Wilford Smith Solicitors Recensioni 327

While the individual staff members were kind and clearly wanted to be helpful, the overall team appears overworked and unresponsive. Our conveyance was plagued by significant delays, missed details, and repeated miscommunication. Most concerningly, the level of service dropped sharply after the sale closed and their fee was paid; the team has been completely unresponsive to all subsequent follow-up attempts. I strongly regret not choosing another conveyancer and would not recommend this firm to anyone looking for reliable and timely service

Initial contact with Wilford Smith was acceptable but a little slow, as time went on trying to contact them in regards to the purchase of the property was an uphill battle. Eventually they STOPPED reply to me all together and any phone calls made to them were met with "the team is in a meeting".

Had to Cancelled their services in the end, they then replied within a day.

This shows they do NOT care about the people they are "representing".

Avoid the stress and pick anyone else.

Helped me massively highly recommend

This was the third time I'd used Wilford Smith. The first two experiences had been reasonably good but this last engagement left a lot to be desired. Communication was woeful throughout and felt undervalued. Disappointed.

If I could give zero stars I would. Avoid avoid avoid.

We had an awful experience with Wilford Smith. They were consistently incompetent & slow to respond, both to us and to others in the chain, which caused repeated delays and almost jeopardised our move. Communication was poor throughout, and we often had to chase for updates or re-send information that we’d already provided. We often ended up having to communicate with our buyers' conveyancers through our estate agent instead.

We also ended up doing much of the legwork ourselves, including obtaining documents from the council and other parties. Key details were repeatedly recorded incorrectly, and it was clear they were out of their depth dealing with a leasehold property.

Due to their miscommunication with our buyers' team, we lost £1,200.

On completion day the proceeds were also sent to the wrong account for the wrong amount. This resulted in further costs to correct the error and significant stress on what should have been a straightforward completion. Despite having all the necessary paperwork and funds by mid-morning, they didn’t release these until 3 pm, leaving us literally standing on the pavement with our belongings waiting for the keys.

This is all just the tip of the iceberg on what was an extremely frustrating and unprofessional experience.

I have called them so many times. They have all the information they require from me and the other solicitors to exchange the property I’m buying and the other solicitors have heard nothing!

Subject: Re: File Reference Request

Hi Paul,

Thank you for your message.

To clarify, the file relates to Sienna.

While I note your comment that funds were placed on 9th September, that was nearly four weeks ago. I think it’s reasonable to have expected more progress or clearer communication by now.

I also find it concerning that you’ve asked for the review to be removed. My comments were made in good faith based on our experience, and I’m happy to review this once things are progressing. Please confirm you have actioned the searches.

Kind regards

Sienna

Please email me an update. I called yesterday and I still need confirmation that the searches have been done.

More to myself - always read the reviews on trust pilot as they all seem to identify problems with lack of communication. Now being reported to the SRA and Legal Ombudsman.

Avoid this company with a barge pole!!!

Can see now they give you a cheap quote to get you on board and they are now demanding another £999. Although my house completed without it? 🤨 My mortgage advisor has said in all her 30 years of providing mortgage advice she has never come across a company like it. She has taken it upon herself to personally help me through this mess to wherever it gets 'escalated' to as this is now the tone of emails I am getting from them asking me to pay. Paid deposit and fees (£1800ish in total) as requested day before completion, all sorted and they confirmed. Day of completion got a revised statement asking me to pay the extra £999 on the day to complete!!!! At first they claimed this was Leeds lenders fee which has been added onto the mortgage as I didn't want to pay straight off... So my monthly fees will include this. Obviously not paying twice for it!! Then it changed to this was extra solicitor fees... My mortgage advisor had said all along they were very cheap... And she thought they were trying to get extra fees. Ridiculous for it to be one price one day and then extra £999 the next - completion day. But how did my house complete without paying all the necessary solicitor fees 🤔... Answer - because I already had!
Just received email from Jackie Bruce demanding I pay fees before it is 'escalated'.
Needless to say, don't use them. Pay more for a decent solicitor. I think they outsourced mine to another solicitor anyway...
I'll be coming back to this review to update you all ..

Absolutely awful company - no service levels can’t speak to ‘lead reviewer’ don’t think they exist - would never ever wish my experience on anyone !

Sadly, my email instructions were not followed and it ended up losing me more than £4K. I can only assume that my instructions were misunderstood but so far I have not had any response to my complaint.
I have not spoken to the overseeing solicitor at all throughout the conveyancing process and feel totally ignored.

I have used Mark Bates for my defence twice now and both times, him and his team (especially Eleanor) have been exceptional. They are very easy to talk to and I feel as though they considered my personal circumstances just as much as my legal circumstances. I cannot fault them.

Good company and did a good job. Would recommend

We starting a purchase & let & after almost 3 months of them doing nothing we used another company who in 5 weeks have got us a contract to sign. Within a week of changing we got sent a copy of the fixtures & fittings dates two months earlier which for some reason they hadn't actioned. After about 6 weeks they asked us for another £700 for the conveyancing of our buy to let, this should've been made clear from the start which suggests they never understood our case. If you want to use this company I would suggest checking if they can actually do the work before you commit. The only times we got anything back was when twice we threatened to take our business elsewhere. Fortunately we got all our money back.

