EXCLUSIVE: O’Neill Patient hits back at customer criticism report
The boss of the leading conveyancing firm has hit back at stinging criticism his firm received in a national newspaper from frustrated homebuyers.
The boss of conveyancing firm O’Neill Patient (ONP) has hit back at stinging criticism his firm received in The Sunday Times from frustrated homebuyers being let down.
The newspaper highlighted that over the past year hundreds of clients had shared their bad experiences of ONP after being referred by companies including the bank Santander and the estate agency Your Move.
The Sunday Times said that since the start of 2022, nearly 700 customers had posted negative reviews online, with most reporting long delays, unanswered phone calls, ignored emails or general incompetence.
But Nick Hale (main picture), Chief Executive of O’Neill Patient, told The Neg: “The piece in The [Sunday] Times was somewhat unbalanced. The [Sunday] Times journalist stated that ONP received over 700 negative reviews, however as the second largest conveyancing firm in the UK we completed 94,000 transaction last year.
“The number of negative reviews therefore accounts for only 0.7% of ONP’s transactions in 2022 with our upheld claims’ percentage being even lower at 0.13%.”
SERVICE
Hale says that ONP prides itself on service and that through 2022 it took action to manage pipeline numbers and that ONP’s TrustPilot score actually increased from 4.3 in January 2022 to 4.5 in Dec 2022.
He adds: “Our TrustPilot business dashboard shows that we have an average score of 4.62 between 1st October 2022 to 30th Jan 2023 which disproves the Times statement that our scores had declined over this period.
“Many of the reviews have been against the backdrop of the government incentives around Stamp Duty Land Tax which led to a rapid increase, of around 50%, in the number of transactions across the sector.”
LAG
“While we, as well as all other conveyancing firms, were recruiting and training as fast as possible, it inevitably led to a lag between the rapid increase in demand and the speed with which all conveyancers could train enough new people to meet this.”
Hale also points to the highly regulated environment ONP operates in.
“We meet these regulations with our qualified solicitors overseeing the work completed by trained conveyancers and supported by robust technology and automation.
“We continually look to improve and are now putting additional measures in place to improve our service by investing in our most highly qualified people and providing partners and clients with more direct access to these people.”
No one forces law firms to accept £50. Surely high service goes hand in hand with higher fees? Lenders will always make these offers if law firms are happy to take it on.
Nick Hale is quite right to come out fighting on this issue. In the context of completing 94,000 transactions last year, ONP should be given great credit for their service standards. Why does The Times choose to criticise the law firm rather than the lender practices that are imposing these incredible strains on the system? The article states at one point: “Santander said its customers could choose £250 cashback or free legal services when they renewed their mortgages.” These so-called “free legal services” will in many cases result in a legal fee to the law firm of sub-£50. The problem of course is that many customers still have a view of a law firm as an oak-panelled consultation room, lined with law reports, and a bespectacled elderly solicitor spending hours pondering the intricacies of their transaction. Now that works for magic circle firms charging out at £1000 an hour but it does not work when you are a firm being paid £50 for the entire transaction! So let’s get real. This is mechanised law and it has to be at these fees. If we want a significant improvement in the quality and speed of remortgage conveyancing, then the “free legals” offering needs to be reconsidered, and quickly. This is no criticism of the law firms and brokers who handle this work currently and who would continue to be the dominant providers: better fees would benefit them as well as everyone else.