Countrywide Property Lawyers > Reviews (128)

I will do my best to review this company without resorting to bad language, breaking anything or throttling any cats.

When we put our house on the market the estate agent persuaded us to use their 'in house' solicitors, who turned out to be Countrywide property Lawyers. THere have been great mistakes in history, let me list a few:

King Harold, 1066 : "What Arrows?"

Captain Smith of the Titanic 1912 : "What Iceberg?"

Captain Cook 1740: "Don't worry, the natives are friendly"

JeffFromPoole 2006: "OK, that sounds like a good idea, let's go for it."

We were promised weekly updates, by letter and email, swift response to all our queries, efficient service and dedication, we got none of these, instead we got lies, evasion, delays, excuses and incompetance.

Here are some examples:

As you will know, these days you have to have an environmental survey of a new property, as a result of this CWPL decided that there was a problem with naturally occuring Radon gas. - for those of you not au fait with this, Radon is a radioactive gas that occurs naturally around areas based on Granite, i.e. Devon and Cornwall.

It does not occur in Dorset and the survey showed this. we took two days of phone calls to get through to CWPL to persuade them of the wording of the report, obviously they raised the objection either as a delaying tactic or out of malice. THe wording on the survey was completely unambiguous:

"Is the area affected by Radon Gas?" reply "No"

We have a lodger who will be moving with us. he was required to sign an affidavit to the effect that he would agree to vacate our home on competion, which he willingly did. FIVE TIMES!!!!

When the Radon issue was resolved, they again asked for his written agreement to move out. we screamed!

Whenever there was a simple question to be asked did they lift the phone and dial one of the seven phone numbers available to them to contact us at any time of the day or night? No. they stopped work until somebody got hold of them to ask what the delay was.

THey lied when they said that they had posted the contract to us for signing.
They claimed that they had posted them on the Monday for signing Tuesday, on Tuesday for Wednesday, - you get the idea. Eventually the post office delivered the ones posted on Friday (I wonder what happened to all the others?) and we got them back to them for handling by 9am monday morning by special delivery.

At two O'Clock they apparently hadn't had them, until we supplied the tracking number and the name of the person who had signed for them at 08.47 am. - It was the person we were talking to!!!!

- AS yet none of the other copies that they swear they posted has appeared. in all my experience of using the Royal Mail they have never lost anything I posted. -Apparently they only lose mail from CWPL.

When we spoke to our buyer's solicitors he asked who our solicitors were. when we told him his words were:

"Oh F**cking hell! not them!"

we got a similar response from our vendor's estate agent, although, being a very posh rural practice they didn't swear, although the tone of voice was the same.

CWPL are known in the trade as the worst, I am very dissapointed that our estate agents recomended them. I would strongly advise anyone not to use CWPL, you would make fewer msitakes if you did it yourself.

I got the impression that, far from being specialists in property law, they had never done conveyancing before.

Very dissapointing.