In a nutshell, we had an offer on a house accepted in January. It's a slow market so we moved into rented to keep our sale while our sellers looked for something. They found a house around the 25th of May.
Fast forward to now. We need to get a school move form in 10 days before term ends so our solicitor proposed exchanging this week. We sorted out our mortgage promptly after our offer was accepted so the offer expires on the 9th of August. So again 2-3 weeks ago we proposed completing on or before the 9th (for our convenience).
This evening we've found out that their solicitor (who hasn't answered our solicitors emails, phone calls or faxes for the last 3 weeks) hasn't been passing on dates to the sellers (thankfully I'd primed the EA who has). In fact before the sellers took a week's holiday last week they spoke to her to see if there was anything they needed to do before going off, and told her yo ring on their mobile if anything came up. They got back to find an answer phone message at home asking for an advance so she could start the searches on their purchase. They are not impressed. But obviously they may not want to exchange on their sale if they haven't had the paperwork back on their purchase.
I know this is not all about me and that solicitors are busy but.... At least answer the phone and let us know that you are massively behind on things. Starting searches 6 weeks after offer accepted ? Not getting a cheque in advance to cover searches ? Even when the sellers asked if you needed anything ?
I'm a little miffed to put it mildly. We can't sort out schools, we will have to pay a couple of month's extra rent and if the mortgage company play hard we are looking at a new mortgage application complete with the fees and associated delay in their survey and processing.
There. Rant over. Apologies for putting you through my tantrum post. I'm retiring to a dark room now. To cry !