HTB Agent 2 (Midlands & London)

SenseandSensibility

Merrrylyn said:

I am also with HTB Agent 2 - submitted application on 16th September, received query on property address on 28th Sept and responded immediately, received the ATP on 29th Sept which was surprisingly as I thought I'd go back to the end of the queue and had to wait another 6 WD. 

I've heard plenty of HTB horror stories on Twitter (long waiting times etc.) so my strategy was to keep calling them first thing at 9am when their line opens. If you get a good customer service agent on the phone, they'll direct your case to an agent if your application has gone over the service levels timescale. I've had to make a couple of amendments to my ATP (wrongly spelled name, other info not included etc. due to HTB's mistake) and I always made sure I called the next day to talk about my case. Another good thing to do is to include the agent's email address in your response email as they may attend to your email if it's a quick update!

We are approaching exchange and not looking forward to have to do the same with our ATE....

We’re now at the same stage as you, ATP came through last Thursday (29/10) and we immediately forwarded it on to our solicitors. Agent 2’s website currently stipulates a 3 day turnaround for ATE’s, though the main delay for us has been the conveyancing process (instructed solicitors three weeks ago but only just discovered they had requested searches today 🙄), though hopefully it won’t prolong things too much. 

Merrrylyn

SenseandSensibility said:

We’re now at the same stage as you, ATP came through last Thursday (29/10) and we immediately forwarded it on to our solicitors. Agent 2’s website currently stipulates a 3 day turnaround for ATE’s, though the main delay for us has been the conveyancing process (instructed solicitors three weeks ago but only just discovered they had requested searches today 🙄), though hopefully it won’t prolong things too much. 

Our convenyacing process has been so sloooow too, mainly due to the developer's solicitor being extremely slow in responses and complications over the lease  The only advice I have is just be relentless and keep chasing (we had to escalate to the developer via the estate agent about how slow their solicitor was!). Good luck with the searches! Depending where you're buying - ours were instructed quite early on and received within a week.

JayNM

Had a similar experience myself, submitted the application through my broker 4 weeks ago, came back 2 weeks later saying there was some errors, broker corrected the errors and send it back off.
2 weeks later had heard nothing back, asked broker to contact them (broker said number was down, which was a lie...) so i rang them myself, luckily I had been cc'd into the amended application and they escalated my case, received my ATP the next day, they were quite helpful on the phone (after a 3hr wait).