First, the positives…
1) The property exchanged and completed at the END of the LAST DAY of the buyer’s mortgage offer, so at least I have my money.
2) There is no longer a need to use Cavendish Legal Group again.
Now the rest…
Memorandum of Sales document was sent on 22nd February 2022 with Completion on 22nd September 2022. To put that into perspective, that’s 2 days before Russia invaded Ukraine to 3 days after the Queen’s funeral, or nearly double the HomeOwners Alliance’s upper estimate of 16 weeks. In the 30 weeks 2 days of dealing with Cavendish Legal Group (CLG) I have found them to be:
Unresponsive. Asked for confirmation whether my documents were completed correctly multiple times (i.e. more than 5 instances) but with no response. After 2 months of silence, made multiple requests for a status report but with no response. Interestingly, I have emails from the Council to CLC complaining that they had not replied to 4 previous requests for information.
Disorganised. On two occasions, information had been provided and yet CLG sent chaser emails for the same information. I have emails from the council complaining similarly that they had sent requested documents and yet kept receiving chaser emails.
Not acting on information. Documents pertinent to the sale had been sent by the Council to CLG and yet I was asked to chase up the SAME DOCUMENTS the DAY BEFORE COMPLETION. It turned out that CLG had the documents a whole month prior.
To cap it all off, CLG sent a completion letter and a receipt – both still had incorrect correspondence details. This was despite: 1) the correct information was on the Memorandum of Sale and 2) on spotting their error, I emailed CLG to correct the details.
To date, CLG have refused to send corrected copies of the completion letter and receipt.
In conclusion, my impression of Cavendish Legal Group is of a firm with serious failings in responsiveness, performance and organisation. Despite listing my grievances to the Solicitor, Conveyancing Manager and Managing Partner and stating my intention to make a formal complaint, there were no changes to their behaviour. They were either clueless about their failures or, as I suspect, they just didn’t care.