Awful experience and abysmal service
Conveyancing - I had to make an official complaint about the handling of my case. Not only had it taken an eternity to complete the simplest of cases but a lot of the time you have to be continually chasing Simpson Millar staff to get any action and despite signing up to a fixed fee rate, twice additional charges were attempted to be added.
The original timescales of 4-8 weeks long passed, in fact it took over 6 months to be completed. Throughout my dealings with SM there was conflicting information, no information being passed on or staff communicating with each other and constantly having to clarify with them or find out what was happening with the case.
At one point, 5 weeks passed without any work completed so an email to my case handler was sent, only to find out that she had left so I then contacted someone else, he had left the company too. Who was looking after my case? Throughout all the correspondences, emails and letters there were incorrect information which was very clear as already supplied previously several times, there is an important need to read the emails properly and get things correct but even this very basic of things they could not get right.
After about 6-8 weeks I received an email saying “There was a re-organisation and be assured that all our staff will do everything to ensure a smooth handover of your file.” I then receive an email, which I am having to explain all of the situation again. This is not acceptable, why was there no handover of information so it just felt like back to Square 1 again but already a large amount of time has passed. Some of this information could have been supplied by me weeks earlier if they could be bothered to inform me but that didn’t happen, they just sat on the case and did nothing. It has been misinformation, mistakes, constant delays, constantly changing between staff and fed small pieces of information at a time rather than at once throughout.
If I was a Director I would be embarrassed by the service you give your customers, just look on the TrustPilot reviews, there a loads of bad reviews complaining about your poor, abysmal, appalling service. I thought solicitors were supposed to be trustworthy, honest, show integrity, be transparent and reliable but unfortunately none of these qualities have been shown by SM. The extra pressure and stress they have caused is unacceptable and also cost me hundreds of pounds in lost interest and other costs because of constant delays. I instructed SM because of marketing lies, because you were a national company with a lot of expertise, a fixed fee with nothing else to pay on top and it could be completed very quickly. All are untrue, I’ve waited 6 months for completion, paid more for poor service when locally I could have saved £. The only “national” thing they are, is a national disgrace. Their level of incompetence knows no bounds, one of my most awful experiences of my life at an already very stressful time. I was completely mis-sold your services, promised lots and delivered little. This was an absolute, incompetent shambles.