Solicitors charged extra £95+vat to exchange/complete within 5 days

[Rockinroli]

So we recently sold our house. We knew we would most likely be moving to a rental and so we asked for as much time as possible between exchange and completion. All parties were on board with is. As it happened the exchange kept being held back by the solicitor at the bottom of the chain but eventually it happened 5 days before completion. This caused us some issues and a lot of stress, but the joke is our solicitor then charged us £95+vat for the extra work of exchange/complete within 5 days, even though we were apparently ready weeks before. Am I being unreasonable to complain?

I imagine it will be in the contract that that's the charge regardless of who caused it. You're still their paying customer, and that still happened.

When you agreed to your solicitor's terms of engagement, you should have been provided with a list of their standard conveyancing fees, in which you'd expect this fee to be outlined.

So the question is:

• If you weren't, why not? How did you know what you'd be paying?
• If you were, and it is listed in there, you have no right to complain.
• If you were, and it isn't listed, yes absolutely complain, as their charges aren't transparent.

Jesus, that's crazy! Unless it's explicitly written in your contract/schedule of fees I would complain.

I sold last year and at the last minute the conveyances added 3 fees - one for obtaining copies of paperwork THAT I HANDED INTO THEIR OFFICE AND GOT A RECEIPT FOR, and two others that sounded very official but when I pressed for more information weren't on my initial contract, nor listed in any of their fees schedule. All 3 were removed.