Enact Conveyancing / Halifax - Desperate help

ras9zg

Hi,
Absolutely having an appalling time with the 'free' legal services that Halifax uses. Enact hasn't responded to almost any messages or requests for callbacks, has consistently sent wrong paperwork, or just not sent any at all, and now Halifax has come back after 3 months - wondering about our HTB loan, when that was originally all disclosed, and we had to get sign off from HTB to begin with. No amount of pleading, getting a manager, putting a complaint on the file, has done anything to fix this for us. I am ready to now just pull the plug, unless it is going to cause us significant issues... Can anyone help on below?

1) If we walk away now, could Enact or Halifax hold us to paying anything? Even though it was classified as free legal / we have not yet recieved any completion date or monies? Follow up Q, could we take them to small claims court for the tons of excess SVR payments + other fees we have had to dole out from, and to which nothing has come of it?

2) Do we need to let HTB know we are not going ahead (if we decide to pull the plug) - or can we merely carry on with our current lender? I assume no new HTB paperwork if we just continue on with current lender, as its just a new offer, not a remortgage.

3) I doubt we could complain to Halifax right ? As it is Enact thats causing the issues?

4) Any other pitfalls to be aware of if we cancel now? Thanks!

Tallulah_Chicken

Oh dear. We also had to remortgage with Barclays who used enact as part their free legal work, and it was an absolutely appalling experience, so I'm sorry you are going through this. We lost our slot with our builders it took so long, so I was fuming! (we remortgaged to finance some improvement work). I know you say you want to pull the plug, but the following worked for us in terms of getting things moving: 1) definitely complain to Halifax. They will be paying for this, so they need to know its costing them business. You have no contract with enact so this is Halifax's problem - start asking them to get involved and to drive the transaction. Ask them to pay your excess SVR payments. They won't, but it will get their attention. 2) Enact certainly used to pride themselves on their trustpilot reviews. So write a really bad one. This is what ultimately got it sorted for us - took an hour for a manager to get in touch and it was all done and dusted within three days of the bad review going online. 3) twitter. Start tweeting about it on the hour, every hour and make sure you @ them in to everything. I know its a pain but it only took a couple of days of relentless bad publicity to get them moving. God only knows how they remain in business. It shouldn't be this hard!

[Deleted User]

Hsbc covered the excess svr for my client when their free legals messed up. Put a bit of pressure on the company that introduced them to you and you might get a sympathetic ear

KMK

My sister has now moved her conveyancing to a local solicitor after a dreadful experience with Enact.Barclays recommended them and she is now complaining to them too

She is getting divorced and wanted the mortgage transferring to her name from a joint mortgage with her husband. Not that complicated, but their service was truy awful; missed deadlines, calls not returned, incompetent call handlers, solicitor dealing with the case never available,letter sent to wrong address, massive delays which have stalled her divorce settlement for weeks.Her divorce solicitor tried to contact them and was left on the phone for 20 minutes today on 3 separate occasions simply waiting for someone to answer the phone.

So she is now going to engage a local solicitor to rescue the situation and will never use Enact again.She only wishes she had done that in the first place.Barclays have refused to take any responsibilty for the mess but she intends to complain anyway.Buyer beware!