Crazy bill from old conveyancer

[conveyancingwoe]

Afternoon all. I got some brilliant advice here a couple of months ago (can't even remember my name change) about our old conveyancer.

Basically he was trying to charge us £7,500 + VAT, plus outlays for straightforward purchase conveyancing.

This does not include stamp duty or anything else, and is JUST for purchase conveyancing - we weren't selling another property.

We are in Northern Ireland which has one of the cheapest housing markets and usually most reasonable fees.

We changed our solicitors after advice from here, he was very very evasive about the cost issue.

BUT immediately asked us to pay him £750+ VAT for the work already done.

He has very reluctantly given us an invoice for this a few weeks ago, but didn't break down the costs - provided a list of services then just the amount (£750+VAT)

He is now threatening to refer us to a debt recovery business!

We never agreed this amount, he won't break it down into individual costs for us and he is being quite aggressive and evasive at the same time.

What is our recourse? Isn't it standard to properly itemise legal bills if demanded? Should we just pay it, or take it to the Law Society NI to look at?

Help! This is such a horrible situation. Plus, in the work that he's done, I think he's made two errors anyway (well either he has or our new one has, but our new one has about forty years experience of conveyancing in the area).

I hate confrontation and am already finding this house purchase stressful enough, so all advice (even if just to pay it and move on) is welcomed. Thanks.

He sounds completely unhinged and incompetent to boot!
Don't let the eejit get away with it.
Well done in not caving though, it's all stressful enough without all this on top!

He sounds a crook. Did he provide a written estimate and terms of business for you to sign? I would write a letter of complaint addressed to the complaints manager of the firm asking for a detailed breakdown as you are disappointed to receive an abortive bill for such an extortionate amount. If it can’t be resolved you will take it to the solicitors complaints at the law society. But you need to prove that you tried to sort it with the solicitors first before going to ombudsman.

@pilates

He did a lot of the work before issuing letter of engagement, then because it was a particularly awful part of the pandemic it took us a few days to review it so I think he’s going for verbal contract. In our defence we had no idea that a perfectly ordinary high street small practice would then try and charge us so much as it’s honestly several times the highest end of local conveyancing charges. Eg we are now paying for a senior partner with 40 years experience in a very long established city firm (so we’re def not just cheap skates trying to get away with paying the least, I firmly believe in people being paid their due) and we’re paying about third to a half of this firms fees.

I believe the letter I sent will be thrown up and chucked in the bin as there’s only two partners of whom the one I’m complaining about is one, so I have very much written it with the view of it demonstrating to both law society and small claims court that I have tried and tried to get resolution. Absolutely prepared to go through both full processes all the way now out of principle.

@HumourReplacementTherapy thank you, you’re so right, it’s such a stressful move anyway, I just spent so much time this week writing this letter out of principle!

The Law Society will take a very dim view that they haven’t provided estimate of fees and terms of business at the outset of the transaction together with details of complaints procedure. You have a strong case, please pursue it. Most Solicitors aren’t like that and they give others a bad name which is what the Law Society are trying to eradicate. Upfront and transparent is what they trying to promote.

out of interest, was the £7.5k based on a % of the value of the purchase? if you're buying a very expensive property then it has some ramifications on cost of insurance and therefore a lot of solicitors charge more for conveyancing of expensiv properties. If you're buying at around £2.5 - £3m that sounds about righ.

Our solicitor wouldn’t lift a finger before we signed & returned the letter of engagement. Even in the middle of a pandemic.

Definitely not 2.5-3m!

It’s an expensive house all right by NI terms, but like I say, all the other quotes were a third of that from very well established firms. I have no problem paying a decent fee because hopefully this is it, our final ever move, but 9k is madness.

But also, one of my complaints which I will take to the law society is that despite frequently asking, they won’t offer any explanation at all as to why the fees were so high. Or what the breakdown of this bill is. Bizarro.

What was the value of the house op? It would be interesting to couch it in terms of percentages to the law society.

What’s the value of the house you’re selling in London, and did the solicitors know details of it?genuinely wondering if they just thought you were minted, and didn’t know the lay of the land over here and stuck the arm in on the off chance you’d just stump up. In any case they’re clearly totally unprofessional.

I have to be honest, all this talk of transparency and help from the Law Society and SRA is the complete antithesis of my experience of them. Google SRA reviews for the real picture, in my opinion they are unfit for purpose and the legal profession should not be 'regulating' itself. I suspect you will be fine though because you did not sign a letter of engagement so the bill will be unenforceable. Once the solicitor concerned realises you will not be bullied they will back down.

@Hexinthecity

I probably don’t really want to get into specifics, but yes it was a nice house in london plus I had ‘flipped’ three houses in terms of buying terrible houses and renovating very strenuously (like a lot of horrible issues no one else wanted to sort) which is really worth it (not in the middle of it ha) in terms of building up deposit monies IF the timing is kind, not setting myself up as some kind of property savant. Which just means that I have actually experienced conveying a lot. So if you know anything about NI houses this means yes we are buying in a very nice address, but actually the house we are buying is such a mess that it was going to be demolished and the banks are utterly horrified. it’ll be two years before we’re in (this is the first time we won’t actually be living in during the work, thank god) and multiple people have walked away from it.

But you are absolutely right, he prob saw we were back from london, buying in a fancy address, thought we were Tim Nice-But-Dim, ripped the face off us. But there are many houses in the area that are actual £££ multiples of our house.

And little did he know of the power of MN!

So OP, whereabouts in Co Down are you moving to?

Ha! It’s actually not County Down! But that probably narrows it down more!

@conveyancingwoe have you made any progress with getting him to back off? Or had any response from the practice partner?