My

Meh123

Hi, I used to work in conveyancing. Firstly they shouldn’t have been rude to you but I assure you they will be run into the ground at the moment due to the stamp duty holiday and an influx of cases.
when they say ‘due course’ it means when a search comes in or an issue is resolved, they really don’t have control over how long it will take, in fact they don’t even know most the time.
Also try and remember with regards to your queries, depending on their content they may need to send them to the other parties solicitors, the solicitors may then have to forward the Qs to the seller, the seller then needs to find the info and return the info to the sols, it will then be written up and then sent back to your sols....they have no idea how long the process will take as it can involve a few people, but it can take a while.
I assure you that they want your file completed ASAP but try and bear in mind that every time you call/email  unnecessarily it will take them away from the actual conveyancing process. I used to advise people to call every 2 weeks (as a rule they should update you if anything like searches come back etc) but 2 weeks is enough time for there to be movement. 

princeofpounds

Exodi said:

I have a lot of sympathy for conveyancing solicitors.

I don't.

I totally understand that the financial incentive is to process huge volumes of work, and not to communicate at each stage of the process. They don't get paid for it.

However, their communication skills are frequently awful, and OP's situation is a prime example. Their replies were vague and dismissive, and the ultimate response was borderline rude (or even plain rude depending on what the 'telling off' actually involved). If they had expended an ounce of effort into explaining their replies, the OP would never have felt like they needed to resort to multiple enquiries.

It would not be remotely hard for them to craft and copy-past a number of replies that would address most of these queries, even if they cannot give a definitive answer they could actually address some of the underlying concern. For example; 'We expect your searches to be back soon, but that could be a matter of weeks rather than days. Please be reassured that we will contact you as soon as we can progress your file, but for now we are waiting on third party services, which is totally normal in a transaction. You do not need to contact us, we will contact you.'. I'm not claiming that's the best reply ever (far from it!), but you get the idea.

Nor would it be hard to set fair expectations of communication at the outset. Particularly with FTBs they are dealing with people who have never been through a transaction, which is the most important of their lives to date. A simple paragraph would explain that housing transactions can take months, that regular updates are not useful if the file has not progressed, that the firm will be in touch at certain milestones so enquiries are unnecessary etc.

Part of the problem I think, apart from the lack of incentive and customer service ethos, is that they don't really like to explain to clients that the transaction can take ages, they are often waiting on other parties, and they are doing nothing with your file more often than something.

Certainly it's not hard to communicate with them promptly when they are angling for new business or chasing up money, when they have to...

If I was the OP; if it was early in the process, I would sack them. If not, bite your tongue and consider making a formal complaint afterwards, emphasising that the only reason for multiple enquiries was the multiple dismissive responses. The Law Society has a conveyancing protocol with the following obligations:

https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/en/topics/property/conveyancing-protocol

"Agree at an early stage how you will communicate with all others involved and respond promptly to communications."
"Maintain high standards of courtesy and deal with others in a fair and honest manner"
"Ensure that you have managed and covered timing and other expectations and linked transactions such as chains appropriately."

Of course you may not have the energy when you get to that stage. The easy alternative is simply to name and shame them online in reviews.

camden_kid

princeofpounds said:

Exodi said:

I have a lot of sympathy for conveyancing solicitors.

I don't.

I totally understand that the financial incentive is to process huge volumes of work, and not to communicate at each stage of the process. They don't get paid for it.

However, their communication skills are frequently awful, and OP's situation is a prime example. Their replies were vague and dismissive, and the ultimate response was borderline rude (or even plain rude depending on what the 'telling off' actually involved). If they had expended an ounce of effort into explaining their replies, the OP would never have felt like they needed to resort to multiple enquiries.

It would not be remotely hard for them to craft and copy-past a number of replies that would address most of these queries, even if they cannot give a definitive answer they could actually address some of the underlying concern. For example; 'We expect your searches to be back soon, but that could be a matter of weeks rather than days. Please be reassured that we will contact you as soon as we can progress your file, but for now we are waiting on third party services, which is totally normal in a transaction. You do not need to contact us, we will contact you.'. I'm not claiming that's the best reply ever (far from it!), but you get the idea.

