I used Best Solicitors 3 years ago when buying my first home. The process was slow, which I don't think was their fault at all but I did always get told the same stock phrase when I called them for an update which didn't help me understand why nothing seemed to be happening. Anyway, we got there in the end - however, I was sure I had transferred too much money to them for the purchase (I'd had to do it in several instalments due to banking app limits) but they told me I was wrong. Two years later they emailed to say I had overpaid £2000 and they returned it to me. This was very annoying but at least they did return it I guess!
I recently instructed them for my next purchase and it turns out they are no longer on the Barclays panel, which means you cannot use them if you are getting a mortgage from Barclays. I had no idea (I had a Barclays mortgage last time as well) and had already made my first payments to them and filled out loads of forms before my broker flagged it. They were initially very difficult in response and said they couldn't possibly tell customers the whole long list of which lenders approve them etc and that they couldn't return my money as it was already spent on checks and searches. I was not impressed with this as I had listed Barclays as my lender on my forms and they did not take payment to begin the searches until 3 days later so I felt they should have checked the forms first and told me that Barclays won't work with them any more. I instructed new solicitors, who offered to see if they could use any of the searches to save me paying for them a second time - when I then asked Best Solicitors which searches they had done, suddenly they agreed to refund all my money except for their onboarding fees (which is fair enough). So either they hadn't actually done any searches yet but were just going to keep my money OR they had, but then were embarrassed when I pointed out they should have checked my forms first so they refunded it anyway.
Either way, it has been a frustrating experience. I am grateful for the refund but wanted to flag the Barclays issue to future customers.
