Bury-based ABT Law LLP has had an advert banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
The website www.evolvedconveyancing.co.uk, promoting conveyancing services, contained an online quote tool. The tool returned a quote of £390.80 when a £125,000 purchase price with no mortgage was entered.
The complainant challenged whether the online quote was misleading, because his final bill was significantly more.
ABT Law did not respond to the ASA’s enquiries.
The ASA was concerned by ABT Law’s lack of substantive response and apparent disregard for the Code, which was a breach of CAP Code clause 1.7 (Unreasonable delay). It reminded them of their responsibility to provide a substantive response to its enquiries and told them to do so in future.
The ad watchdog noted that the complainant had received an online quote for £390.80 for conveyancing services but understood he had been charged significantly more. Because the ASA had not received any substantiation from ABT Law to demonstrate that their quotes were accurate, it concluded that the online quote was misleading.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 1.7 (Unreasonable delay), 3.1 and 3.3 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 3.17 (Prices).
The ASA ruled that the ad must not appear again in its current form and it referred the matter to CAP’s Compliance team.
This is all too common with many solicitors quoting only the conveyancing fee they charge and regularly ignoring VAT and disbursements, which makes it difficult for customers to compare costs.
Ironically, I read a letter in the trade press from an IFA last month that said "RDR would make IFAs truly professional like solicitors and accountants". Personally, I believe we are well ahead of their standards with a more rigorous regime that has been in place and tweaked for overn 20 years.
Financial adviers have file checking, observations, CPD, annual testing, separate formal qualifications for each field, an independent ombudsmen, transparency/public censure and explicit remuneration statements, but the Law Society and SRA have only relatively introduced some of these. Before then, once a solicitor had completed their initial training, they were comparatively unchecked thereon for life.