David Boothroyd
Absymal
Andrew Smith was our solicitor when we moved house last year. He and some of his team were difficult to contact, unhelpful to the point of rudeness, and demonstrated a lack of competence that caused us a great deal of stress and put the move at risk. Given our experience, I am amazed at the positive experiences that others have had, and that anyone can have anything good to say about Andrew. Requests for progress reports were difficult to obtain, frequently defensive, and often involved us being told that they were waiting on us to do things that we had not previously been informed we needed to do. We received essentially no useful advice or support with the process, nor information regarding what next steps would be, all of which made things far more stressful than they needed to be. Attention to detail was poor. On occasion we were given incorrect information (for example that we needed to transfer a six-figure sum before the end of the day, rather than five days hence). This added further stress, and the aforementioned difficulty getting in touch with Andrew and his team to obtain the correct information further compounded this. When the week that we and the vendors had agreed for completion arrived and we hadn't heard anything from Andrew and his team, it took us several days to get in touch with anyone. We eventually found out that Andrew was on holiday that week. The completion date had been communicated to him multiple times, and at no point did he mention plans to go on holiday. This significantly delayed our process. On one occasion we were directly lied to, when a member of Andrew's team told us that the sale of our previous property was being held up by a bank not supplying a figure that had been requested. When we contacted the bank ourselves we were told that no one from Taylor Bracewell had been in contact with the bank in months, but that the bank was happy to supply the requested figure, and did so immediately. When we raised this with Andrew he did not acknowledge any misconduct, and simply said that "The figure has now been received." Three months after moving we received an email from a debt-collection agency, claiming that we owed hundreds of pounds in unpaid fees, interest, and late-payment charges to Taylor Bracewell. When I contacted Taylor Bracewell this was variously explained as an administrative error and a data leak, and I was verbally told that the email was in error and we didn't owe anything. I have since received confirmation of this from the debt-collection agency, but (as of three weeks later) have heard nothing about this since from Taylor Bracewell, nor have I received the paper or email confirmation of this, which I requested and was told would be sent as a matter of urgency.
Legal experts tagged in
this review
A representative from Taylor Bracewell Law Limited responded to this review
Dear Mr Boothroyd We are sorry to read your views on your experience in using Taylor Bracewell. Andrew is a very experienced conveyancer, and as you said, receives a huge number of positive reviews from his clients, so I am sorry if this is not the service you received. I would also like to reassure you that there has been no data leak at all. If you would like to discuss your matter in more detail then please do not hesitate to contact our Practice Manager Roy Sharp, who will be happy to go through things with you. Kind regards Abbie
