Connells Ashford, Kent – Avoid! I'll try to make this as brief as possible. 1) Sellers If you are selling your house you are forced through their preferred solicitor to get your valuation. This solicitor is based somewhere up north. This solicitor is also extremely incompetent. Shoosmiths. You will not be able to push anything through, you will struggle to get answers, you will end up paying more than if you went to a local solicitor who you can walk your ID and paperwork to free of charge. The estate agent is also incapable of filling in standard documents correctly first time delaying the sale of the house! Unbelievable. My advice after our experience: there are a couple of local estate agents which aren't part of a big chain. They offer a better fee and a far better service. They will tell you the correct times for people viewing your house for example. You won't have families turn up @ 1pm when you've requested 5pm-8pm viewings. You also won't have to pay upfront fees with these Estate Agents as they don't fob you off with lifetime memberships etc! 2) Buyers If your dream house has appeared @ Connells, it's almost worth waiting for one to appear with another estate agent. Firstly you get asked if you are going to take up the mortgage advisors services. If you say no, you are told you will not have your offer accepted until certain things are completed. You will then also have the house remain on the market with the potential of some gazumping. Connells are known to tell you your accepted fee has fallen through even if it hasn't just so they get someone through their mortgage advisor, an online search will show many cases. After our first 2 meetings with our mortgage advisor I received a letter from Connells showing they had sent our details to Blacks Solicitors and the sellers Solicitors. When questioning this they said they had allocated us a solicitor, it would be beneficial as they could contact both as they are very close companies. I went home and contacted local solicitors and received quotes. Blacks then phoned me asking for money to start searches, I asked them for a quote first, they came back more expensive and were based in Leeds. I declined their offer and went local, the best thing I could have done as my solicitors based down the road have been fantastic. We opted to take the mortgage advisors advice as we really wanted this house. Upfront fee of nearly £500 for their “Lifetime Membership”. Marvellous. They have found a loophole which many local estate agents are disgusted with. They are having you pay an unnecessary fee before the completion day which is when they will ask for fees. It also took 3 visits to our mortgage advisor for him to tell us he gets his mortgages from a small selection of banks and building societies. When I told him about a mortgage at HSBC I had found he confessed he cannot access HSBC. Too late for us, we had paid for a lifetime membership. You may be lucky and meet your Estate Agent. We weren't. We met our Mortgage Advisor who continuously ensures us he is not part of Connells Estate Agents, he is part of Connells Mortgage Consultants or some other rubbish. When asking to speak to our Estate Agents they are unable to tell us. Our solicitor was also unable to get a name of our Estate Agents. When we were set to move we found out that our Mortgage Advisor/Estate Agent filled in some paperwork incorrectly which delayed the process by approx. 3 weeks as well! We couldn't believe they could be any more incompetent, but they proved to be. Connells are an untrustworthy Estate Agent who try to push both sellers and buyers to things they don't want. Avoid them if you don't want as much stress as most people get from moving!