Poole Alcock Solicitors - Alsager Reviews 13

Really helpful first initial phone call, I felt like Tim really listened and understood my situation and I came away feeling so much better after speaking to him.

We were allocated to a team based in Alsager. Communication was very poor with our conveyancing team (Chloe Heath) throughout the house-buying process, to the extent that as first-time buyers we felt left in the dark at times. We felt that had to remind the team for documents and updates to be given on occasions. An element of the house purchase was missed, which meant that the land registry application was significantly delayed. The team tried to charge us for this despite it being around 18 months after the completion of the purchase. After complaining, the firm agreed to pay this cost. Once this land registry issue was resolved, it took around five weeks for us to be informed that this had happened, and this was only after I chased the firm for information. This has affected the subsequent remortgaging process. Overall, it made our house purchasing experience more stressful, contrary to us feeling supported by our team. Two stars feels generous, and has only been given because the complaints process was helpful. Based on our experience we would certainly advise avoiding this company.

Georgina was friendly and communicated well.
Have decades of experience with Poole Alcock and they have never disappointed.

I find the Government dictated ID checks intrusive, time consuming, and ultimately pointless ( like most ill thought out Government diktats).
Even “regular” customers aren’t allowed to proceed without going through them again and again. This isn’t a criticism of Poole Alcock, all professions and financial institutions seem caught in this trap.

Maybe the professions should fight back and try and inject an element of common sense.

Dealing with local offices is a preference for me where one can
Form a relationship over the years.
It also means I can deal in “paper” - I am of the older generation and am computer adverse.
Poole Alcock have a sizeable chain of offices making this possible and are happy to indulge me.

Recommended

There is a long list of problems that made working with Poole Alcock difficult and unproductive, in my case with Chloe's team. Amongst other factors, this led to the seller of the target property to abort the sale (before I could convince him to go on). Here some overview:
- In the final transaction documents, two mistakes were made back to back. The first were GBP 80 of fees that were redundant and wrongfully added to the bill and the second an understatement of the stamp duty of around GBP 4,000
- Communication was often lacklustre and emails not replied to - if you don't call them yourself directly, don't expect to hear back before two weeks
- I put together a list of open points that I wanted to be addressed, such as issues pointed out in the survey. Two of them remained simply not answered or addressed by Chloe's team even though I sent reminders of the outstanding tasks and status updates
- At some point in the process, progress halted. It was only after asking several times that I was told that a "risk committee" had to take a decision - there was no warning that a 3 weeks delay was impending, no real explanation what this committee was doing, or meaningful updates during the 3 weeks delay that would help me or the seller to understand what was happening. This led the seller to abort the process as mentioned earlier
- In the process of getting a mortgage, a 3rd party solicitor needed to put a stamp on the application and assert I understood the terms of the mortgage. Although it was briefly mentioned in some of the documents, I had wrongly assumed that Chloe's team was a 3rd party solicitor, but actually another team of solicitors were needed for the stamp. After asking Chloe if somebody within Poole Alcock could do this, I heard back and the service was offered to me for GBP 500. This is a higher hourly salary than the most sophisticated lawyers in New York would dare to ask for (I had to go somewhere else in the end)
- I give Poole Alcock 2 stars because they admittedly always picked up the phone and never gave up. I am grateful for that

Overall the transaction did not happen.

Claire Ellis was amazing at sorting my will. Explained everything clearly and guided me with things I hadn't even thought about.

My property purchase has not completed yet and the fact that I'm still waiting 10 months in warrants me flagging this to prospective new buyers. I have had nothing but delay, incredibly poor communication, and the feeling that, as my purchase price is quite low, I'm not that important. I would not recommend them unless you're a big spender. You'll get forgotten about, or passed between the various departments they have that don't seem to communicate well between themselves.

Poor, 1of 5. Unless by some miracle my property purchase actually goes ahead in 2024... This has caused huge long term stress to me and the seller.

Don’t use this company would be my advise. We are the vendors and still waiting on completion over 2 months later. They often won’t take phone calls from our solicitors who has tried to establish the reason for the delay, and when they do respond they contradict and back track when all we want is an open and honest explanation of what is going on. We are in the verge of losing our sale and relisting our property.

Dealt with the Alsager office a couple of times recently and always found the staff there extremely helpful, friendly and approachable.

A shambles of a company run by amateurs. From one debacle to another when using this company to purchase our new home. We went with these as they were local, but not the cheapest, big mistake. Incorrect paperwork, don't listen to instructions, send out final settlement invoice then follow with further payment requests later due to forgetting to add charges. Send out important legal documentation without prior communications, not tracked or signed for, but standard second class, in a cheap envelope that was torn completely open during transit, we were lucky they arrived complete. Constantly chasing them, their internal comms are useless. Stay clear of these circus folk, and save yourself stress and time by going else where.

Poole Alcock were brilliant in helping us organise the purchase of our first home.
They were very communicative, knowledgeable and easy to get hold of when we had any queries that needed answering. I'd highly recommend them as solicitors, especially if you're looking to buy your first property.

Highly efficient, very responsive to queries. All matters resolved quickly

Our house sale and purchase of a new property was seem-less, even with a few hitches out of our control, these were handled efficiently and the sale and purchase went through smoothly

Good communication and straight forward. Good value for money. Chloe and team are very personable.