# Solicitors want more money after closing property purchase



## Will (15 Aug 2006)

I closed on a property I purchased a couple of months ago. I received a letter from my solicitor saying that they acknowledged that the sale was now closed and payment received in full etc.  Then about a month ago I received another letter from them saying that they forgot to charge me for the land registry costs and now want me to fork out another €600+.  Since this is a mistake on their part and I have emails from them confirming the amount I owed to them prior to payment would I have a case for not paying them?


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## Vanilla (15 Aug 2006)

No. Pay up. ( Yes, I AM a solicitor).


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## Allen (15 Aug 2006)

Land registry costs should not be anything like €600 surely?


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## ClubMan (15 Aug 2006)

Looks like they could be but worth querying if no breakdown was provided.


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## Vanilla (15 Aug 2006)

Land Registry fees are usually around the €600 mark or more nowadays, since the registration of a house purchase over €385000 is €625 alone, and add on to that a fee of €125 for a mortgage...


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## Eurofan (15 Aug 2006)

Payment was made in full, not your problem they forgot. Tell them to stuff it, i doubt they'll go hungry. (No i'm NOT a solicitor  )


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## Oilean Beag (15 Aug 2006)

This comes down to your own opinion. I think you got a service you should pay for it. The fees go to the government , not the solicitor.


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## nelly (15 Aug 2006)

You paid the bill issued you. If a shop incorrectly prices a jacket would you want it at the lable price? I would. It is a mistake they can learn from - as my mam says "sense bought is better than sense taught"!


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## mf1 (15 Aug 2006)

"You paid the bill issued you". 

And it was a mistake. I'm with Vanilla on this one - pay up. And yes I also am a solicitor. 

I am a great believer in the "do unto others as you would have them do unto you"

What goes round, comes round. 


mf


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## ClubMan (15 Aug 2006)

Do solicitors charge extra for clichés?


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## Eurofan (15 Aug 2006)

ClubMan said:


> Do solicitors charge extra for clichés?



Not until at least a few months later...


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## liteweight (15 Aug 2006)

Eurofan said:


> Not until at least a few months later...



Hee hee..very good!


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## bond-007 (16 Aug 2006)

Really. 

The same thing happened to me but it took then 6 yes 6 years to discover their error. Same thing letter demanding money to complete the registration. 

Made a swift complaint to the law society and the matter was resolved to my satasfaction without having to pay the money at all.


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## Vanilla (16 Aug 2006)

I think it is more likely that the complaint made by Bond was upheld on the basis of the delay in registration rather than the attempted collection of a fee rightly due to the government. At the end of the day you can listen to all ( what we call in Kerry) the  bar counter legal advisers or you can have a bit of common sense.


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## Blinder (16 Aug 2006)

As someone said, it was for a service you received, so pay up ( nope, I'm not a solicitor)

The same thing happened to me. I paid the solicitor , and they came back later with an adjusted bill ( becuase they had forgotten to bill me for something). I paid it.

If they had overcharged you, I'm sure you wouldn't say to them: " it's in the past, I have paid it , so i agreed with the price, so I don't want it back"


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## deem (16 Aug 2006)

Blinder said:


> As someone said, it was for a service you received, so pay up ( nope, I'm not a solicitor)
> 
> The same thing happened to me. I paid the solicitor , and they came back later with an adjusted bill ( becuase they had forgotten to bill me for something). I paid it.
> 
> If they had overcharged you, I'm sure you wouldn't say to them: " it's in the past, I have paid it , so i agreed with the price, so I don't want it back"


 
Would they have come looking to give it back to you though?


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## gnashers (16 Aug 2006)

well, I had a landlord who was a solicitor once and 6 months after I'd moved out I got a cheque from him for something small that we'd overpaid. I presume he would have the same attitude in all his business dealings


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## EddieT (16 Aug 2006)

This happened to me also earlier in the year. The solicitors added up the bill wrong and did not include the land registry fee (€500 in my case). So I have a statement that was signed by them "paid in full" but they still persisted. Not only that but they refused to register the land deeds until i handed over the money.

