Christopher Davidson Solicitors

My daughter was left a large sum by her great uncle. However, the executors of the Will were less than forthcoming with her entitlement. After four years of ‘delay’ , she finally was contacted by the executors who informed her ‘ there was a lot of complications to overcome’ , but now they were near completion and would receive her inheritance with a ‘haircut’ for expenses. Of course, alarm bells started clanging. My daughter managed to finally get a copy of the will through the government website. I contacted most of the solicitors listed at the top of internet searches in Cheltenham, but was very disappointed with the reaction of all of these, some appeared to sympathise with the executors. I discussed this with my daughter and rest of family and we decided to search solicitors recommended by the Law Society. My first call was with CD Solicitors. I was duly contacted within the hour by the wonderful Steve Felts. Long story short, Steve looked at all the paperwork available to him at the time and was able to secure my daughter’s full entitlement with one email sent to the executors. He also was able to inform my daughter that she would be entitled to claim 1 % and then 5 % interest over the time the inheritance had been withheld over a specified allowed time. My daughter, a selfless individual, declined to seek the interest, but received her inheritance the next day. I cannot state how wonderful the entire staff are at this establishment. They have since dealt with family Wills , Power of Attorney’s and buying and selling of property. The amount billed for all of these services have been truly remarkable compared to the inflated quotes by the disappointing solicitors I had initially contacted.

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Steven Felts

I asked this firm to draft 2 documents for me. In fact they drafted one combining the 2 documents and fobbed me off that this was correct. As part of investing the money these documents were needed by the investment bank. Their deputy head of legal insisted the documents should not have been combined. The wills and probate partner at Christopher Davidson was far to arrogant to even consider he might be wrong. They appear to be ranked 12th of 17 locally for wills and probate so one would have thought they would consider the opinion of a large legal department from an investment bank but they would not even discuss it. I would avoid As an aside during my first meeting with this solicitor he was googling to enable him to answer some questions I posed. That should have been a warning to me.

Used this company. Excellent service and advice from Shelby. Nothing was to much trouble as there were a few blips in the process which were handled speedily Thank you all S

We have used Christopher Davidson, Sue Priston in particular, to buy and sell 6 properties over the years, and wouldn't go anywhere else. Sue is incredibly diligent and has saved us thousands in future problems by identifying issues with properties. For our most recent sale, she worked at an incredible pace to get it over the line in record time, always being absolutely lovely to work with as well. Recently, we used Steven Felts to draw up a legal document and he was also incredibly efficient, delivering a deed for signature within 24 hours of briefing. Excellent solicitors all round - we'd never go anywhere else, and neither would any of my family!

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!!

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Andrew Stephen Raistrick