Yes we would have gone ahead and accepted the risk that either our buyer or vendor may pull out or cause some delay, and would not have expected any recompense, however that's not what happened.

The reason completion didn't occur on the agreed date was because somehow our vendor was not informed of the fact that completion was due to take place on the date agreed by everyone else. She thought that we were only exchanging that day. That can surely only be down to an oversight by one of the solicitors.

I believe that we should expect a certain level of service from professionals who we pay well and trust to do a decent job on our behalf. Okay in hindsight we should have questioned the decision to exchange and complete on the same day but that does not alter the fact that this came about because of a mistake that was neither our nor our vendors fault.

And yes you are right, in seven years time we will be over it.

G_M

How to find out who's liable for our losses

TeaCosy wrote: »

I know that this is how it appears from my posts but be assured that it's not the case. We were very pro-active throughout the process but made a big mistake at the end which I hold my hands up to.

I think you have answered your own question.

Settle into your new home. Consider the financial loss just one more of the costs that arise unexectedly with property purchases, and move on with your lives.

Geoff1963

our belongings were being packed into the removals lorries when my solicitor called to say that our vendor had not realised that we were completing that day.

How did your solicitor discover the vendor was not aware ; and what had made her, up to that point, think they were ?

Our vendors estate agent said that the vendors solicitor had informed our solicitor several weeks before that the proposed completion date was not viable.

I'm with the OP on this. If a solicitor tells me something, I'm going to assume it's true ; rather than trying to work out if it's one of the items on which they only give advice.

I'm often criticised for using e-mail ; but it has the advantage that every conversation is recorded ; which also makes people more careful of what they say.