Nor would it be hard to set fair expectations of communication at the outset. Particularly with FTBs they are dealing with people who have never been through a transaction, which is the most important of their lives to date. A simple paragraph would explain that housing transactions can take months, that regular updates are not useful if the file has not progressed, that the firm will be in touch at certain milestones so enquiries are unnecessary etc.

Part of the problem I think, apart from the lack of incentive and customer service ethos, is that they don't really like to explain to clients that the transaction can take ages, they are often waiting on other parties, and they are doing nothing with your file more often than something.

Certainly it's not hard to communicate with them promptly when they are angling for new business or chasing up money, when they have to...

If I was the OP; if it was early in the process, I would sack them. If not, bite your tongue and consider making a formal complaint afterwards, emphasising that the only reason for multiple enquiries was the multiple dismissive responses. The Law Society has a conveyancing protocol with the following obligations:

https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/en/topics/property/conveyancing-protocol

"Agree at an early stage how you will communicate with all others involved and respond promptly to communications."
"Maintain high standards of courtesy and deal with others in a fair and honest manner"
"Ensure that you have managed and covered timing and other expectations and linked transactions such as chains appropriately."

Of course you may not have the energy when you get to that stage. The easy alternative is simply to name and shame them online in reviews.

At a minimum a solicitor should update you once a week, even if it's to say there's no news.

Thrugelmir

camden_kid said:

princeofpounds said:

Exodi said:

I have a lot of sympathy for conveyancing solicitors.

I don't.

I totally understand that the financial incentive is to process huge volumes of work, and not to communicate at each stage of the process. They don't get paid for it.

However, their communication skills are frequently awful, and OP's situation is a prime example. Their replies were vague and dismissive, and the ultimate response was borderline rude (or even plain rude depending on what the 'telling off' actually involved). If they had expended an ounce of effort into explaining their replies, the OP would never have felt like they needed to resort to multiple enquiries.

It would not be remotely hard for them to craft and copy-past a number of replies that would address most of these queries, even if they cannot give a definitive answer they could actually address some of the underlying concern. For example; 'We expect your searches to be back soon, but that could be a matter of weeks rather than days. Please be reassured that we will contact you as soon as we can progress your file, but for now we are waiting on third party services, which is totally normal in a transaction. You do not need to contact us, we will contact you.'. I'm not claiming that's the best reply ever (far from it!), but you get the idea.

Nor would it be hard to set fair expectations of communication at the outset. Particularly with FTBs they are dealing with people who have never been through a transaction, which is the most important of their lives to date. A simple paragraph would explain that housing transactions can take months, that regular updates are not useful if the file has not progressed, that the firm will be in touch at certain milestones so enquiries are unnecessary etc.

Part of the problem I think, apart from the lack of incentive and customer service ethos, is that they don't really like to explain to clients that the transaction can take ages, they are often waiting on other parties, and they are doing nothing with your file more often than something.

Certainly it's not hard to communicate with them promptly when they are angling for new business or chasing up money, when they have to...

If I was the OP; if it was early in the process, I would sack them. If not, bite your tongue and consider making a formal complaint afterwards, emphasising that the only reason for multiple enquiries was the multiple dismissive responses. The Law Society has a conveyancing protocol with the following obligations:

https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/en/topics/property/conveyancing-protocol

"Agree at an early stage how you will communicate with all others involved and respond promptly to communications."
"Maintain high standards of courtesy and deal with others in a fair and honest manner"
"Ensure that you have managed and covered timing and other expectations and linked transactions such as chains appropriately."

Of course you may not have the energy when you get to that stage. The easy alternative is simply to name and shame them online in reviews.

At a minimum a solicitor should update you once a week, even if it's to say there's no news.

