Countrywide conveyancing problems

Scooby2000

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Hi all
Just wondering if anybody has experience with this lot?
My buyer is using them and its a nightmare, a simple no chain sell is taking months and costing my a fortune as Im being re-possessed now.:mad:

Not sure who's to blame, this lot or my solicitor Allan Rutherford, the lack of communication is a joke with Countywide saying its my solicitors fault for not sending documents and my solicitor seeming surprised as they claim everything was sent when requested. Not sure I rate either of them.:mad:
 
we had loads of problems when selling our house. useless solicitors and estate agents and a silly old cow messing the chain up. i feel your pain bro.
 
Thanks its doing my nut in:( I'm trying to find work, have debts mounting and face loosing my house now because of this lot, so stressed I'm breaking out in a bloomin rash every day.

As the people buying are first time buyers and were moving to rented I thought it would be simple, my agent says he’s seen nothing like it. I purchased my house with no problem years ago as a first time buyer, surely with no chain it should be simple.

Took a hit on the price for a quick sale too, it’s been three months or more now when I was told 6-8 weeks! My solicitor is useless at getting back to me and I've had to threaten a formal complaint to get them moving. Still after reading online about Countrywide I'm wondering if my solicitor is actually doing too bad a job, both he and my agent say they spend hours trying to get through to them.
 
Sounds like the buyers are using a much cheapness option to save themselves a penny or 2. These will be one of them call centre jobbies I bet that spend more time trying to sell you a raft of inflated products then doing the actual job they are paid to do.

Tried talking to the buyers? I suspect they would be concerned they are about to loose out on their new home also?

Feel for ya. I was in the same position as you. Once ya get control of the situation the only way is back up. Your not the first to loose all their money so don't feel bad about it. The trick is learning from your mistakes. I don't touch credit with 10ft pole now. Cash only now and Im back in a 70k house hoping to move upto a 125k house. Fair enough I don't earn what I once did but neither do I have the same raft of problems :smashin:
 
I feel for you. Some friends of ours were stuck for 244 days while their seller sorted out his end of the deal! In the mean time, he let the house fall apart, with the roof starting to leak and the oil central heating packing up.

Sorry its all going so bad for you.
 
i was in a chain of 4

FTB - Us - house we were buying - silly old cow

the FTB solicitor was always unavailable and not even in the office on the day contracts were supposed to be sorted

someone above our solicitor told him we were all ready to exchange. so he did. only to find out the old lady at the top hadnt even signed her documents. so, we signed on the monday and house sold. yet above us were messing about. then the old lady decided to try and postpone for 2 months (this was 2 weeks before xmas!) and we had to move out on the friday. in the end we had everything packed up and in a van trying to sign the contracts.

most stressful time ever, especially with a 4 month old baby!
 
Deal first with the immediate and seemingly larger issue. The potential repossession.

Have you spoken to the bank to explain the situation and that you are currently selling the house and just waiting for paperwork to complete? Have you used or do they offer a payment holiday option? This may buy you some time to complete the sale. Banks are interested in getting as much of their money back as possible, the easiest way to do this is let you sell the house and pay off the mortgage. If they repossess the house there's not guarantee at auction the house will reach a price to cover their costs and the mortgage.

Second, get on to countrywide every day. Ask your solicitor to provide you with a log of what was requested and when this was provided by them and vice versa. We had issues with countrywide and ended up getting a few grand back for extra rent payments we shouldn't of made and additional costs.

Thirdly, all the best and I hope it all works out positive for you. :smashin:
 
Deal first with the immediate and seemingly larger issue. The potential repossession.

Have you spoken to the bank to explain the situation and that you are currently selling the house and just waiting for paperwork to complete? Have you used or do they offer a payment holiday option? This may buy you some time to complete the sale. Banks are interested in getting as much of their money back as possible, the easiest way to do this is let you sell the house and pay off the mortgage. If they repossess the house there's not guarantee at auction the house will reach a price to cover their costs and the mortgage.