Update to the below: 2 weeks have passed and we are at an even more precarious position. Despite Wilford Smith having a formal complaint dated 10/8/25, going through the process with Paul Fitzsimmons and Sarah Mills (as well as the Orange team) Our buyer has updated us that he may be pulling out of the sale. If you would like your sale to progress without losing your buyer, I'd highly suggest reconsidering if this firm was ever on your list for conveyancing.

Original review:
We are extremely disappointed and concerned with the service received from Wilford Smith. Despite raising multiple requests for updates and chasing basic information, communication has consistently been slow, vague, and unreliable during our property sale. We should be close to completing the sale (firm was instructed in May 2025), however there are ongoing delays with communication which are slowing progress and we feel our property sale and buyer is at risk.

By way of an example (and considering we should be close to completion) were informed on Monday, 18th August, that new queries had come from the buyer’s solicitors and would be emailed to us the same day. That email never arrived. We followed up multiple times—by phone on the 19th and by email on the 20th—and each time were reassured the queries would be sent. As of writing, nearly 72 hours later, we still haven’t received them and no explanation has been provided for the delay.
This is just an example of a simple email being forwarded to us, which shouldn't take more than 1 minute to do.

We also have no awareness around when these queries were actually received because of the poor communication from the firm, it’s possible they came in earlier, and we were only advised of this as we had chased up with a phone call to clarify progress. This raises further concerns about the accuracy and timeliness of the firm’s communication.

Now, due to the ongoing delays, both our sale and purchase are at risk- this has been clearly communicated to the firm weeks before writing this review and not just because of the buyers queries.

We've been reasonable and provided the firm multiple chances to expedite queries and improve communication. We're also not people who write complaints, in fact we rarely do. We’ve now had to submit formal complaints regarding the handling of our sale, and may need to look at escalating further.

What’s especially alarming is that two separate estate agents involved in the sale and purchase—each in different parts of the country and entirely unknown to the other—have both raised the same complaint to us about this firm’s lack of responsiveness and poor communication. This indicates that the problem is not limited to a single case, but is systemic within the firm.

A conveyancing service should be adaptable to a client’s needs, particularly when time-sensitive transactions are involved. As clients, we expect to be kept informed with specific, clear updates—such as when queries are received, information to be passed forward to relevant parties efficiently and when replies will be issued. Unfortunately, this basic standard has not been met.

If you value timely, clear communication and professional handling of your property transaction, I would strongly advise looking elsewhere.

I appointed Wilford Smith as the solicitor in the sale of my property chain free to a cash buyer. The entire process was incredibly frustrating and stressful due to a lack of communication and extremely slow processing.

From the outset I was asked to provide the same details multiple times that had already been given in the initial forms requested upon instruction. At every stage of the process I would need to chase to progress anything with no proactiveness shown from Wilford Smith at all. The majority of emails took several days to be responded to and even then additional information was requested (that had already been provided) which delayed the overall resolution of any issues even further. Several attempts were made to call the phone number provided that were picked up at most 10% of the time. The day before I was due to complete I was told that it would not be possible due to outstanding queries from the buyer's solicitor that were in an unmonitored inbox - how was this missed?!

My experience with this firm was far from ideal. The process of buying our new home was difficult and often stressful. Our case was managed by an associate rather than a dedicated solicitor, and communication was a significant issue. On several occasions, I was unable to reach them by phone.
There was also a noticeable lack of guidance. I frequently had to ask the associate to seek legal clarification from their supervising solicitor and provide me with the necessary definitions, which felt like I was doing their job for them.
Additionally, the transaction was delayed by several weeks. Despite being a first-time buyer with a chain-free seller, we experienced a three-week hold-up caused by our solicitor's inaction. Given these issues, I cannot recommend their services

We cannot recommend this company high enough they were fantastic throughout the whole sale and purchase of our new house, even when our first sale fell through. Extremely friendly firm with very knowledgeable staff who are happy to help through the whole process from start to finish. They are a smallish firm that far exceeds the larger firms so you get much more of a personal service rather than dealing with multiple people and call centre’s. Vicky, Kershal, Ruth, Stacey, Kirsty & Hannah were all fantastic and we’ve already started to recommend to friends and would only use Wilford Smith going forward. Thank you again for such excellent service, Mark & Megan

My solicitor Kirsty Smith has just been outstanding! Always replied to me in a timely manor, never afraid to pick up the phone and speak to me very impressed. Thanks again for all your hard work on my transfer of equity case!

Absolute nightmare, the reviews seemed OK when I was looking for a solicitor for the sale and purchase of our property.The lady in charge of our case was absolutely useless ,not getting back to me,my estate agents or other solicitors, had to constantly email and phone her to a ask her to contact people which isn't my job and when completion was done and all money had been paid didn't even pay the estate agent

Very poor experience using this company to buy and sell a house. Initially we were passed about not knowing who are point of contact was. Very poor communication unless they want your money. Many of the staff dont seem to know whats going on. Estate agents were unable to get hold of them leaving us to deal with the chasing for a lot of the process. Over all very very disappointed in the service provided, would not recommend. They made what was already a stressful situation, 10x worse.

Can’t recommend Trevor enough, you don’t get a service like he provides that often anymore. Professional, firm, prompt - always at the end of the phone, does exactly as he says. assures you not to worry he’ll deal with it and that he does.