Countrywide Property Lawyers > Reviews (128)

I think the title of this review says it all really, but ill go into more detail anyway.
We originally decided to go with countrywide, after a recommendation from the estate agent, this was one of the biggest mistakes we've ever made!!

Things started off well, got sent all the relevant paperwork to sign etc, sent it all back as we were instructed to, these were received and processed. Things went rapidly downhill from here. CWPL required a copy of our mortgage lenders valuation report, we sent this back the very next day, to which we had written confirmation that they had received it. A week later, we then get a letter saying that this had intact not been received, and could we send it urgently. This time, sent it via special delivery. CWPL then pulled the ol' "must have got lost in the post" excuse, that was until we proved it had been signed for. This was then miraculously found, and then we were told it would take 48 hours to process, as it was a friday, we thought we leave it until the next week.

Wed heard nothing from them, so by the following wednesday, my wife decided to give them a call, spoke to some random in cardiff, who had no idea about our case, and then proceeded to tell us, there was a lot of paperwork missing, that we hadn't sent back, even though the week before, wed had written confirmation, that everything so far had been received by them. we then asked to speak to someone more senior, to try and find out exactly where we stood with regards to our purchase.

We were then told that additional searches needed to be carried out, and that they required us to pay more money to get these searches done, again we obliged and paid them the money.

Things went down hill further from here, took them nearly 5 weeks to get these additional search results back, our mortgage provider needed some paperwork from cwpl, cwpl in fairness did send it, although this didn't contain all the information our lender needed, so they re sent it. Only problem with this was, they sent the original document, so again it was wrong. My wife then rang the lender to find out exactly what information they needed. She then rang cwpl and told them, they had to write it down as they weren't aware of what they needed to send.

After this debacle, we decided to ring cwpl every day, to chase things up, as this was the only way that results could be achieved. At first they try to fob you off, by blaming the other sides solicitors, then blame us for not sending paperwork back. This got too much, so we asked for the complaints procedure, couldn't believe it when they asked "why?"
We got told the lady that deals with complaints would review our file and call us back, she did, but then she asked what our problem was, and had no idea of our file, this angered us more.

During all of this, we were getting almost daily phone calls from the sellers estate agents, asking for updates, he didn't even ask us what solicitors we were using, he'd put 2 and 2 together, judging by how long things had taken, his words "they're f@@@ing useless!!"

id have to agree

To summerise, unless you enjoy getting no sleep, being constantly stressed, and being told different stories everyday, then by all means use CWPL. Id certainly not recommend them, and we certainly won't be using them again.
Our advice to anyone using them now try and find out who is actually dealing with your case, and when you do ring up, as trust me, you will have to on a daily basis, ask to speak to that person direct. Follow each call up with an email, ensure that you have read and delivery receipts on your email too, and if they don't respond, simply keep re sending the emails, they eventually get bored and respond