Second, get on to countrywide every day. Ask your solicitor to provide you with a log of what was requested and when this was provided by them and vice versa. We had issues with countrywide and ended up getting a few grand back for extra rent payments we shouldn't of made and additional costs.

Thirdly, all the best and I hope it all works out positive for you. :smashin:



Hi
Yes been discussing things with the bank since I could no longer afford payments, they held back two months fro me council ling the court date as I had a buyer. The chap says he can't do any more. Not too worried about losing the house at the moment more about the mounting legal costs.
They've actually been very good considering I'm many many months behind now.

Just got off the phone from my polite but clearly annoyed solicitor.
Says theyre basically lying about requests for information and have now sent everything that is required their end and are sending me a contract to sign and send back. Said all the requests for information regarding parking etc I've had are nonsense and them stalling for time as they're not doing anything.
He's sent Countrywide a rather polite but ****** letter emailing me a copy for my file.
Seems the complaints that my solicitor hadn't sent requested documents were false, Coutry wide had sent me these letters requesting details but not my solicitor.

Of course my solicitor could be lying, but its a reputable firm and looking online much of what he says about coutrywide is collaborated with other people ranting on other forums lol. If I lose my house due to Countrywide I will be taking action against them, when I'm back on my feet I'll take them to court if needed.
 
Sounds like the buyers are using a much cheapness option to save themselves a penny or 2. These will be one of them call centre jobbies I bet that spend more time trying to sell you a raft of inflated products then doing the actual job they are paid to do.

Tried talking to the buyers? I suspect they would be concerned they are about to loose out on their new home also?

Feel for ya. I was in the same position as you. Once ya get control of the situation the only way is back up. Your not the first to loose all their money so don't feel bad about it. The trick is learning from your mistakes. I don't touch credit with 10ft pole now. Cash only now and Im back in a 70k house hoping to move upto a 125k house. Fair enough I don't earn what I once did but neither do I have the same raft of problems :smashin:



Cheers
Yeah had a well paid job but got into debt helping family and trying to live beyond my means.:facepalm:
Lesson learnt, no more credit for me unless it’s very short term and affordable or a mortgage.
Luckily I have more than enough equity to clear all my debts and start a fresh.:)
Had a very secure job one minuet and in the space of a day my world collapsed, finding it hard to get a job now too.:rolleyes:
Have enough for 6 months rent then I well and truly up the proverbial, not fun being out of work, all that money I built up disappearing just to pay bills etc been here before but it was a long time ago, forgot what it was like watching the pennies, just glad my Mrs is in work, though saying that, if she wasn’t we'd be a lot better off on benefit and I'd likely not be losing my house. Still, I’d rather both of us had work and pay our way, hate the insecurity and stigma of being out of work.
 
i was in a chain of 4

FTB - Us - house we were buying - silly old cow

the FTB solicitor was always unavailable and not even in the office on the day contracts were supposed to be sorted

someone above our solicitor told him we were all ready to exchange. so he did. only to find out the old lady at the top hadnt even signed her documents. so, we signed on the monday and house sold. yet above us were messing about. then the old lady decided to try and postpone for 2 months (this was 2 weeks before xmas!) and we had to move out on the friday. in the end we had everything packed up and in a van trying to sign the contracts.

most stressful time ever, especially with a 4 month old baby!

Man that sounds a mare, want to have kids myself, Mrs is pushing for it but I want to be as stable as pos first.

