Hello all,
I know you're all far too busy with your own lives and so on to deal with a random question from a random usually-silent lurker, but could I ask the assorted non-legal experts here to cast their non-legal eyes over the following probably-not-legally-binding complaint I'm planning to send to my solicitor?
In a nutshell, I've been trying to buy a ground floor maisonette flat jointly with my dad for months. It seemed a quick and easy process with no "chain", as we're currently renting and the flat is being sold by executors after the former owner died. Unfortunately, just as we were getting the mortgage sorted, our solicitor belatedly found it was a
freehold flat, and the mortgage offer was withdrawn. We then spent further time speaking to the friendly OAP who owns the freehold of the upstairs flat, and suggested turning both properties to leasehold (becoming each other's leaseholders) in order to make them mortgageable, for our immediate and his/his children's long-term benefit (we even offered to pay his expenses to sweeten the deal for him). However, we've made no progress for months and are now in a ridiculous limbo situation where our solicitor and the OAP upstairs's solicitor both claim the other group is causing the holdups, even though the OAP and his daughters assure us they've willingly signed and returned all paperwork put in front of them.
Backstory over, I'm mulling over the following complaint but crippling insecurity in my own wordsmithery causes me to seek the board's collective opinion on whether I'm being too harsh, too soft, too imprecise, or any other feedback before I email tomorrow (with a printed copy in the post shortly afterward, which I believe is good practice in case they
ignore don't receive the email):
Quote:
<Senior solicitor's name>,
(Prelude: I regret that I have to make my initial contact with you by email, but my busy work schedule and reliance on public transport to get to my workplace (several miles away) makes it near-impossible for me to make an appointment to see you in person during office hours, and I am led to believe by my father that you are frequently "too busy" to entertain telephone calls. Furthermore, I personally find it preferable to correspond this way where I can choose my words carefully rather than speak in haste.)
My name is <my name> and I write to lodge a formal complaint about the quality of service my father and I have received from your firm with regards to our attempted property purchase, initiated by my father with your then associate <junior solicitor's name> more than seven months ago.
Furthermore, I would like to request a summary (preferably in layman's terms) of the current status of this attempted purchase, as I have received little communication from yourselves on the matter. Sadly, my aforementioned work schedule has forced me to burden my father with most of the 'leg work' involved in this purchase, but the two times I have attended your office in person (early June and early October), <junior solicitor> assured me that the purchase would be completed "soon" and "within a few weeks".
Since then, I have only had my father's side of the story, but it seems to me that between yourselves and <OAP's solicitor> (representing <OAP who lives in the flat upstairs and his daughters>), there is reasonable grounds for a formal complaint to the
Legal Complaints Service on the basis of poor service and unprofessional conduct, citing examples such as:
- unreasonable delays
- lack of communication from yourselves to my father and - in particular - myself
- lack of communication between yourselves and <OAP's solicitor> (compounded by your two offices being literally across the road from each other)
- an inability to accurately identify which party is responsible for the delay (both solicitor groups seemingly blame the other)
- refusal to perform your duty of pursuing whichever party is causing the delay on our behalf, instead forcing my father to perform the stressful task of communicating with all the various parties himself
I believe you have had several face-to-face meetings with my father, and I hope you appreciate the stress this protracted affair is causing him. My father is 66 years old and suffers from high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. I have noticed a downturn in his mental and physical well-being these past few months, almost certainly associated with the prospect of losing out on what was the only suitable property in town within our price range due to legal issues outside of his control.
I appreciate you are a busy man, especially since the departure of your former associate <junior solicitor>, but I really must demand you take appropriate steps to draw this matter to a swift conclusion, or else I will have to escalate it to the LCS.
Yours sincerely,
<me>
So, opinions gratefully received?
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