J B Leitch Reviews 

174
TrustScore 1 out of 5

1.1

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Rated 1 out of 5 stars

This would be a nil star review. I have a FREEHOLD house with a grounds service charge through first port. When I bought it the service charge had been paid in advance by the previous owner as a... See more

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

A minus star rating would be more appropriate. They are debt collectors working with FirstPort property service provider. Any delay with service charge payment and the debt is handled by Leitch. They... See more

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Dreadful experience so far. Six years dealing with my Dads probate. No answers to emails, fobs off with Covid excuses blaming tax office for delays, shouldn’t Evan be paying tax on such small amount.... See more

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Truly evil firm who tried to scam my parents out of over £10,000. Both MP Justin Madders (who has raised concerns about them in parliament), and my local MP will be receiving letters about their shock... See more

Company details

  1. Law Firm

Written by the company

JB Leitch are specialist solicitors for freehold investor and property management companies. We have an unrivalled understanding of residential leasehold law.


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1.1

Bad

TrustScore 1 out of 5

174 reviews

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1.1

All reviews

(174)

25 reviews in the last 12 months

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Rated 1 out of 5 stars

My advice to any leaseholders who come…

My advice to any leaseholders who come into contact with this company is that you check the lease and see whether it contains a clause : section 196 of the property act of 1925. This enables the use of historic addresses to ensure mail is not delivered to you on time and in some cases people have experienced an escalation of fees when you fail to receive your mail at the correct address.
Step 1 - request a DSAR and send the request by recorded delivery. Copy in your mortgage advisor on all correspondence from now on.
Step 2 - contact leaseholder advisory service (free)Contact The ICO and ask for a case to be opened on your behalf, if your address has been tampered with.
Step 4 - write to the chief executive of the property management company and mention that this is a formal complaint and request a copy of their complaints process
Step 5 Refer to the FCA if you feel there has been a breach upon your financial status as a result of this case
Step 6 contact the other owners in your building and check whether they have experienced anything similar. Set up a residents committee ASAP.
On performing all of the above we were pleasantly surprised to receive a DSAR within 90 days of our request.
Keep a file copy for yourself and keep sharing information with other leaseholders so you can all raise a class action case if your situation becomes worse. We found the individuals at JB Leitch to be very helpful once we were armed with the correct information. Consult GDPR guidelines to ensure you are protected.

1 May 2021
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Constant breach of conduct

Value
Company is basically acting as debt collectors. Harassing debt collectors. They don’t care when you are on maternity leave getting £600 a month and that is your main income. They don’t care you are in financial difficulties after becoming single mom when your baby is only few months old. To the bill which originally was £1200 they have added £4000 extra fees.

They want you to be in debt. They ignore your offers of payment. You can’t make any payments to make your bill lower. It’s forbidden. You can only pay what they demand from you. That is ridiculous because you want to pay but you can’t do it. They won’t accept £100 but they are happy to accept £400.

They have ignored the fact, that year earlier I wasn’t billed correctly and my solicitors (I was buying the property) where trying to clarify it but both First Port and then JB Leitch ignored them. I was charged extra £900 but my solicitors have refunded that.

I am honestly thinking to start court proceedings for harassment and extortion.

As you can see they do not have positive reviews and that’s a clear picture of customer experiencing disgusting service.

SRA have not replied to complaints for breach of conduct which is very worrying and gives very bad impression about regulatory service. I will be contacting SFO for further investigation

20 April 2021
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Underhand tactics

Being a law firm they use their expertise to work with land holder companies to double your bill. They contacted our mortgage lender when we resisted their inflated bill. I hope one day they try it on someone who can afford to stand up to them in court.

19 April 2021
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

This is the worse company I have ever…

This is the worse company I have ever had to deal with. Charge for every telephone call, email that they reply to. Very arrogant and just out to cause delays and earn more out of service. They will not answer my Solicitor when she has asked for an amount owed and just keep adding charges. DO NOT USE THEM

15 April 2021
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

This firm served me with a false and…

This firm served me with a false and illegal notice, they are the worst to deal with and if possible i would stay away from this firm. currently being investigated by SRA for a range of breaches they have been reported for

30 March 2021
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Crooks, thieves, bullies - should be closed down!

This is the single worst firm of lawyers in the UK. Corrupt thieves. DO NOT USE.
They work with housing developers and when the rent charge is due (that's basically service charges for freeholders which the government deplored) and isn't paid for half of the year (they are due annually) they stick almost £1,000 of charges on a fake account. They are SRA regulated which is a JOKE.

I saw they replied to someone else saying they support people in the pandemic. LIARS!!!

I have it in writing from them (which I've posted) that they specifically say "whilst we appreciate the current unprecedented circumstances..... we cannot accept covid-19 lockdown as a valid legal dispute for non-payment"

You MUST complain to the legal ombudsman and the SRA - the SRA have real power over these thieves.

This firm didn't explain the procedures, complaints or even care. They simply said "if you don't pay we don't care as we will just add it to the service charge account" then stopped replying at all!

They are the worst firm I have ever dealt with and I literally help people buy and sell houses, dealing with several solicitors a day.

They have shamed Liverpool.

DO NOT USE AND COMPLAIN HIGHER!!

25 January 2021
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Not the 1st time i have heard from them…

Not the 1st time i have heard from them and dont know why they dont spell their name leech which is the correct description. They ignore requests for information but keep trying to chase high costs. a tv investigation or class action against them is what is needed.

21 January 2021
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

I find the people who work at this…

I find the people who work at this company, who call themselves solicitors, are lacking interpersonal skills.
Personally I do not think they ere truly solicitors or professionals. I think they’re bully’s debt collectors and con men and women.
First port( another bad company) referred my case to them in December 2020.
I found the 2 people I spoke to are very rude and very unprofessional. I had to tell them not to call me or speak to me again. They are not good listeners and lack work ethic.
I shall be reporting them to the ombudsman .
I informed them about their poor reviews but one of the staff bang the phone on me.

