So, I have been trying to work Christopher Davidson since March 2019 until February 2021, and the work started off well and then deteriorated over time. During that whole time, we tried to buy 2 houses and sell our house.
I will not name the people I was dealing with as it is rude for me to name them. So initially we moved to using Christopher Davidson as our solicitor in March 2019 when we found a house we wanted to purchase. And we dealt with a person we will name ‘Solicitor 1’, and I was very happy with the work. The main issue was that the house we were trying to purchase was a house with basement flat below and the tenant refused to move. So, this went over for 1 year, and in the end, we gave up, which was frustrating, but Solicitor 1 done all we could ask from them.
Then in August 2020 we decided to give it another go and try to sell our house and purchase a new house. It started off again with Solicitor 1 and it seems ok, bearing in mind this was during Covid and the Stamp Duty holiday. Email responses were still good.
Then it went quiet for 3 or 4 weeks and I had chased Solicitor 1 about 3 times on outstanding issues. So, I called up the office and asked for Solicitor 1, only to be told they had retired! I was then told Solicitor 2 would then deal with the case. I did not get an apology to say why I hadn’t been informed of my solicitor retiring or even why they hadn’t picked up any of the emails.
Eventually Solicitor 2 caught up on my purchase and sale and sent out an email with all the details. But the responses were very slow, so again I called up and was told Solicitor 2 was ‘very f*****g busy’, which I understood as it was busy due to the stamp duty holiday, but I found it quite unprofessional to speak to a paying customer like that.
The next issue was when we had the survey for our house, we have an opening between kitchen and living room which we are happy to get indemnity insurance to cover. I told solicitor 2 that we will pay for indemnity insurance to cover this, so could they please mention it to the buyer. Solicitor 2 did not mention this and the buyer backed out. Again no apology for not doing as I had asked.
The final issue was when we had a new buyer, it took 21 days for Solicitor 2 to send on the property information I had filled out to the new buyer. By this point it was likely we would miss out on the stamp duty holiday and we had zero confidence in the company or them being able to complete our sale or purchase.
We then went to Davies & Partners in Gloucester and managed to complete on our sale in 6 weeks.
I did put in a complaint with Christopher Davidson in which they apologised and that was the end of it. Personally, I wont be using them again and it was not a good experience.
Also the one time that we replied quickly was when I actually said I was moving to a new solicitor, it was the first time they had emailed within 1 day! And they were very quick at sending the bill as well!!