Is this a new way of sucking in clients now? Understate the original bill so you use them and then say "oh! sorry we made a mistake, pay up or we will withhold your legal documentation because --- guess what --- we certainly know the law when it comes to getting paid (don't we boys!)".

If solicitors engaged proper staff and used spreadsheets and accounting packages then this sort of nonsense would never happen. Instead they choose to use elderly "dependable" staff who are not IT-savy while all the time looking if they are "just sooooo busy" to sort it out.

It would be very interesting to see exactly how many people have been caught in the trap ...... makes perfect business sense doesn't it ...... under quote but once the client has committed there is nothing they can do......scam?

However they are not the only "profession" scamming believe me. Maybe we should start a thread "How Irish professional scam the public".

Any support out there?

EddieT


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## helan72 (16 Aug 2006)

I have the opposite situation - recently sold house and am dealing with the solicitor i used when buying the house 5.5 years ago. During the course of a conversation he mentions that there is still some money left in my client account and he can offset that against my bill!!!!! First i have heard of it. Was so shocked never asked how much so am about to call him now and find out. I have heard that money is kept in client accounts for a period of time just in case any unforseen bills arrive however 5 and a half years seems a very long time.


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## roxy (16 Aug 2006)

I had a similar situation with Stamp duty on the mortgage, see my Solictor 'forgot' to charge us stamp duty on mortgage? thread. Oh and I paid up too!


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## z107 (16 Aug 2006)

> Instead they choose to use elderly "dependable" staff who are not IT-savy while all the time looking if they are "just sooooo busy" to sort it out.



There are also plenty of younger staff in Ireland who are not IT-savy... believe me!

I know of many older people who have gone to the trouble of learning how to use IT systems, so I don't think age has anything to do with it.


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## EddieT (16 Aug 2006)

helan72 said:


> I have the opposite situation - recently sold house and am dealing with the solicitor i used when buying the house 5.5 years ago. During the course of a conversation he mentions that there is still some money left in my client account and he can offset that against my bill!!!!! First i have heard of it. Was so shocked never asked how much so am about to call him now and find out. I have heard that money is kept in client accounts for a period of time just in case any unforseen bills arrive however 5 and a half years seems a very long time.


 

Let me take this opportunity to have a rant!

Like all professions, there are good and bad in all. The issue here is "normal practice". For example it is normal practice now for a dentist to ask you to sign a social welfare form for an extraction before they do the work. You should be covered by the state but wait .... the professional says "oh! but this is a surgical extraction and you are not covered by social welfare" and then they charge you personally while unknowns to you they are STILL  claiming against the social welfare", (this is a failing of the social welfare system and accountability for the finances of the state) shall I go on? 

Do they really think we are that thick we do not see what is happening? Think about this for a second ...... in the current market how many house sales would a small solicitors firm be involved in...quite a lot... and yet in my circumstance they did not notice that the final bill was understated by almost 20% (paid 2,500 but said they missed the 500) .... yet they see roughly the same size of bills going out every day. Hey, they even tell you themselves they are "snowed under". Have they ever hear of a standard template for raising bills? Hey, have they even headr of the magic word "e-x-c-e-l". 

ALSO the price of the legal fee is directly ties to the value of the premises so with the massive rise in property prices there has been a relative increase in fees, maybe not a direct correlation but far faster than the rate of inflation ....this = more profit! Yet the mistake is MINE! They still get their FULL FEE and I have no come back for THEIR mistake.

Professional means exactly that! They have the experience to tell you that this is what it should cost notwithstanding some unpredicatable factors. (By unpredictable I do not mean that the staff don't have enough fingers to add up the bill so they have to guess.) It should  mean I am willing to quote you AND stand by that quote because I am governed by a set of ethical guidelines by virtue of membership of a professional body.

Professional bodies need to wake up (I am actually a member of one myself) and start forcing their members to take responsibility for their actions instead of protecting their interests otherwise "a quote is not worth the paper it is written on!" and we Joe-Public are just "money-cows" ...... NIB scandal, AIB overcharging, etc. etc. etc. (accountability is not a word that comes to mind) the list just goes on and on.

