My partner sold her house in one day, a nearly-new house, no chains, seemed like a simple sale.
It ended up taking nearly 5 months.
We went long periods of time with no updates, documents found to be sent to the wrong place, poor communication in general and no sense of urgency. The conveyancer who likes to sign correspondence with, "L", refused to meet my partner even when both were in the same building during an office visit by my partner to complain about the level of service. I don't think, "L", ever called, only calling to reply to any of the inquiries by my partner was forced to make.
One mistake was so bad, it may not have been spotted had I not gone in myself to complain.
This whole process caused some hardship because my partner had to pay a mortgage AND rent plus storage charges after moving out of the sold property thinking completion was weeks away, It ended up being months away.
How could such an easy sale take so long? If we were warned it would take 5 months would we have given them our business?
I'm told there is no law against conveyancing taking a long time but we will be making complaints to the FO and the FCA, it seems we just have to report it even if nothing comes out of it.