Fawcetts

We've used Fawcetts for our Ltd company accounts for a few years now and they've been great. Offering advice on tax savings, and always friendly when we pop in. They set up our Payroll, offered training, and most importantly to me always answer the phone should I call.

It is a shame that I feel I’ve been put in a position where I need to leave this review. I am utilising the review system that Google offers to provide a review for Fawcetts based on my personal experience. I have weighed my star-rating carefully to reflect this.

I was a customer of Fawcetts for 11-years and for ten of those, I was very happy. My accountant was one of the business partners and was always quick to reply to emails, return phone calls, and was prompt with filing the various tax returns that myself and my business required. They also readily helped when I needed financial information quickly, such as when I purchased my first home. Up until then, this would have earned them a 5-star review.

Sadly, in the last year, they missed a crucial deadline in registering my business for VAT. This required I drop all my work at a moments notice to spend many weeks pouring over transactions.
Additionally, they neglected to tell me, for two years, that they raised their prices for the services they were providing me and expected me to accept this and with no notice or formal account review. After much back-and-forth I was able to get them to credit some of this to my account however, at no point would they accept responsibility for any wrong-doing or offer any way of an apology. I felt this greatly degraded my relationship of trust I had with them. My accountant, one of the business partners, then handed over my account to someone else within the business. After this matter was settled, I never received an email reply from the partner again.

From then on, responses to emails became less frequent and I was sometimes left waiting for a reply to an email for 2-4 weeks.

Finally, I had had enough and decided to look for another accountant. I provided my notice to Fawcetts and never received a formal response - only an invoice for some additional VAT work in the post the following day, and a statement several weeks later. After repeated phone calls attempts, I was finally able to speak to the accountant that I had been dealing with there but again, was never offered any way of an apology or acceptance of poor customer service towards an otherwise happy customer up until the past year. I made it clear that this would be reflected in my public review, as stated here.
Fortunately, they did send the relevant paperwork to my new accountant.

I am much happier since leaving Fawcetts as my new accountant has been more helpful, responsive, and affordable.

I won’t be looking back.