Merritts Solicitors Reviews 

Over 2 month now since they told us that there was a charge of £14 to come back to us from our house move.. We have yet to receive this payment even though my wife has sent our personal bank details to them. No communication from them at all…

Superb service when dealing with a personal injury claim, wills and two house moves. I’d go nowhere else and love the high street presence of this wonderful local firm.

Excellent service from start to finish, ive used this team for almost ten years and never had any issues

AVOID AVOID AVOID!!

I used this firm as they were recommended by my estate agent and I could instruct them online (timing was limited at the time we found the house because I was due to go on holiday that weekend, so needed someone I could instruct at short notice/on a weekend). It should have been obvious that the estate agent was referring and most probably receiving payment for such leads.

The service was terrible from start to finish. The whole matter was concluded without me ever having spoken to any/my allocated solicitor, who it appears was incapable of returning calls. As others have said, calls are fielded by receptionist/legal secretaries, which isn't the service you pay for. My questions went unanswered, they weren't proactive, in fact they were slow. My searches had been due back for some time and I had to chase them to action them. Their lack of action meant the vendor was on the verge of pulling out.

Paperwork was sent out with inaccuracies, which they struggled to recognise when I asked them to correct it. They failed to send contracts out with some other paperwork (despite it the covering letter stating it was enclosed) and then stated I was the issue as I hadn't returned the paperwork. I returned everything I had that needed returning but they had made an omission, this caused further delays. To their credit they did then pay for docu-sign because I had already paid recorded delivery for the return of all other paperwork and having to do the same again would have caused even more delay. They did act like this was doing me a big favour, which in realty it was simply attempting to rectify their error.

Reception staff verge on rude and couldn't be any less interested in what is being said. Calls are never returned and emails take a long time to get a response.

They did recognise some of their errors and offer £100 discount but this still seems unfair given the lack of service that I received. Other than doing the searches and contract, I fail to see what they have done. They certainly didn't advise or answer questions. Despite a complaint to the practice partner, they still can't get things right. They have sent another letter with yet another "enclosure" that isn't enclosed. The invoice that ISN'T enclosed would appear incorrect as they are requesting a figure in the letter that doesn't account for having had part payment already (I paid disbursements at completion as these weren't in dispute - the 'advice fee' however was).

Strongly advise to look elsewhere. 79% 1-star reviews on Trust Pilot tells you everything. And a lot of reviews have a similar theme.

My uncle and I recently completed the sale of his property, a process that ran from November 2025 to May 2026, and we would like to thank Merritt's Solicitors, in Yarm, particularly Louise Wilson, for her support throughout.

While the process felt lengthy at times and communication could occasionally have been more proactive, Louise was always approachable, professional, and willing to help.
Whenever we needed an update or reassurance, she took the time to speak with us on the telephone and explain where matters stood.

What particularly stood out was Louise's kindness and understanding. My uncle is disabled following a stroke, and Louise went above and beyond by visiting him in person to go through the final completion and signing documents. This made a potentially difficult part of the process much easier and was greatly appreciated.
It is easy to forget that solicitors are often managing multiple transactions and significant workloads at the same time. Despite this, Louise always treated us with patience, respect, and genuine care.
Property transactions are rarely straightforward, but Louise remained supportive and committed from start to finish. We would happily recommend both Merritt's Solicitors and Louise Wilson.

Selina provided an excellent.She was highly professional, efficient, and always quick to respond to any queries. Communication was clear and consistent throughout, which made the whole process much less stressful.

The transaction itself was completed very quickly, and it was evident that Selina is extremely organised and knowledgeable in her work. I really appreciated her proactive approach and attention to detail.

Overall, despite the slightly rocky start, I’m very pleased with the outcome and the service I received from Selina. I would definitely recommend her to others.

What do you think for the solicited

Absolutely terrible - don't use. Our property sale was just farmed out to Secretaries and Trainee Solicitors who just acted as a post box and sent all enquiries from the Buyer's solicitors to us to answer. They just give you problems, not solutions and they should have paid us a fee because we did most of their work for them. They let their counterparts, in our case the Buyer's solicitors, run rings round them. They never properly understood our file, took ages to answer e mails and respond to our calls. Goodness knows where the more experienced solicitors are in Merritts, Yarm Office....maybe there are none ! We ended up with Merritts after a referral by our Estate Agent in West Yorkshire to something called "The Move Butler" who use Merritts to deliver the "Swiftmove" service designed to cut conveyancing times down....it doesn't, because of their inefficiency and amateur standards in Merritts it lengthens the conveyancing process.

