Stamp duty holiday stress

user1977

alexwonghk said:

Octothorpe said:

Hmmmm i think sometimes chasing up is needed.

Our solicitors are amazing. Emailed them Saturday afternoon and they responded this evening!

Get emails from them at like midnight sometimes. 

If I ask a question, i get an answer and can then relax as they've stated how long it takes so I know to leave them alone!

My vendor's solicitor....never responded when being chased about stuff they should have sent over,  then said they'd sent it already,  but low and behold it had never been received.  Finally got it 2 weeks later. Ridiculous! But they are a purple bricks recommended solicitor so what do you expect??

If EA hadn't chased them up repeatedly we probably still wouldn't have had it it sent!

Really surprised to find out the solicitor reply to your email during weekend.

I'm not, considering how busy they seem to be at the moment. Weekends are a good time to be able to catch up with work without interruptions from phone calls etc.

Jaybee_16

Irishpearce26 said:

My solicitor have this system, I can track what stage of the process I am in, when they contacted the vendors solicitor, lender etc. When they begun searches etc and when I contacted them. I can access this information when I want.

That's fine as long as the system is updated regularly.

Appointed a conveyancer in November and the first time I spoke to the allocated solicitor was in March when she wanted to exchange and complete on same day. Pointed out that questions I raised in January were still unanswered in March. 
System portal not updated. One month after completion I received notification that they had updated the portal to show the surveys were returned, and we had exchanged and completed. On the four occasions I phoned she was either on another call or unavailable. Never received a call back.

trance_abbey

Octothorpe said:

Hmmmm i think sometimes chasing up is needed.

Our solicitors are amazing. Emailed them Saturday afternoon and they responded this evening!

Get emails from them at like midnight sometimes. 

If I ask a question, i get an answer and can then relax as they've stated how long it takes so I know to leave them alone!

My vendor's solicitor....never responded when being chased about stuff they should have sent over,  then said they'd sent it already,  but low and behold it had never been received.  Finally got it 2 weeks later. Ridiculous! But they are a purple bricks recommended solicitor so what do you expect??

If EA hadn't chased them up repeatedly we probably still wouldn't have had it it sent!

The solicitor that I'm using also regularly emails me at 10 pm or on the weekend - I think they're doing an incredible job and I tell them that regularly.

My vendor is also using a purple bricks recommended solicitor and despite the vendor assuring me that they've sent in all the forms, my solicitor still doesn't have them. It's quite frustrating!

leypt1

Tiglet2 said:

arrows123 said:

Most of the issues with solicitors could be resolved by setting the right expectation. I sold a house in Jan, was completely reasonable, was in no rush but it did start to annoy me that whenever I spoke to them, they’d tell me they had enquiries to send across and they’d do it by the end of the next day then didn’t meet their own deadlines so I had to chase. If they’d told me five days I would have waited five days before chasing.

I agree that client expectations need to be managed better, however clients don't want to listen or don't want to believe what they are being told and will start trying to micro manage the transaction by constantly wanting to know who is doing what and when, and when that fails asking what they can do to speed things up.  Do you know what helps speed things up?  Not answering the phone or email to a client with yet another update.  Clients were told in December and then again in March that new instructions were unlikely to beat the stamp duty deadline and yet still there are demands to complete by the end of June from clients who think their case is simple.  The reason solicitors cannot meet their own deadlines is because they waste large parts of the day on pointless phone calls when they should be working on their files.

Lol. Communicating with your clients is a fundamental part of your job, and if you don't have time for this then it's your firm's fault for taking on too many instructions. 

Our previous conveyancer seemed to think it was fine to take 2 weeks to forward on an email from the vendor to us. We spent 6 months on what should have been a simple, chain free transaction, and ended up pulling out because we just couldn't get the info we needed - it turns out from our conveyancer.

We didn't chase them early enough or frequently enough because comments on this forum like yours put us off as naive FTBs and made us think that 2 months of radio silence was normal and acceptable - BIG mistake.

Our new conveyancer really shows up the old - actually notifying us that search results have come in, forwarding on new info received as it comes in, copying us into enquiries raised, etc.

As a result we haven't needed to chase once. Turns out it's pretty easy to not treat your paying customers like dirt.

Tiglet2

leypt1 said:

Tiglet2 said:

arrows123 said:

Most of the issues with solicitors could be resolved by setting the right expectation. I sold a house in Jan, was completely reasonable, was in no rush but it did start to annoy me that whenever I spoke to them, they’d tell me they had enquiries to send across and they’d do it by the end of the next day then didn’t meet their own deadlines so I had to chase. If they’d told me five days I would have waited five days before chasing.

I agree that client expectations need to be managed better, however clients don't want to listen or don't want to believe what they are being told and will start trying to micro manage the transaction by constantly wanting to know who is doing what and when, and when that fails asking what they can do to speed things up.  Do you know what helps speed things up?  Not answering the phone or email to a client with yet another update.  Clients were told in December and then again in March that new instructions were unlikely to beat the stamp duty deadline and yet still there are demands to complete by the end of June from clients who think their case is simple.  The reason solicitors cannot meet their own deadlines is because they waste large parts of the day on pointless phone calls when they should be working on their files.

Lol. Communicating with your clients is a fundamental part of your job, and if you don't have time for this then it's your firm's fault for taking on too many instructions. 