@All
Thanks for the replies, the more I look into Countrywide the more of a joke I see, DO NOT GO WITH THESE PEOPLE dread to think how much longer they plan to drag it out for, at least I know whats going on now though.
 
yup. was terrible. we were facing having to move out and nowhere to stay over xmas. all due to incompetent solicitors (actually someone had lied, so not incompetent). i really should have sued the buggers for the stress caused.

yeah, definitely get back on your feet first. the little buggers eat money! also, get stocked up on sleep!!
 
yup. was terrible. we were facing having to move out and nowhere to stay over xmas. all due to incompetent solicitors (actually someone had lied, so not incompetent). i really should have sued the buggers for the stress caused.

yeah, definitely get back on your feet first. the little buggers eat money! also, get stocked up on sleep!!

:laugh::smashin: I want at least two:facepalm:Will mean no more TVs and games consoles for me lol unless I win the lotto. As for sleep, well, nothing wakes me up so the Mrs will have to deal....mind you a good jab in the ribs may work lol.
 
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yeah. we planned on 2 but the mrs was very ill all pregnancy and due to her leaving work and the recession we are a fair whack down from what we had a few years ago. didnt help the new house has been a money pit!
 
When we bought our second house in 1992, we picked one of the cheaper solictors and everything seemed to go okay.

But we got weird things happening -

- the bank asking us for the deeds to which we replied that we didn't have them, our solictor had passed them onto the bank. Eventually the bank gave up.

- buying a gas fire, and the British Gas shop (remember them) had trouble completing the order because our address didn't exist. But they worked around it.

- the water board refusing to provide us with rates bills because our house didn't exist.

Some 2 years later we got a letter from the law society. Our solicitor had been struck off and in going through his affairs they had found all our paperwork, including the deeds in his office - did they want us to complete them - luckily it was free of charge. That explained all the weirdness.

Then suddenly, we popped onto the RADAR and the fun with the incompetent Water Board began - but that's another story.

Cheers,

Nigel
 
We bought our house using them. We had no major issues, sorry. It took about 2 months, but there was no chain as we were FTB buying an ex rental property.
 
Countrywide Conveyancing are absolutely rubbish. I'm not one to generally complain - but what should be a relatively easy case for them has turned into an absolute farse.
 
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All i know fo Countrywide is this: i and my tenant were rehoused due to a leak paid for by insurance.
The flat we were in was one bedroom short - my tenant had to sleep on a mattress in an office room. Mainly though they lied. I found out by mistake that the flat was being charged to the insurance at £8000 a month - i know - and that the owner was being paid £7000 a month by Countrywide. Their fee by the insurance company was separate.

So they are liars in my opinion.
 
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Are the buyers not hounding their solicitors (country wide) to get the sale all tied up?
Try asking the estate agent to have a word with the buyers about country wide dragging it out.

When I brought my second home I used a local solicitors which my aunt has used many times before.
It's so much less stressfull and hassle free to be able to go and speak to the person doing the work face to face as opposed to dealing over the phone and posting paper work off.
 
Countrywide Conveyancing is just a nightmare. you paid a premium price far higher than average conveyancing price with the hope of getting a premium and good service but you only get a mediocre service, bad communication, slow response, slow turnaround........ you don't have direct access to the person managing you conveyancing just a person over the phone reading note from a computer about your update. sometimes you even have a more current update than them and you have to push them really hard before they can act for the service you paid for. terrible.
 
Had a nightmare myself 6 years ago, a no chain sale nearly fell through because of solicitors dragging their heels, in the end it took me going into their office and reminding them that they were working for me, not the other way around, they were less than impressed by my colourful language but it got the right result....
 
I used these without checking ANY references - what a terrible mistake. Emailing or calling was a total waste of time as no-one knew anything, and I rarely received replies in any case. My allocated solicitor was ok so we did limp to the finish line. Since moving in I have had huge problems with the way the vendors left the property and countrywide have been worse than useless. E.g. I told them a building had been removed and received a (rare) reply saying someone had checked the details and there was no mention of leaving garden furniture. You could not make up their utter incompetence.
They are expensive, and useless. I was told one could have 24/7 access to updates online but the system never worked for me despite many complaints
STRONGLY ADVISE TO AVOID THIS COMPANY
 

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