Find a better firm!!
I used them as recommended by the estate agents and it seemed like it would make things more streamlined and straight forward. The Conveyancers' office was physically located next door to the estate agents, so it should have been.
Everything about how they communicated was poor. From answering the phone, where everyone sounded bored and not once gave their name until I asked, to the illiterate sounding emails I received on numerous occasions from my main point of contact. I generally could work out what she meant but it wasn't always clear, particularly when she included abbreviations she assumed I would know. I do not consider myself to be an unintelligent person, but I do not have a legal background and have limited prior experience of the process. I also know that poorly written emails were received by other people. I listened as my estate agent deciphered one, and had another poorly written one liner read out to me by my flat's management company. I assume the author must be capable of better since presumably she's passed some relevant qualifications, so I am left to conclude it is laziness. I also missed an email asking a question once, it can happen as was recieved at the same time as many that were 'info only'. Not hearing from me, she waited 4 weeks before chasing me, again with a 1 line email and without the history, so I then had to try and go back a month and find the original question. It felt as though she worked from a tick box perspective, along the lines of demonstrating she'd technically sent the information and/or request, then ticked off that she'd chased it etc. I feel she lost sight that her job was not to do a specific small task in the process on one given day, but to facilitate the sale as a whole. Despite constantly saying if anything was urgent please ring me don't email (like perhaps when one's not had an answer to a question for a month) she never once picked up the phone to me unless I'd left a message specifically asking her to. I also asked to speak to her boss on occasion, to try and understand what was going on. He is the only person I interacted with (though only briefly) in 4 months who sounded professional or like he had any interest.
I believe the only reason the sale eventually happened was due to the brilliant contact I had at the estate agent. She and I spent a lot of time resolving issues. For example, the estate agent spoke to the buyers solicitors to clarify what they needed, and then I spoke to the management company to request the information. All of which should have been managed by my solicitors.
There was also zero anecdotal advice from the Conveyancers about issues which weren't technically in their remit, but had been raised by the buyers solicitor where I needed to formulate a response, but wasn't sure how to proceed. On it's own, perhaps those might be reasonable. That they were scared of general off the record suggestions in case I sued, but on top of all the rest of the poor, disinterested service, it just felt like another negative.
The reason I've given 2 stars not one, is because I believe they are inefficient at best, incompetent at worst, but not corrupt.
(For internal use, as I don't believe in the public name and shame of individuals, but my main contact got married recently)
