Slow and poor service conveyancer - complaint?

brainiack

I'll begin compiling a formal complaint, following the firm's internal process initially. Still not sure when to submit that, as don't want to jeopardise existing progress, risking hostile behaviour etc at a critical moment. Could I submit it once completed, as I'd like financial remedy not worthless apologies or expediting at the last minute, damage is already done quite frankly. 

EssexHebridean

brainiack said:

EssexHebridean said:

There are a lot of unrealistic timescales being bandied about on this thread. As a rough guideline we usually suggest the following as rough minimums to manage expectations.
leasehold sale/purchase - 16 - 20 weeks
freehold sale/purchase - 12 - 16 weeks.
the shorter end of those is pretty much the minimum most people should even roughly imagine - particularly with leaseholds where as well as all the other parties involved you also have a freeholder (and a managing agent quite often) and substantially more paperwork to read - all of which has to be read through.  In both cases long chains, issues around mortgage companies, local authorities being slow to respond and additional enquiries needing to be raised can slow things down - lots more too but those are common issues.

Strangely enough, it’s in your solicitor’s interest to get your transaction through as smoothly and swiftly as possible, because until that happens, they don’t get paid. The suggestion that they slow things down through some ludicrous sense of power is just beyond laughable. 

No one has suggested that, except you... My issue is I am doing parts of their core job for them finding rudimentary answers very quickly compared to their snails pace, so why should I pay the full fee. They fail to communicate any update whatsoever and have made mistakes in obtaining the management pack which led to at least 1-2 weeks unnecessary delay due to the wider company's failure to provide cover for them while on leave. Doesn't sound reasonable or competent to me in the slightest, unless I was paying peanuts - but I'm not!!

ButterCheese said:

I'm afraid this is very typical.  You have to make a nuisance of yourself.  Don't be afraid to ring them every day and ask what is being done and what the delay is.  They have the luxury of having people's lives in their hands so they don't feel any pressure until you start nagging them. 

Not quite sure how else to read that, to be honest… 

Busadeano

With my solicitor . When they didnt respond to the sellers solicitor for 2 weeks. I think i have the right to say they are slow. Along with constant phone call to them asking for updates otherwise we get little to no updates. Emails asking questions they either ignore or only answer one quetstion .Spending an 1 hour/ hour and half on hold just to be cut off . Many lunch breaks wasted trying to talk to someone. No one has actually had a conversation with our solicitor just the lower downs. 

If my partner read the reviews before we instructed them we wouldnt never of used them. 

Ill not name them yet . But there has been posts about this firm before 

mlz1413

I am in the same position, we got a chain of 4 buyers lined up the last week of May, all going OK maybe a bit slow but 2 of the buyers had to moved in August so children could go to school in September and only 3 houses went through,  I ended up breaking the chain and moving into rented, which I'm still in.

I blamed my online conveyancing firm, but talking to my buyer she said the Solicitors she used where useless, for example not starting searches when instructed and paid for because they didn't normally start them that early in the process. 

Also the 4th house in chains Solicitors have had 4 weeks holidays between Solicitor and Assistant in 1 week slots.   Same Solicitors didn't ask for the management pack until after searches which was another 2 week delay.

I am now looking at late October to complete.

Looking back the worst service has been from Solicitors and the online conveyancing has actually been normal.

The Estate Agents have said this is the new normal time line, apparently it's a low paid job so they have high quantities of customers. Although I can't verify this, it does make sense. 

The Solicitors that have caused the most issues are a local based company that I have previously used twice for conveyancing.   They also hold my Will as I had a good relationship with them.  But having been on the receiving end of their service I am going to move away from them entirely, completely disgusted with the BS dished out.

Bigphil1474

We agreed our sale in March and moved in August, so 5 months - chain of 3; FTB bought ours, us, our vendors bought an empty property. Our conveyancing solicitor was slow in our view, but who knows how many cases they had on the go and how many needy customers they had. We ended up contacting our buyer and our vendor and agreeing to an exchange and completion date between us, and then all telling our solicitors that was the date we wanted. Went fine from then, made sure we moved midweek just in case though.