Issues with the service offered by free legals conveyancers / question for Mortgage Solutions

Holy thread revival Batman!

I recall speaking to a partner in a conveyancing firm several years ago c2019.  They were getting £35 per case from the lender and were making more from the CHAPS payments where the bank was charging them £2 and they were charging clients £40+VAT.  Very tight margins indeed.

Make sure to check completion statements, if it's not bad enough that with a "free legal" incentive they force clients to pay a TT fee to redeem the current mortgage and often another fee to electronically ID each client, they also try and squeeze in another 20 quid to provide them a copy of the land registry title even when it has been opted out of!

Perhaps it's just me, but as most lenders still call it free legals/standard conveyancing, then it should be just that. If the conveyancers can't afford to work for the fees they charge the lender then that's not the clients' problem. 

Agreed, first issue is lenders need to drop the free standard legals tag line (even though thats an improvement from free legals.

£20 fee to ID verify each client - if thats not standard for every case what does standard mean?

£40 to £75 ? TT fee - again, in every case

£? to check an AST + £? to check bank statements for rental income on BTL's - again doesn't every BTL have an AST in place, and if the lender truly insists on this we've either already provided to the lender as brokers, or they can request from us and we can provide to underwriter.

Couple all this with a poor service, not answering phones, spending most of the time trying to find excuses for not doing what they should have done instead of doing what they should have done, conveyancing is very very poor nowadays and getting worse.

Personally, I think more case handlers, less lower grade staff who don't really know what their doing. 

I was hoping Consumer Duty would have cleared this issue up.

Worst I had was about £120 of fees on a standard 'fee-free legal service' remortgage.

What other industry can use the words 'free' and here is the bill in the same sentance?