Solicitors want more money after closing property purchase

Instead they choose to use elderly "dependable" staff who are not IT-savy while all the time looking if they are "just sooooo busy" to sort it out.
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There are also plenty of younger staff in Ireland who are not IT-savy... believe me!

I know of many older people who have gone to the trouble of learning how to use IT systems, so I don't think age has anything to do with it.
 
helan72 said:
I have the opposite situation - recently sold house and am dealing with the solicitor i used when buying the house 5.5 years ago. During the course of a conversation he mentions that there is still some money left in my client account and he can offset that against my bill!!!!! First i have heard of it. Was so shocked never asked how much so am about to call him now and find out. I have heard that money is kept in client accounts for a period of time just in case any unforseen bills arrive however 5 and a half years seems a very long time.
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Let me take this opportunity to have a rant!

Like all professions, there are good and bad in all. The issue here is "normal practice". For example it is normal practice now for a dentist to ask you to sign a social welfare form for an extraction before they do the work. You should be covered by the state but wait .... the professional says "oh! but this is a surgical extraction and you are not covered by social welfare" and then they charge you personally while unknowns to you they are STILL claiming against the social welfare", (this is a failing of the social welfare system and accountability for the finances of the state) shall I go on?

Do they really think we are that thick we do not see what is happening? Think about this for a second ...... in the current market how many house sales would a small solicitors firm be involved in...quite a lot... and yet in my circumstance they did not notice that the final bill was understated by almost 20% (paid 2,500 but said they missed the 500) .... yet they see roughly the same size of bills going out every day. Hey, they even tell you themselves they are "snowed under". Have they ever hear of a standard template for raising bills? Hey, have they even headr of the magic word "e-x-c-e-l".

ALSO the price of the legal fee is directly ties to the value of the premises so with the massive rise in property prices there has been a relative increase in fees, maybe not a direct correlation but far faster than the rate of inflation ....this = more profit! Yet the mistake is MINE! They still get their FULL FEE and I have no come back for THEIR mistake.

Professional means exactly that! They have the experience to tell you that this is what it should cost notwithstanding some unpredicatable factors. (By unpredictable I do not mean that the staff don't have enough fingers to add up the bill so they have to guess.) It should mean I am willing to quote you AND stand by that quote because I am governed by a set of ethical guidelines by virtue of membership of a professional body.

Professional bodies need to wake up (I am actually a member of one myself) and start forcing their members to take responsibility for their actions instead of protecting their interests otherwise "a quote is not worth the paper it is written on!" and we Joe-Public are just "money-cows" ...... NIB scandal, AIB overcharging, etc. etc. etc. (accountability is not a word that comes to mind) the list just goes on and on.

We need a change in culture or else things are just going to continue to deteriorate .... we should have more professionals like your solicitors ..... they are now sadly a dying breed as money is king.

EddieT
 
umop3p!sdn said:
There are also plenty of younger staff in Ireland who are not IT-savy... believe me!

I know of many older people who have gone to the trouble of learning how to use IT systems, so I don't think age has anything to do with it.
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Touche! Then perhaps it should be phrased that the solicitors are the professionals and should be held accountable for the failings of their own staff. In these cases they are clearly not. If they can say "we made a mistake, you owe us more money, pay up cause you have to. We know the law!". What hope has the guy in the street?

What a joke!

EddieT
 
ALSO the price of the legal fee is directly ties to the value of the premises so with the massive rise in property prices there has been a relative increase in fees, maybe not a direct correlation but far faster than the rate of inflation ....this = more profit!

Not true - if you take the time to read many of the posts on this Board you will see that conveyancing fees in general have reduced to what I would now call an uneconomical level. Many firms do the work in bulk, many firms do the work as loss leaders - in my view, it is not possible to give an adequate service for uneconomic fees unless you are effectively subsidising the client.

"Professional bodies need to wake up (I am actually a member of one myself) and start forcing their members to take responsibility for their actions instead of protecting their interests otherwise "a quote is not worth the paper it is written on!" and we Joe-Public are just "money-cows" ...... NIB scandal, AIB overcharging, etc. etc. etc. (accountability is not a word that comes to mind) the list just goes on and on."

This is a rant - the basic question was should the client pay for an expense that was incurred on his behalf albeit he was not made aware of it. It is for the OP and the solicitor involved to take it from there. There was no indication of a mass attempt to defraud/con/extort money by underquoting the final bill.

I cannot agree with your underlying notion that many professional bodies do not adequately regulate their memebrs. If anything, I believe most professional bodies to be very regulatory.

mf
 
mf1 said:
I cannot agree with your underlying notion that many professional bodies do not adequately regulate their memebrs. If anything, I believe most professional bodies to be very regulatory.mf
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I think that the OP should pay up. I agree with mf1 on that but I disagree fundamentally with the principle of self-regulation so I can't agree with the above quote.
 
mf1 said:
I cannot agree with your underlying notion that many professional bodies do not adequately regulate their memebrs. If anything, I believe most professional bodies to be very regulatory. mf
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I agree with this up to a point. However, my own view is that they do very little to deal with incompetence and inefficiency. For lots of practical reasons, it is often dificult to 'shop around' when engaging a professional.
In many cases (I have personal experience here) you may only come in contact with them for one particular situation - once you find out how poor they are at their jobs, it's too late.
 
One of the best pieces of advice that is regularly handed out on this board is that when engaging with a professional do so not only on price but on personal recommendation.

Despite the drubbing that the professions get on this board, when you really follow through on a question, it is generally a great deal less straightforward than was originally presented.

As a practising solicitor, I am also wary of clients that I don't know or have no connection with ( i.e. straight in from the street or Golden Pages). It is quite easy to be caught out by stupid, manipulative, greedy clients who have one eye on the price and another eye on "how can I milk this?"

mf
 
Pay them. An honest mistake is an honest mistake. (Amn't a solicitor and god knows have often given out stink about them)
 
Look back at all the post you were given by them? Was it mentioned that you would have to pay Land Registry fees? Did you know that you had to pay them?

if so, why didn't you question your solicitor (presumably you recieved an invoice and a breakdown of your account).

The money is not going into their pocket, it is going to the Land Registry / Registry of Deeds.

Do you want your Deeds registered?

I think you should pay up.
 
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