Stephens & Scown Solicitors .. Reviews 11

My son purchased an expensive car from a garage in Manchester for £30,000. When he returned home to Tiverton, he noticed that the front of the car appeared to have been recently resprayed and repairs carried out. An independent Mechanical Engineers report stated that the vehicle was an unrecorded Cat U write off and had been badly repaired. I contacted my solicitors in Exeter, Stephens Scown LLP, and Isabella Kershaw, the Dispute Resolution Solicitor, immediately contacted the garage requesting a full repayment of the purchase price. Initially, they refused but after several forceful letters from Isabella, they capitulated and reimbursed my son in full. I cannot thank Stephens Scown enough for resolving this issue and would certainly recommend them to anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation.

In my experience, this firm was extremely expensive and not easy to deal with. I found their billing practices very disappointing — they appeared to apply a minimum charge of ten minutes for even brief calls or emails, some of which took only a few minutes. In addition, I was surprised to see separate charges for general office duties, which I had understood would normally be included within a solicitor’s hourly rate. When I raised genuine concerns about the fairness of the bill, rather than engaging constructively in a timely fashion, they chose to threaten legal action. Overall, I found the experience stressful and would not recommend this firm to anyone seeking fair or transparent billing. They are very good at billing though - they even bill for the time they spend preparing their bill.

We cannot thank enough Victoria Perry and her team at Truro for the conveyancing work carried out on our late father’s estate. Nothing was too much trouble. Anything we raised Victoria dealt with promptly and efficiently. Her patience was endless and her knowledge invaluable. It wasn’t a straightforward sale but she made it feel that it was. Thank you once again to Victoria and her team and I wouldn't hesitate in recommending her services.

This company and judges at Truro court have enabled a bully in a disgraceful abuse case to force a woman with Motor Neurone out of her home . They have ignored witness and medical statements and committed perjury alongside an enforcement company , Wilson & Roe . They are disgraceful! They get one star because you can't give no stars !

I can only speak from our point of view in working with Charlotte Smith for our conveyancing. Three properties since 2019 handled by her. Charlotte is exceptional in her delivery of conveyancing legalities. She's thorough, proactive , methodical - and compassionate . I love working with her as know she's fully in control of procedures, happy to explain in detail , cautious not to rush through - equally understanding when other peripheral challenges are taking place for us as individuals. We just highly recommend her. We felt totally at ease that we were in safe hands. When purchasing or selling property is such a nightmare now a days, Charlotte makes it more bearable. We can't thank her enough.

Carrianne has been absolutely amazing. Really good trusted advice, she was very understanding to my situation. Also agreed within my budget even though I know her time costs more. Thank you Carrianne, you’ve made a difficult time just that little bit easier X

I have just had the misfortune to be the victim of a failed conveyance in which Stephens Scown handled both divorce and conveyance for their client.
It appears that S S are unaware of the workings and problems of financial settlements where divorce is involved as they apparently went ahead with this conveyance when their client did not have positive proof of enough money to proceed.
As this problem unravelled, at no point did S S clarify to others involved but only provide fudged explanations together with other questionable excuses from themselves and their client. The result of seven months of this “circus” was their clients withdrawal, this in spite of his continual assurance of 100% commitment to the purchase.
When asked if they would care to elaborate on the failure of the conveyance and so perhaps correct some of our assumptions, I received a very discourteous and unprofessional reply which in turn has added to this whole debacle and prompted this very negative review.
Moving forward, having been on the receiving end of this conveyance / divorce / financial so called settlement I feel that there is room for improvement at S S for more awareness in areas of duty of care, diligence, clarity, and common courtesy, all of which were lacking in what I have just experienced in this conveyance.

Fair play to them. They literally stopped short of taking the shirt off my back during settlement negotiations as part of a divorce. On this basis, they do a cracking job for their clients.

Please do NOT work with Stephen Scown or the Team leader for Solicitor Estate & Inhertiance Disputes at Truro. They will make you pay to support the third party you have a dispute with, charge you if you don't answer their calls when they ring and will not carry out the will as per your later partners instructions. They have now had the trust fund my late partner left me for over two years which has caused me extreme hardship. This is despite all trustees agreeing the trust fund belongs to me. Also charged me £24k on top of moving costs to move house (so it cost me about £30k to move house - absolute rip off). Just so I could get an RX4 (signed by a second party - to release the charge on my property to move) and release my equity. This caused extreme upset to me, to my first time buyer, the family I was buying from (who had were getting divorced and who had recently lost a child, whilst moving). SS are rogue solicitors. AVOID AT ALL COST

Wills and probate office in Truro.
Firstly, they have great difficulty answering the phone and when you do get through it is invariably to a voicemail because no one wants to talk to customers.
After about a week spoke to the relevant person who then managed to retrieve the will after another two weeks.
After this there continued to be great difficulty in communicating with the firm who were generally not interested. Left a series of messages etc.
Moved to Nalders who were much better.

1 Star is too generous. I had the misfortune of SS working for the other side. The date for transfer of the property was agreed in a Court order. They received the money prior to the day agreed and then did not get their client to sign the transfer document or hand the keys over. It was a week after I paid the money before I was able to collect the keys. They didn't care, despite their client breaking a court order. It then transpired they had not ensured the transfer document was signed and witnessed correctly and refused to discuss this with my lawyers to get it sorted. After two years I went online to start a complaint (I knew they could do nothing as I was not the client but it got the matter in front of a senior partner and it was sorted). I turned out it was one of their staff had incorrectly witnessed the signature. AVOID AT ALL COSTS.