Cut Price Conveyancing

Here is a cautionary tale that I read today:

I found a very good resource for anyone buying or selling property in England. The firm is called Conveyancing Brokers, and I found a firm of conveyancers through them at a very competitive price. The firm assigned to me performed only adequately for my first transaction but I am afraid the second deal has been a disaster. Buy to Let is part of my business and I was making these purchases as major investments for the future. I need solicitors who are going to perform competently.

The solicitors to avoid are Lawcomm, in Southampton. My buyer's solicitors, my seller's solicitors and all the estate agents involved found that they could not make any progress with Lawcomm. My solicitor rarely picked up the phone, it was usually on voicemail. On my purchase I had to ask for the Lawcomm's bank details three times before I could pay them the deposit. On my sale, they did not send a contract or copy of the lease to the buyers for six weeks.

When I complained my case was passed to two more different conveyancers, and although they promised "I will be dealing with your matter in a timely manner from now on", the problems have continued.

The service from conveyancingbrokers.co.uk is excellent and I should have checked back with them before using the same firm of solicitors. Then I would have known in advance that Lawcomm has overstretched itself after a number of fee earners have left the firm - here is a quote from an internal email that was copied to me!! "because of recent FE's departures from this office, I have had to pick up the pieces for their complaints spending hours and hours sorting them out and knew this would have an knock on effect on my files and clients."