RG Solicitors in Sidcup

I strongly suggest you do not use RG Solicitors. They were relatively cheap but by the end of a long, painful and frustrating process I would paid any amount to have chosen a firm more up to the job. The sale of our flat took over six months and our purchase almost fell through after it was left to drag on. Issues raised by the buyers' solicitor were left outstanding for months, basic tasks were not completed without a LOT of chasing up, communication was terrible, and the team failed to understand basic property documents, that we had to repeatedly try and explain to them, the legal 'experts'. As things reached a critical level I spent a small fortune on the phone trying to ensure they did understand what needed doing and that they were finally acting on it.

The staff were personable but sadly seemed unable to cope with their workload and repeatedly failed to progress the sale, telling us it was not a priority at that point or they did not have time to deal with it. Ultimately, we were so disappointed with the service we received that we would have complained to the regulator, but had spent so long dealing with RG we wanted to forget they ever existed. The icing on the cake was when they initially refused to return several hundred pounds they had retained in case the service charges were in arrears. They were not, but RG had misread the accounts. Something they failed to believe until asking the agents to explain the balance sheet to them. And, like the rest of our frustrating experience dealing with them, something we never received an apology for.

Fortunately for us, we found the opening stages of doing business with RG Solicitors off-putting enough and backed out within the 7-day cooling off period. Having been led to believe this was a company local to us, we chose them as we prefer to conduct business face to face, quickly, locally, efficiently. It transpired it was actually run out of the main Sidcup office, involving welcome packs, a Welcome Pack Team, and 'chaperones' to take care of our every need, for goodness sake.

We were swiftly invited to send the initial deposit of £300 in order to facilitate the setting up of our case (selling a private residence), suggesting we'd be able to read the FULL Terms & Conditions on the website, Couldn't find them. When we received these, along with the 9 other attachments to an email (several containing spelling and grammatical errors - not a great advert for a solicitors whose business is careful wording!), we didn't like any of what we read, particularly the raft of possible add-on costs.

I then tried to speak to the local solicitor who had been nominated to take our case on, to make an appointment to discuss my concerns, but it was evident from the ensuing calls I received from two other employees at Sidcup (who HAD managed to speak with her) that she was not keen to make contact yet. (A sign of what to expect throughout.) Basically, until you have completed all these forms and submitted them to The Welcome Pack Team (who process them, check info, before forwarding to the relevant solicitor), the solicitor her- or himself cannot sit down with you to thrash out the Terms and Conditions, to decide if you even want to use them. By this stage you've already paid a chunk of money, invested a lot of form-filling time, phone calls and emails. This farcical, pointless extra link in the chain defeated the whole object of trying to choose someone local, who'd sit across a table from us.

When we requested the return of our deposit, it was met with no further persuasion, sadness or surprise. I can only assume this situation was not unusual. It remains to be seen how long it will be before we see our £300 again. Perhaps we will need to sue ! But who to use?