anyone used any of the online conveyancing companies? Good / bad stories?

just got a few quotes and the total is about £800 less than the bricks and mortar local solicitors i normally use.

Used a Chester based outfit about 8 years ago. Absolutely dreadful service. Since then only use solicitors that I can visit face to face and grab by the throat if situation demands it

When I bought my first house, I used a fixed cost conveyancer in a call centre in Leeds. She was OK, but never did anything unless I chased and could never actually answer any questions herself, she had to come back to me to find answers.

I’m buying and selling now, and I’m using a solicitor that my parents recommended. She is brilliant – based in Wimbledon (not too far), so I can go there in person to sign stuff and drop off documents. She does things spontaneously, without chasing – anything she tells or asks me comes with her legal advice on the best course of action, or a description of my options. The whole process is just much smoother and it feels like she is ‘on my side’, rather than one more person that I need to battle to push the deal through.

The difference is like night and day. I wouldn’t go back to the massed anonymous conveyancing firms.

Dave

When we bought the sellers used online conveyance outfit based near Luton. They were utterly incompetent. It meant our sale took over 5 months because they were too stupid to cope with a boundary issue. We nearly walked away from the sale because of it. The only thing that kept us in was that our solicitor was excellent and did most of their work for them. I wouldn’t touch online monkeys with a barge pole… We negotiated down the house price as a result so it was false economy for the sellers.