*shudder* Buying a flat in London can be stressful. Buying a flat using Howes Percival for your conveyancing makes the whole process even more stressful than it needs to be!! This company is one of the largest conveyancing firms in the UK, so you might expect them to be decent...unfortunately their large size means individual customers are not important to them, and just getting in contact with your solicitor becomes a very difficult chore! I did not choose to use Howes Percival, we chose a mortgage with HSBC so had to use a conveyancer on their list of approved companies. They were the company assigned to us. The bad parts: * We never actually spoke to a solicitor. Everything was done by paralegals and their assistants. I wouldn't mind this if they didn't make so many mistakes... * It took them over a month from the day I contacted them, to the day they started working on our case. * It took them over a six weeks to respond to queries from the sellers solicitors. The sellers solicitor attempted to call them every day, but they were uncontactable (!) * They made mistakes on our mortgage contract, so we had to wait several weeks for a letter from the bank to confirm extra details they they had missed. * They gave the wrong instructions to our surveyor, so we didn't receive the home buyers report that we paid for (we got it in the end, after I called the surveyor to ask what went wrong...) * Their online system didn't work, so we couldn't check the progress of our sale. I told them several times, but it was never fixed. * I tried e-mails, their online system and phoning...but it was VERY difficult to contact the lady working on our case. They didn't work on anything unless I called to check, so in the last month of the sale, I had to call every day to check how things were going, Eep! I had to be a total nightmare customer because I couldn't trust them! * We were told we would receive an information pack explaining the conveyancing process - this never came. * They made countless mistakes and errors (eg. spelling my name wrong on the contract, leaving blank sections on documents, spelling errors, adding the wrong prices etc.) * They tried to charge us an extra £3,700 two days before completion (it was a fee that should have been charged to the seller, but they didn't read the contract, so tried to charge me for it) * They were so slow that they pushed our completion date back by a month, leaving us homeless for a few weeks. They get one star because in the end...with lots of chasing, we did manage to buy our flat. (yay!!) Now, a month later, I am still waiting for the SDLT forms. Ah well...maybe they will come eventually! The moral of my rant: If you decide to get a mortgage with HSBC, and they assign Howes Percival as your conveyancer, ask them to assign a different conveyancer on their list!! read more

Completely agree with Josy. Our experience was much worse. We started Howes Percival as its a bank panel solicitor. After we appointed them to purchase the property with mortgage, we asked them to do a cash purchase too (indeed we have too much money!). The whole process is a nightmare. The most unbelievable thing is that after legal completion (they sent e-mails to say its completed) of our cash buy property, they came to ask for an additional £1850 from us. We presented all past e-mails with the seller to show that no £1850 is needed and that it was recognised by Howes percival before, even though they did not listen, simply told us that either we pay the £1850, or they won't register title for us. We brought it to legal ombudsman which asked us to complain to their partner first, which we did. So the title was registered. Nightmare does not stop. After more stories with the mortgage property, they informed us that they won't process our case any more, shortly before exchanging of contracts, and also informed the bank that due to "due diligence checks" they won't act on our behalf any more. As a consequence, when we called the bank, they cannot find our mortgage offer on the system any more (indeed we have all the paper mortgage offer from the bank already).... This is still being dealt with but imagine if you are the bank, what would you think and do if the solicitor is informing you that they cannot act for your client any more as a result of "due diligence checks?" Is this the first time to hear that a solicitor can screw up your mortgage offer too? read more

A complete shower of incompetents (just my personal opinion I must stress!)... I would never use this firm to buy a property ever again. It's obviously up to you but, if it was me and I knew someone was going to use them to buy my property I'd request that they use anyone else BUT them. In fact, I'd refuse to sell unless they use someone else. Anyone else! Completely non-contactable to the point of abject rudeness, incompetent (asking questions at the 11th hour that should've been asked months previously), completely non-committal over absolutely anything that could be used to hold them to account, slow, seemingly lazy and generally hopeless (in my humble opinion). As said by the previous reviewer (Josy A), it's quite clear that their size means that your measly £500ish job means absolute diddly squat to them. They assign approximately 3/4 'solicitors' to each case so you can hardly ever speak to the person you spoke to the last time... 4 or 5 phone calls and messages regularly result in absolutely no response - the same is true with emails. What's more, they chase issues once a day when any competent solicitor would do it two or three which leads to further, unnecessary delays. All in all I would rather eat my own arm than use them OR recommend that someone else does. Our completion (due to their mistakes) was pushed back by a number of weeks for no good reason. Utterly terrible. read more

Please do not use!! I was assigned them via Fridaysmove.com - and as much as Fridaysmove was an ok company - the solicitors they use obviously are not. 6.5 months before I completed, hardly any communication. I got most of my information from the seller directly. No 3 months on it seems they didn't send the Notice of Transfer to the insurance company so now I'm chasing this. They have a high turnover of staff.. so I am constantly dealing with one person then the next day I get an out of office to say that person no longer works there! read more

I appointed Howes Percival to act a executor for me and to force my extremely awkward co-executor brother who was using every trick int he book to avoid settling my father's estate, to either play ball or to get him removed. Despite all the information I supplied up front and the assurances that they knew how to handle him and their proposed determinedplan of action, all they could do in 4 months was politely ask him to meet with them to discuss representing him - which he then said he wouldn't do because of the numerous errors and omissions they had made whilst trying to butter him uo. And then he walked away. Meanwhile i had paid £1000 to get absolutely nowhere. And all the solicitor could say was that she was pleased i had asked her to stop work. Completely unbelievable!! Trying to get my money back as they achieved absolutely nothing - in fact it's worse than that - my brother really thinks he is winning now! read more