The Conveyancing Blog

I read a horror story recently written by a lady who had entrusted the conveyancing aspect of her house move to a bulk conveyancer. An already stressful situation became much worse thanks to the actions and sometimes inactions of the bulk conveyancer.

The first and probably the biggest lesson to be learnt from the whole sorry experience is that when buying a service you must be very careful indeed. When buying a product such as a specific make and model of washing machine, to an extent you can go to any electrical store and buy that product and it will be identical to that sold by other stores. This is not the case when purchasing a service.

This applies to all professional services whether it be doctors, dentists, accountants or, indeed, solicitors. There are good ones and bad ones in all professions.

In this particular case, the lady in question ignored her Estate Agent’s advice (and she spoke very highly of the Estate Agents in her article) to use one of 2 local solicitors, and she chose to use the bulk conveyancer, partly because they were “slightly cheaper than the local chap”. I am not saying that all bulk conveyancers are bad; there are good ones and bad ones just like solicitors.

Turning to some of the specific problems that she faced, I can say that she would not have faced them had she instructed my firm. For example, her bulk conveyancer was very slow to respond to e-mails and apparently seemed to set her telephone permanently on divert. We pride ourselves here that we answer e-mails as quickly as possible. Sometimes some research is involved before being able to reply but, nevertheless, they are answered quickly. Our telephone divert system is largely controlled by our calendars so that it switches automatically to divert should the conveyancer be in a meeting or out of the office. There is, of course, a manual facility to divert but that is only used when peace and quite is required when, for example, going through a lengthy legal document.

The bulk conveyancer insisted on communicating with everyone by post, even during the recent postal strike. We have been using e-mails as a matter of course for some years wherever possible. Obviously, if there are substantial enclosures then a letter is still more appropriate, although especially in the postal strike we have been sending some fairly bulky attachments with our e-mails to get round the problem.

An issue over an entry on a search was apparently resolved by the lady in question and the person selling the property before the conveyancer’s letter had even reached the other side’s solicitor! There are other issues with unreturned telephone calls and e-mails that were ignored but the final straw came when she found out that her conveyancer had left the firm without anyone from the firm informing her. All in all, it was not a good advert for the profession.

If you are thinking of instructing a professional for a particular service you should ask about the level of service you can expect to receive. For example, with our initial letter we send purchasers a document which sets out how the transaction should proceed, explaining about the draft Contract, searches and how Contracts are exchanged.  It is a policy of our firm to return all telephone calls the same day, if at all possible, or if it transpires it is not possible, then the Client is telephoned by another member of the firm to explain the situation and to reassure them that the call will be returned the following day.

We also have a large enough Team that should any one conveyancer go on holiday or be absent through sickness, then cover is provided by other members of the Team so that your transaction will not be put on hold until your conveyancer returns.

At the end of the day, our very philosophy centers around Client Care. This is borne out by the fact that we send out Client Satisfaction Surveys at the end of each transaction and of those who reply 98% on average say that we are either “good” or “excellent.” On one particular quarter, we were rated as “good” or “excellent” by 100% of those who responded and it was a matter of some personal annoyance to me that it went back to 98% the following quarter!

The moral of the story is that cheapest is rarely the best and that when choosing any service provider you need to enquire about the service itself.

For more information contact Simon Pook on 01635 521212 or simon.pook@clmlaw.co.uk