To think that this was unacceptable from solicitors

With conveyancing either pick a firm where you have a personal recommendation or pick one that is convenient for you to visit in person. Proximity of the solicitor to the property or estate agent isn't important (unless you're buying in Scotland/ Northern Ireland where you need somebody who works in those areas where procedures aren't the same as in England & Wales).

Most solicitors are competent working electronically but the ability to go and see them helps if something isn't quite right.

I'm a non-practising solicitor at the moment in a completely different field with an England wide practice.

Solicitors are collectively terrible at taking proportionate action in response to errors. We under/over react. Yes they should apologise. I don't think any real harm has been done (you're not fleeing a stalker /abusive ex and you're not an MP or otherwise well known, so it's annoying and careless and shouldn't have happened but doesn't pose a risk to your safety or a financial penalty). They should be thinking about a procedure for sending one email saying not very much and getting a response to it before sending more detailed info and /or asking you to email them / not taking email addresses over the phone (to reduce the risk of typos) etc.

My sister was the recipient of emails like this. First was a house sale, she did reply to them and said check your email address and call your client for correct email.
Then came a solicitor letter for an arrest and court details. She replied again, and told them you're contacting wrong person. She's ended up changing her email so it's no longer her name and .gmail Hopefully this will stop her getting them again.

@princessposy They've breached GDPR. Firstly write to them and ask for an audit of your case. So detailing what specific data was leaked to the other "Mrs Smith", what steps they have taken to recall and contain the data and how they are going to deal with similar errors in future. Tell them that if you don't get a satisfactory reply you'll report them to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA). You could also push for compensation. Although you've suffered no material loss, it has caused you emotional distress.

How do you know that the mistaken email is actually a “real” email address?

You would need to go through the firm’s own complaints procedure first. Only if you have exhausted that procedure and not had a satisfactory outcome can you take it to the SRA. The complaints procedure should be outlined in the letter of engagement the firm should have sent you before they started work.

I’d be emailing them complaining and pointing out if their attention to detail is so shit they can’t write an email address that is literally the name of their client, how the fuck can you expect them to ensure all the details of the sale are accurate. Add to that sending details of the sale to someone else or ignoring a failed to deliver message. How are you meant to know that they sent you something you didn’t receive and why didn’t they call you if they weren’t getting a response? Sounds fairly shoddy.

Nope. Clients ignore emails all the time. Then, that sort to the first to complain they haven't heard from us quickly enough when they finally reply to us

Wtf are you on?

Its not like OP can use her work email to send personal stuff, that would be deeply inappropriate.

Public sector doesnt equal "work for MI5" we use gmail, vodafone and tesco like everyone else 😄

What super special secure email account do you use to send all your emails?

There are some posters on here who are either just trolling or just bonkers....

I'd have thought that the lack of any response might have made them think that something may be amiss, tbh.

I worked as an estate agent for a few years in the early 80s.

Every firm I worked for had at least a couple of firms of solicitors that they would recommend to clients. None of them took an actual "cut".

However, every one of those solicitors would recommend that agent for anyone who had to sell a property, eg in probate cases and divorces. Funny, that...

Didn’t your buyer chase you about the lack of progress with the sale?

That constitutes a data breach and they are obliged to report it to the ICO. If they haven't done so then you can report it yourself.

Mistakes happen.

It won't have been without consequences at their end.They'll have to fill in a risk management report at their firm and make a GDPR report.

The firm will take it very seriously and they will do something, but they won't necessarily tell you what that something is.

Also, why didn't you chase them? It's your purchase.

Very true, and yet again minimised rather than apologised for in my case.

I’ve changed solicitors before due to their lack of attention to detail. If they can’t get my name right, I don’t trust them to deal with my affairs correctly.

An apology to acknowledge their mistake would be the normal and professional thing to do. Even if the docs weren’t confidential, they’re still pretty important and the other person could’ve replied saying anything and they’d have thought it was you. Buying and selling takes ages so I would be annoyed at the delay. If they don’t pay attention to details, didn’t think it was weird that you weren’t replying, and weren’t bothered about their mistake then I would not have a huge amount of faith in them

YABU - you haven’t bothered to chase once, you presumably gave your email address across expecting an email and didn’t bother to chase.

People make mistakes. Given they didn’t hear from you pointing out that you weren’t getting emails, how were they meant to know?

Sorry to vent OP. Yes, it's both frustrating & affects confidence in them going forward that they've not apologised & reassured you they're on the ball.
Best of luck with it x

Its a breach of gdlr. Send them an email asking what their policy is in such an instance. Send it to the head partner in the practice.

Indeed. I was Divorcing. Abusive exH. Agreed house would be transferred to my sole name. They sent him papers to sign transferring it to his sole name. I became aware (he turned up at my door saying I was a 'mad bitch'). They then did the same thing, 2 weeks later & to top it off, accidentally copied me in to an Internal email saying: 'has she stopped complaining yet?'. Bloody cowboys.

I would feel the same, I take my data privacy seriously, as should they. You could
out in an official complaint. You would then likely get the response you wanted and they will better understand data security is important to customers.