We were recommended Apex by our estate agent to handle our house sale. The sale side with Tom Brewer went very smoothly and he was very, very responsive. However, he was unable to assist us with our purchase of a new build property, so he passed the matter to his colleague Kelly Stewart. The first red flag should have been when I didn't receive any contact from Kelly after two weeks and the estate agent ended up chasing them and establishing contact for us. I was then called by Charlie who sent over an estimate which we accepted immediately in order to progress the matter.
We then didn't hear anything for another two weeks. I chased Charlie asking what was happening and he assured me the matter was in hand. After another couple of weeks of nothing we got the estate agent involved again and were sent new client paperwork; as if they hadn't been handling us prior to this point. We really should have walked then because it went from bad to absolutely terrible very quickly. Either phone calls and emails were ignored, not responded to or batted off with vague platitudes. Kelly would sometimes be overly friendly or oddly abrupt and rude when we did manage to get her on the phone; it was like talking to two different people and was very disconcerting.
The matter dragged on and on for months without getting anywhere. After my second complaint the director, Phil May, took over. He initially seemed to be keen to help us make progress, but things again then seemed to slide and we felt very unclear about what was happening and what was outstanding.
At one point I wrote a lengthy complaint to the estate agent as they had recommended them in the first place, and suggested that they might not want to continue their association. This complaint was forwarded to Phil who then accused me of slander (surely a solicitor should be well aware that the written word is libel - another red flag) and essentially made me apologise for hurting his feelings before he continued to work with us. He didn't actually manage to make any progress and it was only the involvement of our IFA which actually got us to the point of being able to exchange and complete. Even the completion process was an odd affair where we didn't hear anything from them until almost 5 pm to say we could take the keys. Luckily, our seller had let us move into the property much earlier in the day, so we weren't left paying extra removal costs, but I'm cynical enough to think that this was a deliberate ploy by Apex to make our move just that bit harder after I'd "hurt their feelings".
We discovered that some of the delay was because they had my name misspelled in multiple ways on multiple documents, as well as an incorrect address which we had corrected with them several times. Even the final invoice had the wrong address on it, which was another added insult to injury. The lack of attention and competence for an established company was really very disappointing.
All in all, stay away from this company. There's something not quite right with the way they operate and working with them has been one of the absolute worst experiences of my life. They didn't deserve a penny of what they got paid and I'll reiterate my previous stance that, in my opinion and experience, they are an embarrassment to the profession.