Arrow Conveyancing Limited

We had a terrible experience with Arrow throughout the sale of our house. From the start, communication was poor. Our solicitor was never available by phone and only responded via email, typically just attaching documents with vague subject lines like “For Your Attention” and no explanation of what was happening or what action was needed.

They wrongly accused our purchasing solicitor of trying to dictate the chain, when in fact they were acting in our best interest. Rather than working collaboratively, Arrow seemed to work against them, creating unnecessary friction and delays.

Arrow had confirmed in writing that they would not charge us for liaising with our purchase solicitor, but later added those charges to our bill. When we challenged this, they initially refused to remove the fees, and we had to push back strongly before they relented.

We also discovered hidden fees in the final payment statement—charges we had never agreed to. They billed us for documents we already had and could have provided ourselves, and they inflated the cost of other documents, in some cases tripling the actual price.

Thankfully, after seeking advise elsewhere and having carefully reviewed the paperwork we flagged these issues. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to avoid all the charges and ended up paying hundreds more than we should have.

I would not recommend this firm based on our experience.

Had to do a lot of chasing around, kept coming back with silly questions from The other party even though I sent every single information possible. And then it felt like they was buying time by asking things two weeks before completion if the drainage runs through the next door neighbours property and then sent me a link to make them aware of any trees that are over a certain height etc. Ridiculous.

Absolutely awful from start to finish. I started out being patient and not chasing because who wants to be that person. Ended up realising no progress was made unless I did chase. Communication was woefully inadequate, especially when having a row on the phone with my conveyancer (BOTH of us were shouting at each other). What should have been a simple house sale -no chain, they were a first time buyer with mortgage agreed) - ended up taking 6 months! They were slow, arrogant, rude and dismissive. Stay as far away as possible from this shitshow.

From the first contact with the new client team to completion the team were helpful and efficient. We had various delays and issues due to circumstances outside of anyone's control and Ama was great keeping us updated and making sure everything still went as smoothly as possible.

I used Arrow Conveyancing to purchase my first property and I would avoid using them again if needed.
From the start we were wrongly advised to withdraw our deposit by the new client team who advised we would be completed in six weeks, this caused us to lose over £2,000 in interest. We were the allocated a solicitor and the process from initial introduction to our completion day was poorly handled. Lack of communication from the solicitor, I had days where the estate agents were chasing me to see if I had any updates, emails weren’t being dealt with efficiently and often not answered and basic questions that were asked were simply ignored. We requested advance notice of when the deposit had to be paid by and this was sent to us at on a Thursday at 5:30pm, no notice or advanced warning. I found the whole service unreliable.

My house sale was a no chain property purchase, with very simple format as my deposit money was ready to use in my account as soon as the sale went through.

It took a long time for the firm to assign me a case manager which meant the estate agents couldn’t take the house off the market and once assigned I received an email rather than any pleasantries with a phone call which would have been nice considering I’m a first time buyer and didn’t know anything about the process that laid ahead.

At first I was trusting, waiting patiently for responses because I have been told that generally it can be slow speaking with solicitors because they have lots of cases on at once and my solicitor was responding within 48 hours of a message being sent. Unfortunately at this point I already felt as though my questions weren’t being answered and that the same words were being sent to me, leaving me confused about the requirements for gifted deposit checks. A phone call here may have been much quicker and easier.

Communication seemed to break down further around the searches on the house. Paying for them along with the ID checks was the first thing I did the day I received notice to do so in March but the searches weren’t completed until end of May. I started to question what the hold up was mid May but was receiving the same answer from my solicitor that we were waiting on the seller to provide a sewerage bill to send for the water & drainage search. Eventually I felt I needed to take matters into my own hands and contacted the council & search company used by Arrow and the seller to get the process moving. It turned out that the sewage bill we had been waiting a month for didn’t exist because the house has a septic tank, which my solicitor was well aware of as enquiries had been sent requesting details on any damage or repairs. This was disappointing as it meant we had wasted an entire month due to lack of attention to detail and I had to get heavily involved, instigating approvals from Arrow for a different search type. What was more annoying was that this search was returned on the same day of submission, which means the house sale could have happened so much faster if it had just been given the right amount of attention. I was also asked by her which date I’d be looking to complete on, after I’d confirmed with her that I’d like to have it all done by end of May. This question also predated the water search so it was impossible to know when completion would happen, particularly as the least experienced person in the process. I was further a little unsatisfied with the enquiries made on the house as they repeated things I already knew or were stated through the documents provided by the seller. Again, a phone call before the enquiries were sent would have gone a long way to finalise something we were both happy with. One enquiry asked why the house price sold for below asking, which I knew was simply due to the scale of the work needed and the fact that my low offer was accepted due to the family of the deceased owner wanting to sell quickly after a year on the market.

Once I was in contact with the seller I realised just how slow my solicitor was being and that I was being lied to. Where I was hearing from my solicitor that we were waiting on something from the seller, the seller told me that these things had been sent a week ago and that their solicitor had been chasing mine for answers for sometimes over a week. Having met and got on with the seller incredibly well and judging by the experience I was already having with my solicitor, I inclined to believe her. I was very grateful to be in communication with the seller directly, as responses from my solicitor got slower - which was surprising given how close we were getting to completion.

When I eventually sent my deposit to Arrow early June, I had to chase for confirmation of receipt, adding unnecessary stress to the process. When the sale had completed my solicitor was the last one to communicate this with me. When the keys had been dropped off, I knew 2 hours before my solicitor told me. I would go as far as saying the best service I receive from Arrow was when my solicitor was not there, as I received a friendly phone call from the lady who was covering Allison for the day and exchange of contracts happened within 20 minutes of this introduction.

Overall I found my experience with Arrow to be very lacking in customer care & consideration. What should have been a simple process left me in tears of frustration and writing emails in a state of distress trying to understand what was happening. Allison was very difficult to get hold of and although her assistant wanted to help on the phone they were very confused by my requests and recommended that I just go back to emailing her. The house is a big renovation project that needed as much of the summer light as it could get. I could have had an extra month and a half doing work in the property that was wasted. When it comes to selling the house I’ve already considered using the sellers solicitor as they were prompt, communicative and thorough.

Everything was incredibly slow and when it came to crunch time (exchange) the conveyancer disappeared so we thought we were completing one day as everything was in order and it didn’t happen for another 5 day! Each day we thought it would go ahead but the conveyancor just didn’t do anything. I think she went on holiday without sorting anything out and the technical support team ended up doing the work but no one said that, we had to keep chasing everything and pushing for it to go ahead each day and no one seemed to think there was any problem. No one apologised. It just seemed really strange.
I’d fork out the money for a solicitor next time. We could have been in the house ages before and it would have been a lot less stressful.