As a retired lost grad educated teacher I have a half a brain
But this lot here defy all logic.
Do not use use this bunch of social ,intellectual cripples in way
For the sale of our house knowing that my wife's and my relationship was totally broke they totally gave us no information about the house sale until 16 weeks in
At which points we were fired an emai(and im so sorry to say this im hyper clever) may as well have been written in Chinese)
So fair play to my wife whobdealt with this
After this they sent us a contract to sign
And both me and my wife double checked this to make sure bw hadsigned it
Then I got a snarky email off one their members of staùff called Sophie
Where ⁹I asked her where had we missed singing as we had both checked the document
We both. agreed that the bit of the document that hadn't been signed hadn't been sent out originally

It gets better when i was asking Sofie could you please help me in terms of the correct signing of the document
As we both were struggling
I have the email
We are here to help
Look at the letter attacheldI am registered as disabled
Wow what a rubbish bunch
I am going to put their emails to me on line
Avoid these like the plague⁹

Shocking service for conveyancin for the purchase and sale of our property. Extra fees coming out of no where, that were no where to be seen on original documents sent out by themselves and third party companies. On questioning this, they managed to find even more charges that they had apparently not charged us. We originally quoted £2000 in fees which actually ended up being over £3000. The staff are unfriendly and unwilling to help. Any contact you make is made to feel like a hassle and you should be gate despite paying over the odds for a substandard service. Avoid at all costs.

Nightmare from start to finish anyone getting a solicitor for buying house please don't go with the ones your estate agent suggests look for your own. Got keys for my house at 5pm at night

having being unfortunate enough to deal with this company, i would urge you not to use them. I was referred to by my Mortgage Adviser from Countrywide Mortgage Services as she is a person friend of Mr Riordan, (backhanders left right and centre) although i already had my own solicitor, was told that Merritts would do a small part of my mortgage so i ended up getting charged twice which ran into thousands. I find Merritts are unprofessional and cover up for each other, disgrace - also don't use the Mortgage Company as they are worse!!

Trust me when you read this - use anyone but Merritts for your house sale/purchase. We’re so mentally exhausted from the experience that we can’t even bring ourselves to write a full review. In summary -

- Zero proactive communication: We didn’t hear from our solicitor for the first two weeks, and after that it took on average 3 emails before we got a reply. Many of our questions were unanswered.
- Professionalism: everyone at Merritts that we dealt with, seemed like they couldn’t get rid of you quickly enough. Replies bordered on rude, and despite multiple promises to have a call back from our solicitor ‘as a matter of urgency’, she claimed to have never been advised this.
- Had to do alot of the work ourselves to keep the process moving, including taking it upon ourselves to get our searches returned early, despite being told this wouldn’t be possible. This was made more difficult by the fact that we were given the wrong company name to chase.

Strongly advise looking for alternatives. Please read the other reviews of Merritts before considering using them.

This is a company that takes your money, provides a terrible service and simply doesn't care. There are two actual solicitors, but conveyancing is carried out by young inexperienced temps who are given no guidance. Merritts never answer the phone and all emails asking for updates are ignored. Their complete lack of response to other solicitors meant we lost a sale and then we got their bill! Shockingly bad!

