As a beneficiary of an estate, I feel compelled to share my experience with WDS Associates Legal Services Ltd. Since the death of my aunt in 2019, we have been waiting for over four years for the estate to be administered. The UK probate court had issued a grant of probate in April 2020, but to this day, I have not received a final account or distribution of the remaining estate. Your company's address is listed in both the Gazette and the Grant of Probate documentation in connection with the estate of Maria Baumgartner-Watson (Ref: 2019/285/BAUMGARTNER-WATSON/70109). In 2023, WDS informed me of an alleged fraud committed by a former employee. However, such an incident has no bearing on the obligation to distribute the estate to the rightful beneficiaries. The way WDS handled this situation has been and is still extremely disappointing and frustrating for me. Public financial records show that WDS continues to operate with a bank balance of nearly £200,000 and net assets of approximately £270,000. In order to assert my rights, we were forced to hire both a German and a UK-based law firm - a significant effort and additional cost for our family living in Germany. The incomplete and lengthy estate account has also led to serious issues with the German tax authorities, which require a complete inheritance statement. I wish my aunt had chosen a regulated law firm. As things are now, this is certainly not what she would have wanted. With this review, I hope to help others make a conscious and informed decision when selecting a service provider for estate administration. read more

My wife and I used WDS Will Writing & storage services several years ago and paid our annual storage subscription until we telephoned and cancelled the service in early 2020, we were advised to follow this up in writing, which we did. We were not informed of a cancellation fee at this point. We heard nothing from them for a couple of years and then mysteriously we received a handwritten invoice in 2023 which we put down to an admin error so ignored it, We then received another a few months later which now had a 'default' charge added. So I emailed Mike Diamond and stated that there must have been a mistake as we had cancelled years before. We then entered into a frustrating exchange of emails where WDS took on a very threatening and bullying tone. This was quite shocking for a professional legal firm. I asked them to supply the original copy invoices they claimed had been sent to us. They were unable or unwilling to do this. They then started Court proceedings pointing out how bad this would be for us. I am not one to be bullied by anyone. However, I was willing to go to mediation, during this I asked again to be supplied with the original invoices, they then sent over 'new' handwritten invoices which were NOT copies of the invoices they claimed to have sent, presumably because they never existed- they were dated on headed paper which had a later date printed on it!!. To prevent the embuggerance of having to attend court I offered a Goodwill gesture and also paid the cancellation fee (the one we were not informed about and was detailed as 'default' charge) However, Charlie Diamond, who had now taken over dealing with this refused, at which point I said "we will see you in court". To cut a long story short I attended the Court hearing and Charlie Diamond (WDS Representative) appeared through a video link. The case was reviewed and the Judge dismissed WDS claim and found in our favour, he asked if would like to claim any costs, however, in the interests of further goodwill I said no. What I requested was for Charlie Diamond to confirm that the Account was now closed and that having paid the cancellation fees they would send us the original copies of the Wills that we paid for. She agreed. You may think that was the end of it, given the Judgement and the agreement. However, the Wills never materialised, so I emailed Charlie Diamond asking their whereabouts. I received this reply: Dear Mr Henderson, As per the Judges decision, I did confirm the agreement between you and WDS have now been closed and the contract is no longer legally binding. As for your storage facility as the account was in arrears and payment has not been received for such arrears everything is forfeited and destroyed. Therefore, this now concludes all matters, and no further contact is needed. So watch this space as I have given them 28 days to provide our original wills or we will again be meeting in Court, where WDS will have to explain why they did not abide by the assurances made to us in front of the Judge. I have also emailed the Court to inform them of WDS's action and email. If you are unfortunate enough to have dealings with WDS Associates then don't let this company or their unprofessional representatives bully you into anything, their administration and record keeping are so poor that why anyone would trust them to look after their legal documents is a mystery. If they threaten Court Action, don't be cowed, there is a strong possibility that they have no basis and are simply trying to frighten you into paying something you don't owe. As for the goodwill I have continually shown them, by not requesting expenses for a lost day at work and paying a cancellation fee that was not originally requested! Well, this is over and when we meet again in court I will not be so conciliatory. The sooner this area of Legal Services is regulated the better, that way firms like this will no longer be able to trade or behave like this or risk being 'struck off'. read more

