Key handover - shouldn't the agent bring them?

[Rhubarbgarden]

Those who've bought a house recently: when you completed, did your estate agent meet you at the house with the keys or did you have to collect them yourself from the estate agent's office?

We are completing on Thursday (thank god) so we can finally move from our uncomfortable temporary accommodation into our new house. Spoke to the estate agent this morning to ask what time he would meet us at the house with the keys, and he told us we'd have to collect them from the office. I am enraged. Probably an extreme reaction, but I can't believe he can't be arsed to bring them down there himself. The office is in a town some miles away, and on moving day we will have enough on our plate dealing with removals, a toddler and a baby without having to make an extra journey. The agent is earning tens of thousands from this house sale, I am irked he can't do this small thing. Is this normal? It's Hamptons, in case anyone is wondering.

We bought through knight frank and they did offer to meet me at the house with keys but we were top of the chain and it was nearly 4 pm by the time money moved up the chain and I was having a complete melt down so I went and stayed at their office for over two hours waiting so I can grab the keys as soon as transaction was completed ! It was cruel sat there looking stupid and staring at the keys in front of me on the table 🥵 so glad I got it same day I heard horror stories where one could be homeless and have to pay for extra storage etc if completion drags over to next day … the removals people reached the house at 2 pm and just waiting forever

We dropped off old keys with our estate agent and picked up new keys with seller's estate agent.

I had to take a gamble on timing - removals were slow so when it got to the time we were to drop keys off (2pm for some reason), DH left with the kids to go to our EA. We knew that the earliest the new owners could get to the house was 20 minutes after he dropped off the keys and we only had 1 car. So I stayed to empty bins, hoover the removal men out of the last room and clean any dirty footprints as well as make sure all instructions for boiler/appliances/bin day etc were in one place.

I was so flipping stressed that day, I could have cleaned 5 houses in that time powered by my nervous energy.

We drove to New town, picked up keys (delayed by our sellers taking their own sweet time) and on to new house. Removals had been waiting over an hour by this point but I did not care as a) they had been so bleeding slow at packing they could wait and b) we had the package that covered any extra hours caused by delays in key pick up.

Having those keys in our hands felt epic. Didn't expect to meet estate agent at new house, glad I went in as the nice lady in the office gave me a hug and told me it was all over and to enjoy the house 😂