Vanderpump & Sykes

I recently engaged Vanderpump and Sykes for a transfer of equity to make my wife a joint owner during a re-​mortgage.
They told me that I could only lodge stamp duty after the re-​morgate, placing me above the stamp duty threshold. This turned out to be false.
They added non-​optional extras like «office copy» and stationary to every bill.
They repeatedly tried to push responsibility for the handling of stamp duty onto my lenders solicitors despite this being a personal tax matter (and as I mentioned above it turned out there was no stamp duty, they were doing the transfer the wrong way around).
As a result of the stamp duty disagreement, mid-​process they increased their fee from an originally quoted £450 (already on the top end for this service) to over £1000.
I raised these issues with Vanderpump and Sykes and, despite having email evidence of every aspect, was told they had done nothing wrong. They never asked to see the email chain with their solicitor concerned or discussed the complaint with me before they dismissed it.
Bottom line is if you like unclear pricing, being extorted and dealing with someone who has poor domain knowledge then Vanderpump and Sykes are the solicitors to go with.