Fidler & Pepper Lawyers

Dealing with Fidler & Pepper was by far the most stressful part of our house purchase - and considering it fell through right before exchange, that’s quite an achievement.

We were recommended them by our mortgage broker, and as first-time buyers, thought it best to trust him. That was a mistake. We were not treated like customers, more like annoyances, and getting any form of response from them was practically impossible.

Their attention to the most basic level of detail also left a lot to be desired. We were asked the same question by them four times over the course of about three months, regarding a form we’d returned to them the very same day we instructed them.

On another occasion, we noticed two letters detailing different types of indemnity insurance had been uploaded to the case tracker. We asked if these could be explained to us on numerous occasions and were eventually told that we'd find out in the property report. When we asked when we might see the property report, we were (predictably) ignored for weeks, and then one of the conveyancers finally sent it over with a passive aggressive note saying, “Here's the report early as you were in some huge hurry to see it.”

When we dared to follow up on the more worrying of the two issues weeks later (because the report didn’t mention it after all), we were told in an offhand manner that “the system had pulled through the incorrect letter” and there wasn’t actually an issue at all.

I could go on, but in short - save yourself the stress and go with literally anybody else.

Absolutely appalling company. Our buyers used these and they are awful.

All parties, ourselves, our buyers, our solicitors and the estate agents were all absolutely fed up with them.

Dragged out the process, impossible to get hold of, incompetent and kept losing documents or saying they hadn't received them (on the same email thread they'd been sent them, or the same day someone went down in person).

They were so terrible we nearly pulled out and found different buyers. We ended up paying for indemnity insurance because they couldn't read something (that everyone else could), just to get the deal over the line.

Seriously, avoid. If we ever sell again, a condition will be that nobody in the chain uses this company for conveyancing.

Terrible service experienced from Fidler & Pepper. As a 1st time buyer I was often left feeling confused and frustrated. When asking questions I was made to feel like an idiot by Natalie who used such a condescending tone in her emails but point blank refused to speak to me over the phone. There was a long period of time that I didn't hear a single thing, resulting in my mortgage advisor having to make a complaint in order to get an update.
To top things off, I recieved confirmation that everything had gone through with the land registry only for them to attach the wrong deed! I then had to contact the land registry to ask what was going on for them to tell me that F&P had sent me a copy of the previous owners deed instead.
Steer clear of this money grabbing firm. They are rude, incompetent and unprofessional.

I’m surprised to see so many horrendous reviews - maybe they are taking on too much work? Beth Hibbert dealt with the purchase of our first house and overall it was a positive experience. Extremely quick (just 5 weeks between our offer being accepted and us getting the keys!), we received regular updates via text & email and if I sent an email outside of office hours Beth would often respond straight away which I found really helpful and really appreciate! There were only a couple of hiccups, the main one being that they had our address wrong at the beginning and it took them a while to change it even though I rang them as soon as I received the first lot of post. Luckily the neighbours were nice enough to keep delivering it to us but it is something to be careful of especially when dealing with legal documents. I also felt like I was annoying people when asking questions, which I understand must be a bit tedious for conveyancers who deal with the same things every day, but buying a house for the first time is scary and they should expect a lot of questions to be asked. Overall I am impressed with my experience and I would probably use them again. Thank you :)

Awful firm - have slowed everything down in our process and completely ignore emails. If you are looking to purchase a property with them or sell I would avoid like the plague - we have been waiting almost 3 months for them to actually present any evidence as to what they have been doing on our buyers behalf and now at risk of the chain collapsing - if it does, they will be the ones ringing up and explaining to our son why he can no longer have a garden and a swing set - I hope that you read this and understand just how poor and horrendous you are - it’s sick that you get to play with lives and have no consequences - if i could give it minus stars then I would do so instantly.

Update 1# - our buyer has still not been issued with anything to sign, a week after this review and waiting from our end, it seems nothing has changed.

As far as house moves go, despite the small chain, ours was relatively complex due to a variety of legal issues further up the chain - however, in spite of this not making the process the easiest to deal with, the service we received from F&P was terrible & added to stress levels.

The irony was that F&P's value proposition is around making the process as seamless as possible. However, after a smooth welcoming service (which included our initial legal fees being collected), the service we received in reality could not have been further from this....

Our emails were ignored / took days to reply to (and when we did get a response the tone was rude, blunt and unhelpful) , calls weren't answered (when they were we never got a call back or had to speak to a rude receptionist) and information wasn't communicated properly (our completed legal pack contained 2 documents which should not have been sent to us / documents for other people).

