Last minute delay for completion nightmare

[wishIwasonholiday10]

We are supposed to be completing today but our lawyers IT system is completely down and they have been unable to transfer the money. Has anyone experienced something similar and what happened next? Our sellers just rung us panicking as they have had all their stuff packed up and we have loads to deliveries booked to the new house tomorrow (whiteware, furniture etc). We are bottom of the chain - will be liable for everyone’s costs even if it’s our lawyers fault?

Have you spoken to your bank.

How can our bank help? We have already transferred the money to our lawyer.

Why do your lawyers need their IT systems working to transfer the money? The money does not live in their computer, it's in a bank. They should just be able to pick up the phone to their bank and get it done.

Excuse me if I am being naive, but it just sounds like they are being lazy - they don't care about the horrific effect it's having on the chain.

Have you already exchanged or was it supposed to be a same day exchange and complete?

I would be back on the phone to my lawyer and asking them exactly what they are doing about this and the consequences if they can't find a way to send the money today.

I don’t understand it either but they say they are unable to carry out any completions today. We exchanged more than 2 weeks ago.

Ask your lawyer what they are doing about it as the chain is waiting. They should have a plan B after all whilst IT syatems failing might be uncommon power cuts, for example, can happen at any time. This should be a situation they've thought about and have a plan for.

Oh what fresh hell is this? Id be kicking off nuclear with them until they resolve this shit. If the money is in their bank account then they can phone the bank to arrange the transfer. Don't let them get away with fobbing you off.

We had similar once on the lunch time of moving day, we were sat in our van with all our belongings and our solicitor, when chased sounded confused, and replied, oh, you wanted to move TODAY?

So yes, trust me, they can move quickly when they absolutely have to. And this sounds like one of those moments.

They can't just leave it at that. What are they doin to get this over the line? Are they covering costs? Ring them and speak to senior partner or go to their offices

I would be on the phone to the highest partner

There must be a more manual system available.

Whatever the practicalities of what they can and can't do today if their IT systems are down they must have insurance which covers them for this scenario- any costs associated with the chain not being able to complete as scheduled cannot possibly be down to you in this scenario.

Let them know that you will expect them to cover any costs if they don't release the funds today.

Surely they are regulated somehow. I would let them know you will be complaining to their Regulating Body for the lack of back up procedures. iT failure is not an excuse

Our company had a recent IT issue where systems were down, for payments we needed to make we just had to do it manually with the bank, they should also have a disaster recovery plan in place that outlines what should happen in this scenario

Thanks all for the advice! We didn’t get anywhere with the lawyers (couldn’t even talk to someone as they were not answer the phone, just a few email updates).

we still don’t know if completion will take place tomorrow.

it appears to be part of this issue, reported to be a cyberattack:

https://todaysconveyancer.co.uk/technology-failure-impacting-transactions/#

Not sure if other firms affected are continuing to make payments or if it is just ours that is crap.

What a nightmare!
Just to highlight that I have read some terrible cases of fraud where someone pretends to be your solicitor and asks for money to be sent to a new account. These impersonations can be super convincing. Just to be sure no-one takes advantage of the upheaval by conning you in any way, especially if it's all being done by email not phone.
Hope all sorted soon

This was mentioned on another property thread today - is it worth posting in the Legal Board to see if anyone can advise?

i agree they should have a back up plan in place but it feels like the wild west out there at the moment. My solicitor has been appalling today and it's related to their systems, so I actually wondered if there'd been a hack there (there hasn't, they're just crap).

Conveyancer here….
Its CTS that has had the cyber attack (you can find them on Twitter) they provide the systems for lots of law firms and this outage has had on impact on court cases/conveyancing/probate- the lot!
I work at a high street practice and, whilst we haven’t been impacted by this, we could manually process completions BUT we could only do this because we still run paper files and are quite ‘old fashioned’.
The issue with the many firms impacted is because everything is ran through these systems. The won’t have access to client phone numbers, ledgers, important documents that you need ‘on file’ before completion etc. Most of the firms impacted have remote workers and they had not been contacted (on personal mobiles because the systems are down) to be told what to do/what’s happening.
To complete on a matter you must be certain you have the correct monies available and they are unable to check this because they have no access to their ledgers. I understand they are having to go through 1000’s of bank transactions to manual correlate their ledgers. I know of staff twiddling their thumbs at home because they are not office based and can’t access the system and I also know of incredibly stressed office based staff who are doing everything they can to facilitate completions.
Unfortunately there is too much reliance on tech and these firms do not have plans in place for if it all goes wrong!

@PomPomSugar

This is what I feared..

Solicitors, and I'm guessing banks, are under no legal obligation to keep back up systems on paper?

I'm not affected today but I really feel for people who are, there's no consumer rights any more.

I was at my conveyancer last week and they scanned a bunch of paper statements straight into a computer - so will not have any paper records at all I'm guessing?

A pp mentioned going into the office - my solicitors has two security guards who have to put in an access code before you can even enter the lift. Rough part of London though, a big building housing many offices.

I don't want to piss on anyone's chips but you are not out of the woods when you exchange. There's so much left still to go wrong.

Conveyancing needs so much reform but ...where have BCPs gone? Or does no one have those any more?

Thanks all, especially @PomPomSugar for the insights. We haven’t had any updates this morning other than that they are working as hard as they can to get everything up and running. Our firm is quite a large one and I suspect they don’t run a paper system. They are in another city (and probably have a lot of remote workers) so there would be no option to visit them in person even if it would make a difference.

I never dreamt this sort of nightmare would be possible, just assumed the completion would be a formality. We have our rental accommodation until Thurs at the latest and have rescheduled our movers and some of the deliveries. Our sellers are in an even worse position as they have moved out of the property with only the clothes on their backs and are understandably super stressed and keep telling us about their mounting costs.

OP I'm glad you have somewhere to stay

I don't want to cross over issues so...I won't!

But it is absolutely appalling to me that we live in a world where this is normal now, having your entire effing business based on an online system, with the impact on people's lives not having been considered from the start. At my age, one of the most depressing things is seeing workers in their 20s etc who have no idea that there used to be a business world that was better run fir all involved -workers, customers, everyone.

Sorry OP, I'll stop talking as I can't even fathom how you must be feeling.

@wishIwasonholiday10 im affected by this too.
supposed to be exchanging today - completing Wednesday.
removals booked and paid for and our airbnb as our new house is probate and needs lots of work. Going to lose about £4.5k in costs and the solicitor has just said they’ve no update and can’t do anything
not sure what to do!
have you had any updates this afternoon?

No updates at all this afternoon 😢 We have no idea what is happening or what the likely timeframe for it being resolved is. Not sure what would happen if it takes longer than early next week as our lease is up and our mortgage offer expires at the end of the month too.

Oh my goodness I’m so sorry that sounds insanely stressful 😩
I just cant believe there is no contingency for this sort of thing. It’s stressful enough and then this crap to deal with.
My solicitor has said hopefully it will be sorted at the weekend but who knows……