Edward Romaine

We received outstanding and understandable help and direction from Edward Romaine

Solicitors tagged in
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Edward Romaine

I've given it 6 months after the end of the matter to write this review, but I still feel it is important to share my experience. I have already taken this through Lyons Bowe's complaints process, and got nothing but a condescending and useless response, under the guise of a "reasoned approach", which as far as I can tell is what Lyons Bowe call blaming it on me, refusing to accept responsibility and taking a condescending tone throughout. My experience with Lyons Bowe was a comedy of errors from start to finish. I wish I'd changed to a different solicitor after their first mistake. Lyons Bowe were the cheapest quote through for the purchase of my first property. As soon as I'd accepted the quote, it immediately increased by £480, as they'd "forgotten" to add the Leasehold Supplement. They immediately said this was my fault as I hadn't told them it was a leasehold property, yet in both the email I sent them and the quote they'd returned, it said it was a Leasehold. While I realise quotes are always subject to change, it changing immediately after I'd instructed them seemed dishonest. When I raised this with my point of contact, I was told "Well if you don't want to pay it, you're welcome to find another firm". Hoping that was a one off, I let paid the additional supplement they'd missed and carried on with the process. My next point of contact was Robert Hann, who was responsible for the conveyancing process. In the email, he sent me documents with hundreds of pages and very little explanation, just that he was happy with them. I'd made sure to do my own due diligence and had a few questions of my own. When I replied to Robert with these questions, I chased for 2 weeks (phone and email) before finally managing to get a reply out of him, that he was going to look into my questions. Having to spend so much time and effort to get even as much as an acknowledgement within 2 weeks left a severely sour taste in my mouth. In fairness to them, this was the only part of my complaint that they upheld and apologised for. Moving to the Exchange and Completion team, I had made it clear from early in the purchase that I was going to be using an ISA to fund a significant portion of the purchase. When I mentioned this, it took them by surprise and further delayed the completion process as they then had to go and do the paperwork. They told me I needed to go and get the balance on a cheque (I didn't know how the process worked so I was entirely under their guidance at this point), but no information about how the cheque should be made out. I was then told that the cheque was wrong and accused that I'd "rushed off and got the cheque before we'd asked for it". I'm not exactly sure how I'd have done that, considering I thought it was all handled by bank transfer between them and my bank so had no idea that a cheque was required until it was asked for! Finally, the day before completion, I had a phone call at work saying that "you still owe £1000 (approx. figure) or you won't complete tomorrow." In the week leading up to completion, they had sent me a Mortgage Statement confirming the final value owed, which I duly paid, and they then sent me a further Mortgage Statement saying the value owed was now £0, only to then call me the day before and ask for another £1000 with the threat of not completing if I don't pay it. They offered no explanation why this value had changed, and seemed unwilling to find out when I pressed them for it. I had since found out they'd confused the Gross and Net Mortgage Advance figures (another mistake on their end!) and entered the wrong value into their system, which was found the day before completion. The complaints process with Edward Romaine involved him trying to offload any blame onto me and making it very clear that, despite me sending him the relevant evidence, "I cannot agree with you that it is a poor process that Lyons Bowe run", mixed in with his final punch that he can't be held responsible for buying a house being a stressful experience, somehow managing to completely ignore all of the points I'd raised through the process, claiming that buying a house is stressful.

Legal experts tagged in
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Edward Romaine

Robert Hann

Jada Panico

Lily Beckett

Max Barnett

14/01/2026

Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback with us. We strive to provide the highest level of service to every client, so we are sorry to hear that on this occasion we did not meet your expectations. We would very much welcome the opportunity to discuss this matter further with you, in order to understand what went wrong and how we can improve in the future. If you are open to such a discussion please feel free to call us on 01749 345756 and ask for a member of our Business Support Team.

Very quick service to have my identity confirmed for land registry requirements. Solicitor had to verify my identity which took 5 minutes. Not too complicated.

Solicitors tagged in
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Edward Romaine

Max Barnett

22/10/2024

We’re grateful that you took the time to leave us a review. Thanks a lot!

Helpful, supportive and very knowledgeable

Solicitors tagged in
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Edward Romaine

The team that dealt with my mortgage are professionals, patient with my inquiries and requirements, and very knowlegeable. The price is fair.

Solicitors tagged in
this review

Edward Romaine

Max Barnett

01/05/2024

Dear Jerome, we appreciate you taking the time to let us know about your experience! If there’s anything else we can help you with, please let us know.