3 reviews (1/5) and information for Baker Ashley Limited, Pontypridd

27/01/23 - Reviewed by Anonymous

I am very sorry to say that but this was the worst experience I had with a Solicitor company. I was very disappointed and let down by the staff. I lost the remortgage opportunity at the time just because the solicitor did not do their job and now it is costing me a fortune. Just go and find another solicitor company.

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14/09/21 - Reviewed by Umer

I first signed up to Baker Ashley based on these reviews back in mid-November 2020, and I had only just completed the post-completion steps mid-sep 2021. A Painfully and stressfully long process! I reckon all these "5 star" reviews are from very early on in the process, and if you read some of the geniune 1-star reviews, I can understand and absolutely relate to all of them, as I have had similar experiences.

First of all, you would have to send 5-6 emails in order to get a reply once. They are terrible at keeping you informed across the entire process. This is probably the most stressful part - not knowing where you stand in buying a home. It's ridiculous as this is a life changing event for most people and being left in the dark very often is the worst thing you can do.

Secondly, I feel like the team are not very technical at all. Comms are still performed via Fax & Mail, rather than digitally. I have seen a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes from the Solicitors emails/letters as well. If this was 1993, then I'd expect this. Their hoolwa system was next to useless too.

Third, after I manage to finally buy the house and move in, I experienced many problems that the seller had lied about (plumbing problems, drainage issues, flooding & no professional cleaning). The seller had given us a 1 year personal guarantee to fix any problems, so I went through my Solicitors to get him to come and fix these problems, as the house was not in a liveable state for anyone when we moved in. And guess what? My solicitor told me to write a letter and email it directly to the sellers solicitor, which I did, and got told that I am not allowed to communicate directly, and can only go through my own solicitors. So I asked for this, and she simply forwarded my initial email to the sellers solicitors. With 2 or 3 back & forths, the seller said he would be happy to pay for damages instead. Then I chased up my Solicitor to finalise this and get this sorted ASAP. I had chased up 3-4 times and got no reply, so when I called up, she simply said "Listen, I want to back out and don't want to help with this". So I'm simply left deserted and had to foot the cost of £5K in plumbing fixes by other professionals, all simply because she couldn't be bothered to help resolve issues with the house. So much for after-care for clients. WASTE OF MONEY!!

Finally, the post-completion to get the title deed transferred into my name, is said to take no more than 4-6 weeks max by HM Land Registry. Guess what, mine took 6 months!! I had to eventually start chasing multiple times a week to HM Land Registry myself because the conveyancer assigned to this task just didn't stay on top of it and again ignored the outstanding requisitions required for such a long time. It got to the point where HM Land Registry were closing the case as the time limit was about to expire, and my conveyancer didn't inform me of this, and had to request an extension myself - how bad can this get?? I even asked what were the outstanding requisitions that were causing such long delays but I apparently am not important enough to be given this info, even though I have paid for this service. It took my HEAVY involvement with HM Land Registry myself to do the job of Baker Ashley employees to finally get this all completed and transferred over to my name.

All I can say is, NEVER AGAIN!! AVOID!!

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14/03/21 - Reviewed by Michael Soltau

Do not use this company, avoid at all cost! Worst company I have ever had dealings with in 40 plus years!

Over the of purchasing my apartment I had 4 different solicitors dealing with it, so the whole thing took far longer than it should have and due to the delays it cost me an extra £2000 rental cost.

Calls were not returned and communication was very poor, (this was prior to the pandemic), the use of their Hoowla system was next to useless as they did not bother to update it. When asked for things they did not appear blaming it on the Hoowla system.

I complained to the MD and was told if I didn't like the service to go else where, not very helpful, if I had gone else where I would have lost my property.

Not recommended at all!

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