23 Aug 2019 9:02 PM:

Hi there, I wonder if anyone can help out or give me an opinion on whether our solicitor is correct in the fees he’s asking for or if he is starting to be creative.

We put a deposit on an apartment off-plan a good while back but it wasn’t completed on time and we went to court to cancel the contract and get our money back. We won our case and two appeals also. For which I’m grateful to the solicitor.

However, the developers went into insolvency and so far we haven’t had any money back. That part I understand, upsetting though it is.

But what troubles me is that our solicitor has always taken the line that it didn’t matter about the various extra amounts he’s asked for as we would get it all back plus interest. We know that was not necessarily true and always questioned about extra ‘fees,’ for example having to pay for a technical surveyor which was apparently needed to put a value on the apartment. In that case we said we would pay it on the basis that we got the report. But we never got the report as the solicitor said it turned out to be a group one and didn’t list the apartments separately.

Then he asked for 1,000€ to pay for a new procurator as the original one had retired. That seemed a bit strange as I thought we were past the procurator stage. But we paid it anyway.

Sometime after this, he rang up and asked for 2,000€ which he said was needed in order to proceed to a final stage that may allow for us to quickly collect what was owed. And that he needed us to send the money I urgently.

(A efectos de proceder a un último peritaje que posiblemente nos permita cobrar rápidamente lo que se les debe, necesito me hagan llegar urgentemente 2.000 €, bien entregándomelos directamente en mi despacho. Espero urgentemente vuestra respuesta)

This seemed even stranger and we asked him to put it in writing. As a result, he sent an email with the request which is what appears in italics above. We kept the email with the request but have never replied and he has never written again. This was one year ago. Needless to say, we haven’t received any money and have no notification or papers to confirm that the

Accountants have finished their job and we’re not getting anything back.

And I daren’t contact the solicitor because I fear that he might ask for more money as his settlement fee. And if we don’t pay it, start to threaten us with court action.

But it still troubles us because it would have been helpful to get something from the accountants to say that we wouldn’t be getting any share of the insolvency money. I know we won’t, I don’t doubt that, but I’d like to have it in writing from them.

Thread: Solicitors fees - real or imagined

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