To think solicitors are f***** unprofessional and no other professions would get away with it

[Indigo93]

A chance to rant. Please tell me I am not being unreasonable to feel utterly pissed off and beyond exhausted over this???

After 5 months of attempting to buying home with no chain at either end, we have been "apparently" ready to change contracts since last Thursday but surprise surprise it hasn't happened. So far I have been the one to chase the seller, the agent, the lender and other parties to send stuff back as our solicitor prefers to sit on their bum and wait for days for snail mail. We needed to exchange today in order to not be homeless for a few days due to complications with renting. Today was finally to be the day but guess what?? The vendor's solicitor is "working from home" and has not responded to emails or phone calls all day!!!!! Her team have apparently said they can't do any more. The e. agent can't reach her either.

WT ACTUAL F??!!

How is this professional?!?!?!

How do they continually get away with slow and non-responsive practice!!!

Rant over

Often when solicitors "disappear" it is because their clients have asked them to stall....

That is fair enough if it is the other side's solicitor.

I feel your pain, @Indigo93 When we last bought, we were selling two and buying together. We had the finance to go ahead and buy as soon as I sold my flat. I was looking forward to decorating the new place before we moved in, and also having some other work done. To this day I have no idea why our solicitor coordinated the purchase with the sale of the second property. I asked often enough what the hold up was.

Only discovered that it was our solicitors when I met the sneery estate agent through whom we bought, who asked why I had said I could buy when the first property was sold, when it only went through on the sale of the second.

Soo cross making, so inconvenient. And it turned out the estate agent is the mother of the person we were buying from, sigh. Not such a great introduction to the village.

Most resi conveyancers end up skipping most of a lunchbreak on a Friday and definitely do not have a 2 hour one!

A key is always to be nice to the secretary - mine says she doesn't mind giving a quick chase if the client is nice (a please/thank you is great and a 'hope you are well' in an email goes down a treat - after all we are only human).

You do get nightmare people in a chain (I am lucky that most of my clients are lovely) and whilst people want to move, not everyone in the chain wants the same thing. I once had a chain waiting a week and a half to exchange - everyone was ready but everyone wanted different moving dates and no-one would compromise.

You do get some great stories though with conveyancing and the few funny moments are great - most relate to things left behind or taken by the previous owners. I have had internal doors taken, a kitchen ripped out by a disgruntled ex who had kept a key, a family member's ashes left and I will always remember the 'the seller has left his porn collection and blow up doll' complete with photographs of both (how you manage to leave an inflated blow up sex doll in the cupboard I don't know).

Btw, never go with the agent's suggested conveyancer. Go with a friend or colleague's recommendation.

A late update after a busy day. So the good news is, we have exchanged!!!! FML!!! Extremely relieved as you can imagine. We have asked to expedite completion and we think we can just about work it so we remain under a roof until completion. Literally one more day’s delay and that would not have been the case.

The seller’s solicitor just went AWOL today. No contact or response to calls / emails. A new solicitor from the same firm said he would step in and look after the exchange today after DH and I spent ages chasing the estate agent (who -would you believe it- was on annual leave, and passed us onto his colleague)!

Unbelievably, my solicitor also went on leave today! !!!????@%%*!!

Luckily, the legal assistant at my end took over and was extremely sympathetic. She pushed and pushed for exchange to happen. Even at the very last minute this afternoon as they were both on the phone doing the exchange, the seller’s stand-in solicitor once again raised the possibility of the deposit being paid straight up the seller as “agent” (see my previous update). This would have been an absolute killer, but the legal assistant to her credit said “no, please, we have already discussed this, and they must exchange today” or words to that effect.

Thankfully he backed down and said we could just do it normally (standard deposit), and hence the exchange was able to happen. I could have kissed the legal assistant for putting her foot down on that point!

That was a 5pm and since then there has been much organising, relief and celebration in our household, as well as a feeling of sheer exhaustion.

I will never understand why something so straightforward (no chain either end, vacant newish build) had to be so incredibly difficult, and long (5 months) and how the various solicitors involved in this can justify how they have managed their approach to this work in terms of communication and professionalism.

Solicitors are allowed to go on leave, you know. Yours appointed a competent deputy, so I can't see why you complain about that.

I'm very pleased for you Indigo, what a relief.

She took annual leave, like she was an actual employee with legal rights to do it? The cunt!

Bibesia hardly! No-one in her office could locate her or knew where she was and her colleague stepped in after being pleased with my us through our solicitor.

5 months is long with no chain, no doubt about it. About 3 months is not unusual usually because mortgage offers take a good while to obtain and searches can be slow and there can be legal issues to sort out, insurance policies to buy etc

I am so glad you were able to exchange as it removes all the uncertainty from it. When my daughter first bought very unusually her lender did not send the funds on time so she had to complete on a Monday not the contractual Friday but was staying here at home and so the timing did not matter and she was happy to pay £60 or whatever in interest charges. We still don't know why the lender was so slow at transferring the money on the completion date every one knew about in advance.

Indigo93 thanks goodness!! Enjoy your new house :)

in real jobs, there are managers that organise delegation when people are on leave. or the person themselves does it. This was the first question I asked when selecting a firm of solicitors.

it isnt hard.

Unbelievably, my solicitor also went on leave today! !!!???@%%!!

And? Isn't your solicitor allowed to go on leave?

She wasn't the one that caused the delay (that was the other solicitor going AWOL) and I imagine she had plans / reasons for going on leave and didn't just do it to be spiteful.

Should she have changed her plans for you? (Which may have been impossible, btw.)

A new solicitor from the same firm said he would step in and look after the exchange today after

And you're still complaining?

Anyhow. It's obvious that you're in a very stressful situation and this is did work out. It seems like everything went well (Ultimately...)

I agree with PPs that it's unreasonable to moan about your solicitor going on holiday. Whenever they go on leave, there's bound to be at least one client exchanging contracts. It's often hard for clients to comprehend that they're just one of many clients, many of whom are in equally stressful situations. (I've been a client myself enough times so I have seen this from both sides.)

When a solicitor goes on holiday, there is always someone else to supervise their caseload, and they step in if that is needed. The solicitor's secretary will also be around, and in conveyancing in particular an experienced secretary is able to do a lot of the work themselves.

Indigo, I was talking about your own solicitor's entitlement to go on leave, not the other party's.