Do not use this company! We found them through a charity list, did the will, mailed it back, then... Nothing. For months we are told the will was not received and told we now have to pay lots of fees, despite being told it's all free and we just need to donate to the charity. After months of hassle it's clear this is a scam to get money out of people going through the charity arm. Beyond fed up and they are not threatening to charge us for cancelling the will! read more

WDS Critique Document keeping. I hope that it is better now because when I contacted them to have changes made to my wife's will they, initially, couldn't find it. Fee collection. WDS were very good at this. Since I took out a Gold Lifetime Service Agreement with them I estimate that I have paid them in excess of £3000. Some of these charges were services performed twice, separated by several years, without justifiable reason it now seems. I'm not sure, yet, whether the transactions were legal but they were certainly unethical Accuracy. The changes that my wife required to her will were simple but specific and we had the 'benefit' of a home visit. It took some considerable time for the changes to be passed on to the will writing team and then only after several telephone calls were made to chase up the matter. The will was returned with errors in my daughters names and they seemed unable to get them right. I have several original copies of my wife's will, all bearing the same reference number, I suppose that it was embarrassing to have an accurate sequence recorded thereby indicating the number of errors produced. Complaints procedure. I complained to the managing director twice and the office manager several times but nothing worthwhile transpired and eventually I wrote a poor review on their website. When I gave the office manager information that she requested I was informed that she considered that to be harassment and she was going to set the police on me. Managing director's comment. 'We got there in the end'. This was because I drafted the will and sent it electronically to WDS who adopted it, bound it and then sent it back for my wife to sign. Dispute. I have been in dispute with WDS for some time and at last I thought we were getting somewhere when a Skype conference was arranged. It seemed that while I negotiated in good faith, WDS negotiated for time. Trustworthiness. In my experience of WDS they have proven time and again to be duplicitous. I wouldn't trust then as far as I could blow a battleship. They have a tactic that tries to put the onus of responsibility on the client or the surviving family. WDS is not regulated by any organisation and are unaccountable to anyone. Even now they have refused to make changes to my will even though I have paid for it in my Gold lifetime Service Agreement. Despite any remarks that may be made to the contrary, there are no errors in this text. I have a WDS receipt signed by a man, who it was claimed never worked there. I awarded a single star because I am unable to give a zero star grading. read more

These guys are con artists, plain and simple. Do not trust them with your precious money and future. I have had an horrific experience (no customer service, ignoring my requests for documents for my deceased father), refusing to answer simple questions for no reason. The 'Director' (master con artist) palmed me off on the Office Manager when I started questioning the credibility of the organisation. They are all now ignoring my emails, calls and more importantly my mothers emails and calls (she is their client). Incidentally they ripped her and my father off to the tune of about £7k. I am getting them investigated. AVOID. If I could rate lower I would. read more

Posting review here, due to it mysteriously being removed from the popular search engine I used to post it previously... My partner and I have used WDS associates for the drafting and storage of our Wills and Lasting Power of Attorney. The service provided has been very poor, most notably due to the unprofessional behaviour of WDS Director Mike Diamond. My Will was incorrectly drafted, due to a paragraph numbering 'typo' made by WDS. They sent a corrected draft, on the basis that the previous version could have been 'misunderstood' (not executed in line with my wishes). However, it took nearly two years for them to spot the mistake; essentially leaving my estate exposed, should I have passed away during this period. I therefore requested that the storage fee for this period be refunded to me, which I thought was more than fair to WDS, given the potential consequences resulting from their mistake. In response, Mike stated "you are another of those wanting something for nothing". He then put the blame on me by highlighting that I had signed, and therefore 'approved', the Will (completely dismissing the fact that WDS had a duty to draft the Will correctly). He also stated "AS YOU ARE IN BREACH OF CONTRACT BY NOT PAYING YOUR SUBSCRIBTION IN AUGUST WE SHOULD APPLY A DEFAULT FEE AND ALSO CHARGE INTEREST". However, we had paid in August, but WDS changed their banking provider without telling us. This was not an isolated case of Mike stating that we are in 'breach of contract'. He used these words on a number of separate occasions, without merit, in an apparent attempt to intimidate us, in response to us merely expressing our legitimate concerns. Mike would also give completely incoherent responses to clear and direct questions; seemingly keen to use error and omission as tools to evade answering. This was apparent when I asked for a numerical breakdown of the costs incurred by WDS, which they loosely referred to as their justification for the cancellation fee (which was not numerically defined in the contract). Given our experience with WDS, we have little confidence in the documents produced by them, and will now have to spend more money to get them done properly by someone else. read more