We often found ourselves or our estate agent having to try and do the job of our solicitor in terms of communicating with other stakeholders - which really made us question what we were paying for.

The worst aspect of the whole process - we actually missed our exchange date - due to the fact our solicitor wouldn't answer the phone to our seller's solicitors on a Friday afternoon. When we tried to call to get through to F&P, nobody answered the phone.

There weren't many, but the positives - good online portal which facilitates transparency and Tom became helpful towards the end of our transaction - otherwise, wouldn't touch F&P with a barge pole again - really hurt having to pay the legal fees for this.

Only rating this firm a 1 because there’s no option for -1

The firm are appalling! Our buyer opted to use them back in March 2022 and started proceedings - around July time after issues relating to EWS1 certificates, they managed to secure a mortgage offer. We then also got a mortgage offer in August 2022 and thought the process would then speed up.

Fast forward to September, we are ready to complete for October as our searches etc have come back, we inform this firm and our solicitor gets now response back,
we then hear back that they have not completed searches at all and have outstanding queries - following this, the firm then also provide little to no communication to our solicitor on what they are waiting for etc

Our solicitor then suggests the date of Friday 11th November and once again gets no response, until of course a week before - when despite having the lease and ordered searches, they come back at 16:30 (half an hour before closing) stating they can’t exchange because they need permission for a dog - THEY HAVE HAD SINCE MARCH to get this information. Luckily we as the seller were able to provide all this information for them by the following Monday, assuming that because of this they would be happy for exchange and then we can move on the agreed date - the firm informed their client (our buyer) that they would order funds from the lender, but refuse to still exchange and once again go quiet in relation to comms.

On the 10th of November we find out that they had raised with the bank an issues with a charge of £11.00 roughly, this once again was provided to them ages before this date.

We then have no idea what is happening on the 11th as the seller is being told they are waiting for funds to be released - in the meantime we haven’t been told by the firm through our solicitors that the y won’t happen and we haven’t been told it will either - we have paid £400 for removals who load up…. Only to unload at the same location because the lender did not release funds, all due to a query they raised a day before!

We then get told we could potentially complete on Monday once the lender has released funds, of course this didn’t happen either.

EVENTUALLY we did complete and are more settled in our home - but long story short, this firm is useless, they are not responsive or communicative and I would be extremely concerned with any review stating that they are “great” or it “went smoothly” social media such as Twitter would indicate otherwise.

The firm were that and, we even considers paying for our buyer to change solicitors - putting us further out of pocket but it would have been less stressful than dealing with these.

Receptionists lack any people skills, the CEO and managers do not care - please save yourself the stress and deterioration of your own mental health and use any other firm - because of the failed original completion date we are now £750 down due to ban hire etc and going into Christmas having to scrimp , all of this because they lack communication and consideration.

I honestly cannot express how dreadful this firm is - please if you want more information or in depth detail get in contact!

Absolutely awful service from Fidler & Pepper. They were recommended by my mortgage broker a few years back and initially had no problems.
I went to renew my mortgage and to my surprise found out that the help to buy loan that I paid off in full back in 2019 was still registered against the title of my property. I got back in touch with Natalie Kelleher who had dealt with this back in 2019 for me.
I was told by Target HCA that the discharge paperwork wasn’t received which was why it was still registered against the property.
After I informed Natalie, she then told me that Target didn’t receive the DS1 form (that she was supposed to send) on the day of completion. I was told the following:
‘ 1 have emailed them this over now, and I have asked they expedite the removal of the charge
I would advise you chase Target for them to expedite the removal too.’

So, not only was this not completed properly back in 2019, I was expected to chase Target HCA for something that should have been sorted by Fidler & Pepper over 3 years ago! I have never received an apology from Natalie. I honestly get that people make mistakes or somethings are missed, but when I emailed Natalie saying that I was astounded that I haven’t received an apology I was met with silence. I didn’t receive a response from her at all.

This all happened whilst I had a 3 week newborn and during the early stages of my maternity I was having to call Target HCA and constantly email back and forth. I have never known stress like it. My mortgage then went on the variable rate due to the delay as I had to wait 20+ working days for Target to process and update Land registry. This has been awfully stressful, especially as we are living in a time where the cost of living is at its worst, I certainly didn’t want to be on the variable rate as the interest rates have also shot up.

Save yourselves a lot of stress and go with someone else. I will NEVER use Fidler & Pepper again.