Please read if you value your health and sanity when dealing with Merritts solicitors in Yarm. Don't be fooled by all the positive reviews on their website as they must block anyone with constructive but negative criticism and for me giving 1 star as the minimum here is a gross injustice as they are simply not fit to undertake any conveyancing without mistakes and bad performance on your behalf. We took in good faith the recommendation from our estate agents Gowland and White that we should entrust our conveyancing to Merritts only to discover how hollow this was as we later discovered that the agents were paid £125 for each recommendation. Consequently, Merritts undertook our conveyancing which was a nightmare from start to finish culminating with a 9 page letter of a detailed account of multiple issues ranging with lies, basic errors, bad or no communication and general misinformation. My letter went to senior partner Mr. Moran who summarily dismissed it adopting a bunker mentality instead of dealing with the points constructively as any reputable company would do. Result, chaos to continue for any other unsuspecting client. My solicitor was someone who either is in the wrong job or she has no idea what customer focus and satisfaction is but certainly adopts a low and reactive (instead of proactive) stance when dealing with your affairs. In my company she would be dismissed outright as incompetent. I believe this culture of incompetence is endemic throughout Merritts as both my buyer and my seller were unusually with Merritts and with three different solicitors there we all suffered with the same bad experiences. My 9 page letter describes how bad they are and is freely available to anyone who wishes to be informed of my experience but really my advice is go to anyone else since otherwise you put your faith in Merritts at your peril.

The initial documentation sent out by Merritts had incorrect address details. From here communication was poor. When calling the office phone calls went unanswered and I would need to leave voice mails and then follow these up as calls were not returned. To get a response in the next day or so I usually had to copy in Alex who was a partner in the company. I decided to write to both the buyer of my property and the owner of the property I was purchasing to therefore have a means of knowing what I was waiting for during the selling/buying process. I would fully expect to get this from my solicitor given the rate they charge.

Moving/completion day was made incredibly stressful by Merritts. I had returned the contracts needed for exchange over 2 weeks prior to the planned completion date. These had been returned to the team working on my case (Harriet, Lucy and Alex) asking them to let me know if anything was completed incorrectly. There was a signature missing and Lucy did not inform me of this until the day of completion. This therefore added a 1 hour round trip (spare time I did not have) onto an already busy and stressful day of packing up my house, relocating into another region and then needing to unpack into my new property. Further lack of attention was demonstrated when Merritts tried to charge me an additional £1300 for their work. This was due to an incorrect remittance statement where extra charges had been incorrectly added to my purchase. I therefore had to flag this on the day of completion/moving and ensure this was taken off prior to paying Merritts. These documents were signed and invoices complete at 1pm, I was then advised that exchange of contracts would take place imminently over the phone. However, Lucy and the estate agent informed me that this actually did not take place until 3pm thereby post-poning transfer of funds and completion leaving me with a van full of my furniture and belongings to sit in Asda carpark for a few hours and look into potential accommodation for the night as no one could confirm that I would be able to collect the keys before 5pm (solicitor and estate agent closing times). After pressing Merritts and the estate agents all afternoon I was able to collect the keys for the property I was purchasing at 4.30pm and needed to extend the van rental and pay for an 'out of hours' return.

In my experience Merritts made the moving process more difficult than it already is.

Would not recommend!

Myself and my partner used this solicitors based on a recommendation from our mortgage advisor. The whole process was made so much more stressful than it needed to be due to lack of communication. There were numerous times we had emailed and made phone calls to speak to the solicitor and had no response, it took us to contact our mortgage advisor complaining to finally receive contact.
We didn’t have any contact with updates throughout the process which was not helpful considering we were first time buyers.

The day before completion we were asked to send our deposit money and solicitors fees via email with no follow up curtesy call, when we replied to the email we still received no response. We sent over half our money and tried to contact to confirm they had received it but they didn’t answer the phone after 4.30pm considering they are supposed to close at 5pm! My partner then contacted the following day to check they had received it and was told that accounts hadn’t confirmed but they took his number and will contact when they know for definite. There was still no confirmation of his money but confirmation of my own and I had to ask again for them to confirm they received it and they said that had it from yesterday. This is unacceptable when transferring over a large amount of money!

On the day of completion, it was made 1000x more stressful then it should have been and they left it to the very last minute to transfer the funds even though they were told we needed the funds before 5pm. Which added pressure to ourselves and all other parties involved.

If I need a solicitor in the future I will not be using Merritts!

Absolutely awful company, if you want a quick sale and good communication do NOT use these , it has taken us months to buy a house , they don't listen to what you want and don't reply For days to emails and never answer the phone , we just paid 50grand deposit and received a confirmation email but now they are telling the seller they can't agree a completion date as they haven received the funds , total lie ! And we are still waiting a date after
Months and months