Solicitor requesting money 1 year later - Invoice error

bitsandpieces

When my solicitor miscalculated my invoice for a flat purchase, then asked for the extra (under £100) a long while later, I pointed out that this delay was an error on their part and I hadn't budgeted for this. I asked if they would therefore waive the charge as a goodwill gesture and requested that, if they were not willing to do so, they send me details of their complaints procedure so that I could pursue a complaint with them. They waived my charge (though my charge was lower - I suspect processing a complaint might have cost them the money they were wanting).

saajan_12

bricksalad wrote: »

I can see where you're coming from fromtheshires, but I feel it's fundamentally wrong for someone to advertise something at a certain price and then retract that after everything has been paid for.

Was this a disbursement or the solicitor's fee? If the former then it's not really a price they're advertising, your contract at the outset would likely have said you cover whatever disbursements they incur, including whatever the LR fee was. So if the LR fee incurred in the process of conveyancing was higher than quoted, you still owe the actual fee.

However this assumes the solicitors only made necessary / agreed disbursements. If an online submission was agreed and they did not follow this then they'd have to reimburse your losses / pay for the difference.

TBagpuss

I think it would be reasonable to write back to say that as it appears that the underpayment was due to an error on their part and that it as taken then a year to notify you of the mistake, that you feel that they should cover the shortfall.

I think the delay gives you a legitimate cause for compliant, even if the charge is a reasonable one or you were given notice that the figure ight change.

G_M

You need to refer back to the original quote and terms of business.

If they quoted you a figure specificaly for electronic LR fee, then that's what you agreed to pay.

If they quoted a fee for conveyancing + disbursements , then you owe them for whatever disbursements they incurred.

We can't see your contract, and your post does not make it clear.

Thrugelmir

bricksalad wrote: »

Any thoughts on my position?

Solicitors are very effective debt collectors.

davidmcn

This is the solicitor's estimate for what a third party was going to charge, not their own fee. What you ought to pay is whatever the minimum Land Registry fee is for the transaction in question. If it was something which couldn't be done online then it'll be the offline fee. As above, if it been an overestimate then the solicitors would be obliged to refund you (whether you noticed or not).

Marvel1

If you overpaid, would you request it back?

Ebany

I had an email from our conveyancers a month or two after we completed saying they had miscalculated and that we owed them an extra £1000 - claiming they had double counted a rebate that came with the mortgage. As it happens, I pay a lot of attention to paperwork regarding such an expensive purchase, and I couldn't see any way they had done such a thing, so I emailed them back asking them to show me where in the calculations they had sent on my (supposedly) final invoice they had gone wrong. A couple of days later I got another message saying 'Oh no, we did it wrong this time, don't worry, it's all fine'.

Given the service we had received was terrible, I'm not convinced it wasn't an attempt to con me out of extra money.

Tiglet2

Land Registry fees are disbursements - the fees are not set by your solicitor and any quote for disbursements will be estimated. Generally a fee of £135 will be for an online application for a purchase price between £200,001k - £500k. If for whatever reason the application has to be submitted by post, the fee doubles to £270. This happens with First Registrations or where coloured Plans are oversized, or Transfers of Part. It might be that when you instructed a solicitor, the information given at that time meant an estimated Land Registry fee of, say £95, but as the transaction progressed, the fee may have tipped into the next price bracket, i.e. £135 for an increased purchase price and the solicitor failed to adjust their projection.

You may get them to waive the fee but most importantly, if the application at Land Registry is still outstanding, you will not be shown as the owner of the property and the title deeds will remain in the previous owner's name, which could cause problems if you come to sell in the future.