WDS Associates has charged me for their services for 3 years and have ignored my persistent requests to rewrite my Will. They have not acknowledged my complaint and then got my address mixed up with my ex-husbands address to send my documents when I cancelled my Will. They then had the audacity to blame me for all their mistakes. I would not recommend this company at all. I'm not sure how old the testimonials are on their website, but I wouldn't believe them now. read more

Have been dealing with this company for at least 13 years. For an annual fee, our Wills, Deeds to our property, and Lasting Power of Attorney are stored safely. Home visits are available free of charge, for which we found very useful and everything was explained well. During the home visit my only criticism would be that there were numerous additional suggestions for further fees which felt like a sales pitch. A leaflet explaining these options to look at in our own time would have been much better. read more

5 years ago I done my will etc with WDS and payed a lot of money too have them done but now I'm being told they have no record of payment of which I did pay them. I'm now being told that I will be passed to debt collector for the payment, I'm in poor health and find the company a nightmare to deal with. read more

In January of this year my husband sadly passed away so I required a copy of the will he had written with WDS in 2003. Originally I was told that they did not have a copy as I had not paid the storage fees but several conversations followed, all with different information. This included not having a copy at all, copies were sent unsigned but never returned and also that one signed copy had been sent to us. After several conversations, including one with a solicitor who called WDS on my behalf, it transpired that they were in fact able to retrieve a signed copy from their database for a cost of £40 + VAT. At my time of grieving, this service was totally unprofessional and shambolic. This particularly applies to Lorraine who I can only describe as rude, unhelpful and seriously lacking in empathy which would be expected considering the line of work she is in. This happened consistently during several phone calls. However, one member of staff, Kelsey, was very polite and helpful. The email communication from the company's director, Mike Diamond, whilst slightly more helpful, was pretty poor. But he did request an honest review from me so here it is! There really isn't enough space to convey how poor this company's service is, what I've written is really a summary and my personal experience, but I would urge anyone not to use WDS or if you already have, please retrieve your will before you actually need it and store it with a reputable company. read more

Personally I found this company defensive and not easy to deal with. The man who came out to 'help me' write my Will and discuss Power of Attorney has a completely non empathic manner. (e.g. go a look in a medical dictionary and go through it from a-z to work out whether I wanted 'not to be resuscitated?!! - truly helpful!! NOT) Some of the questions were very 'leading' and some of the things that I didn't understand and asked to have clarified were still not explained clearly. On top of that there was further costs and options which were gone over and over about putting my information into their storage and when I asked about confidentiality (which does not featured in their customer contract and neither does the new GDPR law) I was fobbed off with "it will all be kept in storage!" - have just cancelled my cheque and feel that I have done the right thing. Although this company offers cheap services - I am going to spend a bit more and go to a more reputable establishment. Easy to book ... not so easy to offer feedback on their services.... read more

I have found this company really helpful so far. The person we worked with has come out to us twice at times of day that were convenient for us (and probably less so for him!). He has been really helpful and informative and explained all our options and what we needed clearly. Paperwork has been returned quickly and with clear indications of our next step. The office was really fast to respond to emails, even, as we are now, in the midst of the awful virus crisis. read more

Okay service, the Wills were hand delivered and the additional help needed for my Mum was accurate and good value

A most satisfied client of WDS associates, I have no hesitation in recommending them as they provided me with a great service and took the time to answer my questions. Thanks! read more

This company has been a total disaster to deal with. They visited us and we were told what documents we would need and that they would make all the necessary arrangements to get others to sign as necessary. They lost our Wills and denied receiving them even though they were signed for and sent recorded delivery. Several weeks later they miraculously turned up at their premises. We have paid the annual fee to allow updates which they did and returned fully signed. They then claimed yet again not to have received the recorded delivery item. They still have not completed all of the documentation after about 3 years and always expect the customer to do the chasing to see what the situation is rather than what was promised originally. We have cancelled any further activities with them as it just didn't work and they had the cheek to say they would reproduce the lost documents but only if we paid another annual storage sunscription. read more