There's only so many hours in a working week.  Would you be prepared to pay for the service , on a time charged basis,  on top of the standard fee charged?  

Thrugelmir

fleur8 said:

Thrugelmir said:

How many times in total have you contacted them recently?   At least 4 times by the sounds of it. 

Four times in 3 weeks

Exodi said:

I have a lot of sympathy for conveyancing solicitors.

FTB'ers aren't aware of the timeframe to buy a house, quickly become impatient andabsolutely hound solicitors for updates.

A lot of the time a solicitor may be waiting a respone from a search, or the vendors solicitor, or a whole host of things - people just instantly jump to the conclusion that they're just sleeping in the office all day. Should they not have an answer to one of these queries, you can see why they would respond with 'in due course' - they don't want to make promises of how soon the searches may return because they don't know.

Your phrasing of "I simply wanted to know what 'due course' and 'soon' means" could be interpreted as you being a [Insert Profanity of Choice Here]. Your post comes across as a bit entitled to me, to the others in this thread, if the head of the OP's solicitors messged them personally and asked him to stop bombarding them, I'm sure they wouldn't be fussed in the slightest if the OP took himself to another solicitor to start the process again.

I have not hounded anyone and I have always been polite. I'm surprised that you have judged me as entitled from my posts but it's difficult to tell tone over the internet. I haven't at all suggested that the solictors were sleeping in the office all day. I am not waiting for searches - these took four weeks to come back and I did not contact them once during this period. I have been told all the enquiries are back. If new enquiries arose, I don't think it's that hard to type 'we are waiting from responses from the vendor's solicitors' to be honest'.

You didn't contact them for 2 weeks. Some of the contact must have been close together. 

Tiglet2

camden_kid said:

princeofpounds said:

Exodi said:

I have a lot of sympathy for conveyancing solicitors.

I don't.

I totally understand that the financial incentive is to process huge volumes of work, and not to communicate at each stage of the process. They don't get paid for it.

However, their communication skills are frequently awful, and OP's situation is a prime example. Their replies were vague and dismissive, and the ultimate response was borderline rude (or even plain rude depending on what the 'telling off' actually involved). If they had expended an ounce of effort into explaining their replies, the OP would never have felt like they needed to resort to multiple enquiries.

It would not be remotely hard for them to craft and copy-past a number of replies that would address most of these queries, even if they cannot give a definitive answer they could actually address some of the underlying concern. For example; 'We expect your searches to be back soon, but that could be a matter of weeks rather than days. Please be reassured that we will contact you as soon as we can progress your file, but for now we are waiting on third party services, which is totally normal in a transaction. You do not need to contact us, we will contact you.'. I'm not claiming that's the best reply ever (far from it!), but you get the idea.

Nor would it be hard to set fair expectations of communication at the outset. Particularly with FTBs they are dealing with people who have never been through a transaction, which is the most important of their lives to date. A simple paragraph would explain that housing transactions can take months, that regular updates are not useful if the file has not progressed, that the firm will be in touch at certain milestones so enquiries are unnecessary etc.

Part of the problem I think, apart from the lack of incentive and customer service ethos, is that they don't really like to explain to clients that the transaction can take ages, they are often waiting on other parties, and they are doing nothing with your file more often than something.

Certainly it's not hard to communicate with them promptly when they are angling for new business or chasing up money, when they have to...

If I was the OP; if it was early in the process, I would sack them. If not, bite your tongue and consider making a formal complaint afterwards, emphasising that the only reason for multiple enquiries was the multiple dismissive responses. The Law Society has a conveyancing protocol with the following obligations:

https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/en/topics/property/conveyancing-protocol

"Agree at an early stage how you will communicate with all others involved and respond promptly to communications."
"Maintain high standards of courtesy and deal with others in a fair and honest manner"
"Ensure that you have managed and covered timing and other expectations and linked transactions such as chains appropriately."

Of course you may not have the energy when you get to that stage. The easy alternative is simply to name and shame them online in reviews.