5 January 2021
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Unprofessional and lazy.

JB Leitch has been employed by my building management company to sort out fee arrears that occurred when I bought my flat last year. The Seller's Solicitor messed up and have refused to correct the error creating an arrears dispute. The management company themselves are unprofessional, unresponsive and lazy - which is also how I'd describe JB Leitch. Had the management company deigned to communicate with myself and my solicitor the situation would have been sorted out last year, but it's been going on for a year and 7 months now. JB Leitch has been of no assistance and left my Solicitor to do all the work but has decided that I owe them disbursements for their thumb-twiddling. After months of requesting a Statement of Account it finally arrived missing pages, in particular the one that breaks down their fee.
A simple mistake, however it's one that they refuse to correct!
Avoid at all costs.

9 September 2020
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Dreadful service - don't use

JB Leitch were involved in the sale of my father's retirement flat, acting on behalf of the property's management company. They were without doubt the worst solicitor's I've ever dealt with, and I recommend you never use them. They failed to respond to emails and phone calls, and refused to negotiate with me or my solicitor. Truly awful.

25 July 2020
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Looks like there is a common theme

As my previous post got taken down for defamatory I am just rewriting it.

During lockdown the lady I was dealing with refused to let me speak to a manager. What I meant by unethical staff is the lady I was dealing with refused to hear me out. She also refused to let me speak to a manager and said 'there was no manager' which I refuse to believe. I was in contact with my estate management company and showed proof I was in contact with them and it was wrong of them to refer me to the solicitors as the estate manager from trinity took over three months to respond to me. Even after showing proof of this the case handler at J B leitch was rude and wouldn't listen to why I shouldn't pay the fees or be referred to the solicitors. Apparently there is 'no manager' that can help or can deal with things. Please listen to the recorded phone conversation.

1 July 2020
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

No assistance

No compassion and expensive charges to get money at all costs. I advised the property management company we could not afford charges until the property was sold, they appointed J B Leitch regardless and when I informed them the same, it was a case of "not our problem, pay in 5 days or we will take legal action" . Once again advised them we did not have funds to pay and they withheld the purchases information pack so the sale could not proceed until we coughed up the money (by clearing all our savings) and almost £400 of charges on top. This on top of the covid-19 lock down in the uk that was announced and our savings going to this terrible firm instead of helping our family to survive in this extraordinary time. Avoid

26 March 2020
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Unpleasant experience

This legal company teams up with predominantly poor property management companies such as Firstport Property Management, and Homeground Property Management.

Their raison d'etre is to charge disproportionately large legal fees to leaseholders as a result of late service charge payment.

This was my experience:

- Myself along with other leaseholders in my block of apartments received the annual accounts from our property management company Firstport.

- The accounts incurred more costs than we expected under major works for the building, and we endeavoured to find out why.

- It materialized that 1 leaseholder in the block had sold their apartment, and moved out the previous year. They had moved out without fully settling their service charge bill, and there was a small amount outstanding on their service charge account.

- Firstport then passed this outstanding service charge item to JB Leitch, who then proceeded to charge to the block leaseholders £8-9000 in legal fees in order to chase down the small amount outstanding on the departed leaseholders account. All that JB Leitch did for this £8-9000 was to send out a few automated reminder letters to the old departed leaseholder, the majority of which (perhaps all) had been sent to their old address at our apartment block, which was inevitably likely to be a pointless exercise.

- Firstport then allocated these huge and unnecessary JB Leitch legal charges of £8-9000 to a major works levy in the building accounts. We do not know if this was deliberate or in error.

- Other leaseholders also reported receiving unpleasant letters and extra fees on their personal leaseholder accounts due to being only 1-2 days late in payment, and never having received any service charge invoice or reminder.

In summary, JB Leitch will take advantage of any opportunity to charge disproportionately large legal fees for even the most trivial of items.

26 March 2020
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Very poor experience from a defendant's…

Very poor experience from a defendant's perspective. Shoddy 'solicitors' who really are nothing more than glorified debt collectors. Despite all payments being up to date, attempted to claim over £1200 in respect of a £950 debt (which didn't even exist), even went as far as to issue a claim form which was promptly discontinued when they realised it would (obviously) be defended. I definitely would not recommend from a client perspective, as they think nothing of racking up enormous legal fees for their clients which - as in our case - are unrecoverable and thus it's left for the client to pay. Solicitors are also not even aware of very basic law that 90 seconds on Google reveals (in relation to forfeiture, small claims track, discontinuance and costs). A complaint to the SRA is pending.

10 February 2020
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

This is a true review for J.B.Leitch.It…

This is a true review for J.B.Leitch.It follows Trustpilot guidelines so not expected it to be taken down.
J.B.Leitch have taken my daughter three times to Leicester County Court acting on behalf for Firstport. I have on all three times acted for her. They provided me with wrong information regarding vat on electricity and refused to send me trail audits and invoices. After the third court case was over i eventually received this information.Im now having to compile all my proof against them to report them to the relevant authorities. They truly are the worst debt collectors around and any leaseholder being chased by them should immediately google them. J.B.Leitch you have successfully taken down so many reviews on this site but you can not take down the google reviews. In the process of reporting them to the FCA. Will post their report.

1 February 2020
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Bad company

Be careful this company is part of the Ground Rent Trap.
Basically they make it impossible for you to contact them in order to pay for it and then charge you over £1000.

I feel trap to this and am astonished at how this is still legal and allowed in a modern society like the United Kingdom... I just hope someone eventually shuts them down.

28 May 2019
Unprompted review

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