We need a change in culture or else things are just going to continue to deteriorate .... we should have more professionals like your solicitors ..... they are now sadly a dying breed as money is king.

EddieT


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## EddieT (16 Aug 2006)

umop3p!sdn said:


> There are also plenty of younger staff in Ireland who are not IT-savy... believe me!
> 
> I know of many older people who have gone to the trouble of learning how to use IT systems, so I don't think age has anything to do with it.


 

Touche! Then perhaps it should be phrased that the solicitors are the professionals and should be held accountable for the failings of their own staff. In these cases they are clearly not. If they can say "we made a mistake, you owe us more money, pay up cause you have to. We know the law!". What hope has the guy in the street?

What a joke!

EddieT


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## mf1 (16 Aug 2006)

ALSO the price of the legal fee is directly ties to the value of the premises so with the massive rise in property prices there has been a relative increase in fees, maybe not a direct correlation but far faster than the rate of inflation ....this = more profit! 

Not true - if you take the time to read many of the posts on this Board you will see that conveyancing fees in general have reduced to what I would now call an uneconomical level. Many firms do the work in bulk, many firms do the work as loss leaders - in my view, it is not possible to give an adequate    service for uneconomic fees unless you are effectively subsidising the client. 

"Professional bodies need to wake up (I am actually a member of one myself) and start forcing their members to take responsibility for their actions instead of protecting their interests otherwise "a quote is not worth the paper it is written on!" and we Joe-Public are just "money-cows" ...... NIB scandal, AIB overcharging, etc. etc. etc. (accountability is not a word that comes to mind) the list just goes on and on."

This is a rant - the basic question was should the client pay for an expense that was incurred on his behalf albeit he was not made aware of it. It is for the OP and the solicitor involved to take it from there. There was no indication of a mass attempt to defraud/con/extort money by underquoting the final bill.   

I cannot agree with your underlying notion that many professional bodies do not adequately regulate their memebrs. If anything, I believe most professional bodies to be very regulatory. 

mf


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## Purple (16 Aug 2006)

mf1 said:


> I cannot agree with your underlying notion that many professional bodies do not adequately regulate their memebrs. If anything, I believe most professional bodies to be very regulatory.mf



I think that the OP should pay up. I agree with mf1 on that but I disagree fundamentally with the principle of self-regulation so I can't agree with the above quote.


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## euroDilbert (17 Aug 2006)

mf1 said:


> I cannot agree with your underlying notion that many professional bodies do not adequately regulate their memebrs. If anything, I believe most professional bodies to be very regulatory. mf


 
I agree with this up to a point. However, my own view is that they do very little to deal with incompetence and inefficiency. For lots of practical reasons, it is often dificult to 'shop around' when engaging a professional.
In many cases (I have personal experience here) you may only come in contact with them for one particular situation - once you find out how poor they are at their jobs, it's too late.


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## mf1 (17 Aug 2006)

One of the best pieces of advice that is regularly handed out on this board is that when engaging with a professional do so not only on price but on personal recommendation. 

Despite the drubbing that the professions get on this board, when you really follow through on a question, it is generally a great  deal less straightforward than was originally presented. 

As a practising solicitor, I am also wary of clients that I don't know or have no connection with ( i.e. straight in from the street or Golden Pages). It is quite easy to be caught out by stupid, manipulative, greedy clients who have one eye on the price and another eye on "how can I milk this?"

mf


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## bond-007 (17 Aug 2006)

Why have ads in the golden pages if you feel that way?


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## Gordanus (17 Aug 2006)

Pay them.  An honest mistake is an honest mistake.   (Amn't a solicitor and god knows have often given out stink about them)


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## December (5 Sep 2006)

Look back at all the post you were given by them?  Was it mentioned that you would have to pay Land Registry fees?  Did you know that you had to pay them? 

if so, why didn't you question your solicitor (presumably you recieved an invoice and a breakdown of your account).

The money is not going into their pocket, it is going to the Land Registry / Registry of Deeds.

Do you want your Deeds registered?

I think you should pay up.


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