At a minimum a solicitor should update you once a week, even if it's to say there's no news.

If they charged you £25 every week for each update/no news, I suspect you'd think that a fortnightly or monthly update was sufficient.

I can only comment on the firm that I work for, but currently it would not be possible to provide a weekly update, particularly if there was no news.  One client has sent in 115 separate messages since September when they instructed.  They completed yesterday (so two months) and are now threatening to go to the Ombudsman as it took so long and messages were not always answered within 24 hours.  Honestly, I don't know how the solicitor in charge of this transaction (and has worked long hours to bring this case to completion) has been able to keep his temper in check.

Surrey_EA

camden_kid said:

princeofpounds said:

Exodi said:

I have a lot of sympathy for conveyancing solicitors.

I don't.

I totally understand that the financial incentive is to process huge volumes of work, and not to communicate at each stage of the process. They don't get paid for it.

However, their communication skills are frequently awful, and OP's situation is a prime example. Their replies were vague and dismissive, and the ultimate response was borderline rude (or even plain rude depending on what the 'telling off' actually involved). If they had expended an ounce of effort into explaining their replies, the OP would never have felt like they needed to resort to multiple enquiries.

It would not be remotely hard for them to craft and copy-past a number of replies that would address most of these queries, even if they cannot give a definitive answer they could actually address some of the underlying concern. For example; 'We expect your searches to be back soon, but that could be a matter of weeks rather than days. Please be reassured that we will contact you as soon as we can progress your file, but for now we are waiting on third party services, which is totally normal in a transaction. You do not need to contact us, we will contact you.'. I'm not claiming that's the best reply ever (far from it!), but you get the idea.

Nor would it be hard to set fair expectations of communication at the outset. Particularly with FTBs they are dealing with people who have never been through a transaction, which is the most important of their lives to date. A simple paragraph would explain that housing transactions can take months, that regular updates are not useful if the file has not progressed, that the firm will be in touch at certain milestones so enquiries are unnecessary etc.

Part of the problem I think, apart from the lack of incentive and customer service ethos, is that they don't really like to explain to clients that the transaction can take ages, they are often waiting on other parties, and they are doing nothing with your file more often than something.

Certainly it's not hard to communicate with them promptly when they are angling for new business or chasing up money, when they have to...

If I was the OP; if it was early in the process, I would sack them. If not, bite your tongue and consider making a formal complaint afterwards, emphasising that the only reason for multiple enquiries was the multiple dismissive responses. The Law Society has a conveyancing protocol with the following obligations:

https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/en/topics/property/conveyancing-protocol

"Agree at an early stage how you will communicate with all others involved and respond promptly to communications."
"Maintain high standards of courtesy and deal with others in a fair and honest manner"
"Ensure that you have managed and covered timing and other expectations and linked transactions such as chains appropriately."

Of course you may not have the energy when you get to that stage. The easy alternative is simply to name and shame them online in reviews.

At a minimum a solicitor should update you once a week, even if it's to say there's no news.

It is not uncommon for each solicitor to have around 150 files on the go at any one time. If they gave weekely updates they would need to average 30 each day, or roughly four an hour, taking a typical business day. 

That doesn't leave much time to get any actual work done.

mrtachyon

Exodi said:

I have a lot of sympathy for conveyancing solicitors.

FTB'ers aren't aware of the timeframe to buy a house, quickly become impatient andabsolutely hound solicitors for updates.

A lot of the time a solicitor may be waiting a respone from a search, or the vendors solicitor, or a whole host of things - people just instantly jump to the conclusion that they're just sleeping in the office all day. Should they not have an answer to one of these queries, you can see why they would respond with 'in due course' - they don't want to make promises of how soon the searches may return because they don't know.

Your phrasing of "I simply wanted to know what 'due course' and 'soon' means" could be interpreted as you being a [Insert Profanity of Choice Here]. Your post comes across as a bit entitled to me, to the others in this thread, if the head of the OP's solicitors messged them personally and asked him to stop bombarding them, I'm sure they wouldn't be fussed in the slightest if the OP took himself to another solicitor to start the process again.

