As a committed bargain-hunter I know what a great feeling it is to bag something at a discount.
Whether it’s a last-minute holiday, a restaurant voucher or a cracking online shopping deal you have found, saving money is not only savvy, it’s good for the soul.
You really have something to smile about when you end up with a good quality product or service for less than you expected. But that is a very different thing indeed to just buying something cheap.
False economy
We’ve all heard the phrases ‘you get what you pay for’, and ‘buy cheap, buy twice’, yet sometimes we ignore them in our eagerness to save a bit of money.
I did it recently when booking a hotel in Luton, finding what looked like an absolute bargain room in a decent location. However, on arrival I was greeted by a small, dank hole with a window that wouldn’t open.
No frills, no fresh air, and no way I was spending the night there.
This meant I had the inconvenience, and cost, of finding somewhere else at the last minute, so what started out as cheap turned out to be expensive – and a major pain.
An expensive mistake
The same principle applies in conveyancing, where it is vitally important that quality comes before price. Put simply, the consequences of a poor conveyancer getting it wrong are disastrous for your client – it could literally cost them the roof over their head. Hardly worth a saving of £100 on the legal fees is it?
Of course, not all cheap conveyancers will make mistakes, and not all expensive ones will provide a great service. However, I’ve worked in this industry for a long time and let’s just say the race to the bottom on prices has done nothing to improve overall standards.
Your safest bet is to find a conveyancing partner that has the scale to achieve efficiencies and remain competitive, while retaining the personal approach and professional standards of a smaller firm.
In other words, you want a named point of contact who is in total charge of your client’s case, and all the work should be done in-house, not sub-contracted out of the office or out of the country (it happens!). Crucially, the people doing the conveyancing ought to be experts with years of experience behind them.
Cost is important of course, but value for money is what really counts.
