Sir, – In your QA column (Residential Property, June 30th), you advised readers to shop around when retaining a solicitor for a house sale. The implication was that a reader should go with the solicitor offering the lowest quotation. Is this good advice?
If you have a medical problem, would you go to the doctor charging the lowest fee? Perhaps, but you might not be too happy later to find out that proper medical notes were not maintained, or follow-up tests not monitored. If you opt for a low-cost solicitor, you may well find out, years later, that corners were cut and proper title searches were not carried out. A low fee may turn out to be an expensive and disastrous mistake.
Better advice to your readers might be to ask around rather than shop around. – Yours, etc,