Hastings Legal

Feb 16th, 2023

Sep 8th, 2022

We used Hastings Legal to aid in our house move 2021/2022. Their website advertises them as being experts in across border conveyancing, which was one of the main reasons we chose to go ahead with them, along with their supposed No key, no fee promise. Unfortunately neither of these things turned out to be true. Lia was our contact throughout the whole process, and it soon became clear that she was not qualified enough for the position. After an initially promising phone call and email where we were assured that both our English sale and Scottish purchase could complete simultaneously it later became clear that this would be harder than it was made to sound. Resulting in a significant amount of stress and emails from our side to try to better understand how Hastings were proposing to proceed with our purchase. The final blow was finding out that a large retainer had been recommended by our bank to complete the purchase, which had been completely missed by Hastings Legal. This only became evident to us a few days before we were due to exchange, at which point Hastings Legal then attempted to rectify with the bank, but only managed to cause the bank to threaten to completely withdraw the mortgage offer. Hastings then suggested we get in touch with the bank ourselves to try to change the banks mind. Needless to say our purchase ended up falling through on the day of completion due to this as well as the rest of our chain, something that has caused myself and my family an enormous amount of grief and stress over the last few months. This did not stop Hastings demanding their substantial fees for so called work that they had apparently carried out on our behalf though. Throughout the process we were repeatedly made to wait days for any kind of answer to our queries and told to contact the seller ourselves to chase for information rather than them do it. Requests we made regarding the house purchase were ignored. We made recurring attempts to call Lia and were consistently told that she was out at a business lunch or would call us back later, which never happened. We would later receive an email from her which did not fully answer our questions. The support we received was close to non-existent, definitely not a service worthy of almost 1k of legal fees. Overall our experience with Hastings Legal was absolutely atrocious and we are still investigating our options in terms of their liability regarding our house purchase. I would advise anyone considering using them to avoid at all costs.
Aug 21st, 2022

The staff are friendly and welcoming. When it comes to business, nothing is too much trouble for these well trained and knowledgeable people. The fees are fair, reasonable and well laid out in advance and so no nasty surprises. If you are selling, the property departments advertising material couldnt be better. The legal department has all bases covered and swiftly solves any problems that crop up. I wouldnt use anyone else!
Aug 19th, 2022

Sep 2nd, 2021