Rubbish solicitors! Delaying on purpose?

[Patience1990]

Have been trying to buy and sell since May. Sale fell through once and re-sold in June. Currently going through Premier Property Lawyers and all they seem to be doing is delaying us.

Our purchase is in an even worse state than our sale.

Claimed they haven't received paperwork that has been sent to them by different agencies 3 times. We know they requested the searches to be completed on the 12th August and told us they would be done by September 11th which seems like such a long time. We have now been told they won't be done until the 29th September. Is there any way to get these done quicker?! They are using a private company do do these apparently. I am so fed up of them messing us around.

I'm 28 weeks pregnant and these delays are pushing us close to our due date.

Can anyone offer any advice?

Are they local to you? Could you take the paperwork in yourselves? Otherwise, what about scanning stuff over?

I feel for you. I guessed before opening the thread that Premier Property Lawyers might be mentioned.

My buyer is using them; he followed advice to not start conveyancing searches and enquiries until he had a mortgage offer. 6 weeks in no replies to my solicitors on progress, zero contact since my solicitors sent draft contracts at the outset. Eventually the estate agent got in touch with the buyer and put a rocket up him telling him he should have been doing stuff concurrently not consecutively. Next day searches started and enquiries booked in. My son is also selling and using same and all going pear shaped.

Sorry no advice. Except choose solicitors/conveyancers carefully. Not much you can do except be aware when you see who others are using.

@snowspider wish we had never bothered with them! They claimed to not have received the draft contracts for ages so had to chase up our buyers solicitors to get them to email again. We had our mortgage offer on the 1st July yet they are saying they haven't received it. Got it sent out again and they are still claiming it hasn't arrived. Completely useless!

Do you think if we got our estate agents to give them a call it might expedite things? So annoyed.

Some estate agents can help to push things, but I suspect it's down to how your conveyancers process their cases.

I'm using them AND my buyer is - I think it depends on which individual conveyancer you get to be honest. Mine is ok, gets things done at a reasonable pace, but is just plain rude on the phone and makes me feel unreasonable every time I enquire about progress. My buyers conveyancer however is awful - no urgency, asked the same enquires a number of times, has messed up some paperwork now causing huge delays.

I won't be using them again!

I agree with PP that you need to be harassing your solicitor to get them to chase it all along too.

Is it too late to change to a proper conveyancing solicitor who can get the job done?

I’m having a nightmare everything been ready since end of July. Except replies to enquiries my solicitor is saying two aren’t answered and their solicitor is saying they answered all ages ago. So annoying ... I could’ve been in weeks ago!! Grrrr

go online. find their top team. email them
with a complaint

last year our solicitors delayed and delayed. turned out our case worker was overworked and stressed and it was not a simple case so she put it off. 15 weeks in i complained to all senior team. i had one of the directors allocated to my case and we exchanged within 5 weeks, which considering was pretty much a standing start, was great.

one thing i did was call the council and ask when searches sent by them - this established that there was an issue with the electronic interface and got things moving.

i was livid so i feel for you

Are you using them through purple bricks? I found PPL totally and utterly incompetent. I had 2 house sales fall through because of them.

Disinstruct them and use someone sensible!

@sanityisamyth yes we were recommended them for some bizarre reason. Will definitely be complaining to purple bricks about them too. I'm so worried things will fall through. They are completely incompetent.

I just don't know how I can get them to get a move on with these searches. All I keep getting is "it's not our fault, it's the council or it's the searches company".

Our local council are telling us they haven't even received contact about the property!

@GU24Mum we are so far down the road now I'm just concerned if I do this the buyer will think we are messing them around and it will take even longer! Plus we have already paid them a deposit.

Maybe cut your losses and change. I will drop my buyer if things slow up again so poor conveyancers are a risk to sales. I'm not buying at the moment so no chain and my buyer is FTB so only a single transaction.

Hi OP, my reply was unhelpfully short and flippant.... but the sentiment wasn't off. Unfortunately there are some dreadful outfits and you've landed up with one.

The estate agents can chase too but ultimately the lawyers answer to you not the agents so you need to be pushy - assuming (which I have done!) the firm is genuinely rubbish rather than that you don't understand the process. Did you find the lawyers or did the agents recommend them? If the matter then they may have a bit more sway than usual. You're probably stick between a rock and a hard place though in terms of whether it's better to disinstruct (pretty unusual but not unheard of) or stick with the current ones.

When they've told you they're using a private company to do searches they probably mean something like Searchflow/Search Acumen which coordinate the process. You could ask for the email confirming what the expected reign dates are - that will also show you when they were submitted! It should only be the local authority search which takes time though that's the most important one.

If you've got any general queries about the process or timings and want a sense check on them, feel free to pm me.

@GU24Mum thanks for the info. Am at the end of my tether with them. I feel like I've basically done all of their chasing for them up to this point anyway!

They were recommended to us by purple bricks and seemed to have a decent online portal. We didn't have any alternative so went ahead with them.

I'll be contacting them tomorrow to ask for the company name and contact details of the third party. They have stated online that they requested the searches on the 12th August but an email from the council last week told me after I enquired, that no party has contacted them regarding the property in question.

They have given me every excuse in the book. Blaming the council, blaming the third party company, furloughed workers etc. When I called them today (and couldn't speak to my conveyancer as she was "busy") I was told that they hadn't even received my mortgage offer in a really condescending tone.

The mortgage offer has been sent to them twice (once on 1st July and again on 31st August) and they are still claiming it hasn't arrived.

this is all dreadful for my stress levels. Am way too pregnant for this.

Tbh anything called 'premier property lawyers' isn't going to be great. I may be biased but you need a decent national firm or at the very least a high standard regional firm as you get what you pay for. I suspect somewhere like that has one or two qualified solicitors in order to call themselves a firm and hundreds of unqualified paralegals doing the leg work un supervised.

I've used ppl 4 times and they've been great every time.

Very much depends on who you get I guess. Am just about to use them again for a remortgage.

Have never used purple bricks and never will.

It is always best to use a firm recommended by a friend/colleague

Not a conveyancing factory

You get what you pay for

I'm a conveyancing solicitor. PPL really are shit I'm afraid.

Not all licensed conveyancers are crap. I work for a medium-sized one with a decent reputation. But when they get as big as PPL, it does seem to go to pot.

Sorry to barge in..
Can you share how long it took for your offer to be refused/accepted?
We've offered the asking price but haven't had an answer in 2 days. Others have offered substantially less but are in better positions. Is the EA using our offer to nudge up other offers?
It's radio silence from the EA who was previously keen as they want to sell our house too.

Sorry wrong thread!!!!

Please ignore

@MinnieMountain tell me about it. Is there anything we can do or say to get them to speed up the searches? Or can we ask them to use a different company?

I'll be lodging an official complaint with the ombudsman after this is all done.

They aren’t solicitors.

we've completed 3 weeks ago, using PPL.
overall OK, started great!! with eway platform showing every progress, no pressure from buyer(purchased end of Jan, his tenancy ends mid August).
come covid, thing slowed down.
not so happy at the last stage, my conveyancer completely ignored my questions(several emails), if isn't relevant to her requests,just ignored them.
my seller used even worse online firm, things went almost pear shape.
we exchanged, next day completed two days before my buyer's mortgage offer expires.
stressful experience, i saved money by using them.
however, i won't advise anyone if they have strict deadline to meet or not straightforward property to buy/sell.