Our previous conveyancer seemed to think it was fine to take 2 weeks to forward on an email from the vendor to us. We spent 6 months on what should have been a simple, chain free transaction, and ended up pulling out because we just couldn't get the info we needed - it turns out from our conveyancer.

We didn't chase them early enough or frequently enough because comments on this forum like yours put us off as naive FTBs and made us think that 2 months of radio silence was normal and acceptable - BIG mistake.

Our new conveyancer really shows up the old - actually notifying us that search results have come in, forwarding on new info received as it comes in, copying us into enquiries raised, etc.

As a result we haven't needed to chase once. Turns out it's pretty easy to not treat your paying customers like dirt.

We'll just have to agree to disagree.  

At the moment solicitors are swamped with transactions.  They often do not get to decide whether or not they take on many instructions, it is whatever the "firm's" policy is.  There is often a "sales" department whose main responsibility is to get as many instructions as possible for their monthly goals, without any consideration for whether the legal department can handle the work.  Currently with the majority of clients wanting to complete by 30th June, they need to get the work done now, so communicating with their clients has been poor.

My firm has an online system for tracking progress.  It is updated daily, but does not prevent clients contacting us via phone and email in addition to the portal.  

Believe me, I totally get it that clients feel that we should communicate as and when they demand it but there is a fine line between updating and copying clients as and when they need to and being harrassed daily by clients and their EAs who want you to chase all third parties every second day.

Your new solicitor may not have as much work to do as your old solicitor and therefore has capacity to hand hold you through the process.

Most people choose their solicitor based on cost and find out too late that their 'cheap' conveyancing comes at a price - a lack of client contact time.

leypt1

Tiglet2 said:

leypt1 said:

Tiglet2 said:

arrows123 said:

Most of the issues with solicitors could be resolved by setting the right expectation. I sold a house in Jan, was completely reasonable, was in no rush but it did start to annoy me that whenever I spoke to them, they’d tell me they had enquiries to send across and they’d do it by the end of the next day then didn’t meet their own deadlines so I had to chase. If they’d told me five days I would have waited five days before chasing.

I agree that client expectations need to be managed better, however clients don't want to listen or don't want to believe what they are being told and will start trying to micro manage the transaction by constantly wanting to know who is doing what and when, and when that fails asking what they can do to speed things up.  Do you know what helps speed things up?  Not answering the phone or email to a client with yet another update.  Clients were told in December and then again in March that new instructions were unlikely to beat the stamp duty deadline and yet still there are demands to complete by the end of June from clients who think their case is simple.  The reason solicitors cannot meet their own deadlines is because they waste large parts of the day on pointless phone calls when they should be working on their files.

Lol. Communicating with your clients is a fundamental part of your job, and if you don't have time for this then it's your firm's fault for taking on too many instructions. 

Our previous conveyancer seemed to think it was fine to take 2 weeks to forward on an email from the vendor to us. We spent 6 months on what should have been a simple, chain free transaction, and ended up pulling out because we just couldn't get the info we needed - it turns out from our conveyancer.

We didn't chase them early enough or frequently enough because comments on this forum like yours put us off as naive FTBs and made us think that 2 months of radio silence was normal and acceptable - BIG mistake.

Our new conveyancer really shows up the old - actually notifying us that search results have come in, forwarding on new info received as it comes in, copying us into enquiries raised, etc.

As a result we haven't needed to chase once. Turns out it's pretty easy to not treat your paying customers like dirt.

We'll just have to agree to disagree.  

At the moment solicitors are swamped with transactions.  They often do not get to decide whether or not they take on many instructions, it is whatever the "firm's" policy is.  There is often a "sales" department whose main responsibility is to get as many instructions as possible for their monthly goals, without any consideration for whether the legal department can handle the work.  Currently with the majority of clients wanting to complete by 30th June, they need to get the work done now, so communicating with their clients has been poor.

My firm has an online system for tracking progress.  It is updated daily, but does not prevent clients contacting us via phone and email in addition to the portal.  

Believe me, I totally get it that clients feel that we should communicate as and when they demand it but there is a fine line between updating and copying clients as and when they need to and being harrassed daily by clients and their EAs who want you to chase all third parties every second day.

Your new solicitor may not have as much work to do as your old solicitor and therefore has capacity to hand hold you through the process.

Most people choose their solicitor based on cost and find out too late that their 'cheap' conveyancing comes at a price - a lack of client contact time.

Just to clarify, it's not that we haven't had to chase once, it's that we haven't had to query once because our solicitor is proactive with taking small steps to keep us updated, i.e. using the cc and forward functions in her emails, which takes her maybe 2 and 60 extra seconds respectively. This isn't about handholding.

Our previous conveyancer was a partner in a very well-respected local firm, recommended by my BIL as the best solicitor he'd ever had. Don't know what had happened since my BIL used him but he was asleep on the job.

Edited to add: I do have sympathy for conveyancers who are subjected by their firms to extreme workloads, and as much as I appreciate my solicitor, it does make me uncomfortable to see her sending emails at 9pm on a Sunday. From a buyer's perspective, I'd rather be turned down by a firm because they're at capacity, than get my case taken on and then get poor service from an overworked solicitor.

Do you have a union?