I don't think it's unreasonable or "entitled" for a solicitor to give an estimate to how long things should take. Sure, they may be waiting on searches but considering their position, while they can't promise anything, they should know approximately how long it will take given their experience on other transactions. Something along the lines of:
"We are currently waiting for the response to your LA search, based on our other cases this normally takes X weeks but this is variable and isn't a guarantee we will receive yours in the same timeframe. Please feel free to get in touch again if you haven't heard from us by then"
Simple, then the client goes away for X weeks. Obviously if they kept getting in touch for an update during that timeframe it would be unreasonable.

Beeboo23

If you’re buying through an estate agent you might actually find it quicker to pick up the phone and ask them as mine have been very good at chasing things. 

Just an example but I emailed my solicitor suggesting a completion date and he said he hadn’t heard back when I followed it up. I called up the estate agent instead and she was able to tell me exactly what the delay was with the vendors getting back to me. 

Most of the time if I’ve had a query the agent just calls up the seller and gets back to me within about 10 minutes. I tend to get the official answer in writing from the solicitor a couple of week a later. 

camden_kid

Surrey_EA said:

camden_kid said:

princeofpounds said:

Exodi said:

I have a lot of sympathy for conveyancing solicitors.

I don't.

I totally understand that the financial incentive is to process huge volumes of work, and not to communicate at each stage of the process. They don't get paid for it.

However, their communication skills are frequently awful, and OP's situation is a prime example. Their replies were vague and dismissive, and the ultimate response was borderline rude (or even plain rude depending on what the 'telling off' actually involved). If they had expended an ounce of effort into explaining their replies, the OP would never have felt like they needed to resort to multiple enquiries.

It would not be remotely hard for them to craft and copy-past a number of replies that would address most of these queries, even if they cannot give a definitive answer they could actually address some of the underlying concern. For example; 'We expect your searches to be back soon, but that could be a matter of weeks rather than days. Please be reassured that we will contact you as soon as we can progress your file, but for now we are waiting on third party services, which is totally normal in a transaction. You do not need to contact us, we will contact you.'. I'm not claiming that's the best reply ever (far from it!), but you get the idea.

Nor would it be hard to set fair expectations of communication at the outset. Particularly with FTBs they are dealing with people who have never been through a transaction, which is the most important of their lives to date. A simple paragraph would explain that housing transactions can take months, that regular updates are not useful if the file has not progressed, that the firm will be in touch at certain milestones so enquiries are unnecessary etc.

Part of the problem I think, apart from the lack of incentive and customer service ethos, is that they don't really like to explain to clients that the transaction can take ages, they are often waiting on other parties, and they are doing nothing with your file more often than something.

Certainly it's not hard to communicate with them promptly when they are angling for new business or chasing up money, when they have to...

If I was the OP; if it was early in the process, I would sack them. If not, bite your tongue and consider making a formal complaint afterwards, emphasising that the only reason for multiple enquiries was the multiple dismissive responses. The Law Society has a conveyancing protocol with the following obligations:

https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/en/topics/property/conveyancing-protocol

"Agree at an early stage how you will communicate with all others involved and respond promptly to communications."
"Maintain high standards of courtesy and deal with others in a fair and honest manner"
"Ensure that you have managed and covered timing and other expectations and linked transactions such as chains appropriately."

Of course you may not have the energy when you get to that stage. The easy alternative is simply to name and shame them online in reviews.

At a minimum a solicitor should update you once a week, even if it's to say there's no news.

It is not uncommon for each solicitor to have around 150 files on the go at any one time. If they gave weekely updates they would need to average 30 each day, or roughly four an hour, taking a typical business day. 

That doesn't leave much time to get any actual work done.

150 files on the go - maybe that's why there are so many complaints about solicitors. But I'm not in a position to judge their business model, just saying.