London & Country www.landc.co.uk

They use the word broker extremely generously. This is a clown show.

I am a first time buyer and so rely more than perhaps any customer on the advice a broker could offer. But my experience has been beyond awful. I had a total of 6 case managers (and counting) and 11 months (and counting) to buy a house that neither the vendor nor myself have a chain.

They will sell you on the fact they don't charge you a fee. Don't fall for it, find an independent who charges and will actually work for you. Don't not take their recommendation for O'Neill patients solicitors either, they will tell you they have a partnership with them and this allows them to speed up the process. O'Neill are useless too and will not represent your concerns to the vendor or act on your behalf.

The lenders survey threw up some knotweed in the area. Rather than the broker or solicitor approaching the vendor to raise my concerns I had to liaise with the estate agent and arrange for the vendor to provide knotweed survey. I initially raised it with the solicitor (which I had to do myself as L&C did not do it and actually told me I had to) which I stupidly thought was being taken care of. Several months later I discover the vendor had no idea I even needed this. After sorting it with the estate agent it was done inside of a month. The knotweed survey came back fine and no issues. I then get a call to say mortgage had been rejected because of the knotweed. The L&C colleague told me it was not policy to lend on a house with it. When I (angrily) reminded them that the survey advised it was not an issue and they they should probably do their bloody job and push back on the lender, they did so and as if by magic the underwriter did their job properly and the mortgage progressed.

They then tell me the lender needed a damp survey (which I just arranged through the estate agent because the clowns wouldn't know their backside from their elbow) however this was 8 months in. The lender had had the house on their books for 8 months (and 2 mortgage applications at this point) so I was beyond frustrated to have this extended further and could not understand why they would raise it now AND NOT AT THE SAME TIME AS THE KNOTWEED SURVEY ?!

During this time L&C had not bother to progress the mortgage in any other way. So as soon as this had been completed instill needed to do the most basic parts of the mortgage application like proof of address and resubmit my bank statements because they had taken so long the lender would not accept the first TWO sets I had submitted.

All the while I get to send messages on their portal, see that they are viewed but have no response.these guys clearly lie, mismanage your expectations just to keep you trapped in a mortgage purgatory until it's not worth going to a decent broker. I went through two full mortgage applications because of the time it took to do anything.its been a living hell.

They clearly take on far more clients than they can actually look after. Their staff are under equipped to do anything but the most basic of tasks which involves mainly sending emails. I had a house that needed some actual brokering and they went to absolute pieces. They shouldn't be allowed to call themselves this as there is absolutely no advising going on.

For the love of god, all buyers avoid.

They messed around my case for over 2 months, repeatedly changing their ask for different documents, never being clear as to what exactly the lender needed. The guy who first handled the case disappeared for weeks and then it was always a new person handling the case. Long and short of it is that after 2 months, they told me the lender is not taking my application further. In other words, my application was unsuccessful. One would have expected the broker to know the requirements and criteria of the lender, and not waste over two months of a client's time - totally hopeless and unprofessional. it appears that they never checked with the lender as to the progress of the application until after about 4-6 weeks of submitting it.

my credit rating is excellent but they could only find me a rate of 3.8 %..very vague with replying to emails or returning calls.demanded wage slips and bank statements numerous times then after nearly four months they tell me i was rejected because id used my £200 overdraft too often and the lender didnt like the way i ran my bank accounts?.funny that since ive never missed a mortgage payment in thirteen years and my credit rating is excellent.the feeble advise was if i didnt use my overdraft for three months then theyd look at it agaib?.i said is included on that another four months on top for you to get your act together.i said they dont make me feel like a swan on the water like in their adverts.more like a scuva diver.USELESS

Started off ok with an advisor who then left the company without telling us.

Our case was then passed to another advisor, this set us back quite a bit and had to have the same conversations again.

This advisor then did not contact us for weeks, we rang up to find he had gone off for over a month and not told us.

We were then passed to another advisor who was helpful and promised to send the application the next morning and said he would call us in the afternoon once done, have still not heard from him a week later despite calling 4 times for call backs and escalating to his supervisor.

Absolutely left in limbo. Have now gone with another company hoping for a better experience hoping we have not missed our chance to buy the property.

AVOID this company! Glad I didnt pay anything for this service.

Absolute shambles to deal with. They do not communicate. Mortgages or remortgages are stressful at the best of times this lot pile on a whole lot more. We need this need that etc please email. Hear nothing for weeks you contact and then they say oh we need it posted ! no mention of the fact they received by email as they asked and then changed their minds but don't bother telling you. Do not answer phones or emails. They sound young so im guessing they are unaware of time factors etc that come with mortgage offers and house purchases, definitely a case of piling the clients up and hoping a few will be sorted to make some decent money, not a client friendly company you sure as anything are not priority.

Wanted to remorgage, initially spoke to someone for about an hour. Asked about income, outgoings etc but a lot of time was spent looking into mortgage protection. That was not the reason I called them. Anyway a day and time was set for this person to call back and let me know what mortgage deals they had found. I waited and waited no call. The day after no call, so I have given up and sorted it out myself. I think it isn't very good customer service to arrange a phone call and not bother ringing. Even if they can't help you it's just courtesy to tell you. I would not try to use them again and would not recommend them. Just do your own research and apply direct to the lender.

Poor service, failure to return calls, incorrect processing meaning that application was delayed, poor time frames, rude staff and me having to chase them at EVERY turn.

I used them before and they were great but this time they are just beyond terrible. Def would NOT use again. I think they have gotten complacent and therefore don't seem to care about customers anymore.

Seem more interested in selling me add ons than getting the mortgage right. I have had MORE calls from insurance and life cover teams than my account manager!

We used London & County a couple of years ago and they were very good. However we contacted them again recently and was disappointed with the response. They basically could do nothing for us, gave no real information on way forward. The guy who was our adviser was so uninspiring! In fact had an attitude of don't care. Overall useless. I contacted Skipton building society and got an excellent deal. Processing paper work now. So my advice is shop around and don't be led by recommendations for London and county. There are others out there.

Will not use in the future. Spent weeks speaking with a woman on the phone. Just when I needed her to speed things along she went AWOL. After 30 days of silence I get an email saying sorry she hadn't been in contact with me. By this time I had to go back to my existing lender and not take advantage of better deals that were available.

Wasted over 2 months trying to get a mortgage on a property with this company.

Terrible customer service...they never ring back when they say they will or give you updates on how your case is progressing.

They boast about their online tracking service but this tells you nothing other than your application has been submitted.

Had 3 mortgages declined with these brokers which decimated my credit score that I had worked hard to build up - even though I had provided a copy of my credit report! This indicates to me that the advisor had no idea what he was doing.

They got several details wrong on my first mortgage application...including the address of the property I was trying to buy. This took nearly a week to rectify.

You are assigned an 'Advisor' and a Case Manager' for your mortgage application but I'm not sure what the point in this is as they both asked for copies of documentation which I had already sent in. When I pointed this out I was told that they 'needed it anyway'.

After nearly 5 weeks of getting no updates from L & C on my 2nd application with a lender I went to the lender directly who told me that my application had been declined 2 days earlier and my brokers had already been told! When I rang L&C to ask why I had not been kept in the loop I could only get hold of the 'Case Manager'. She initially said they had still not heard anything back from the lender. When I said I had already spoken to the lender she was very quick to say she did not know what was going on with my case and I should speak to the advisor...who then proceeded to not pick up his phone for the next 6 times I tried ringing him.

Ended up having to let the property go in the end as this process had taken so long with no mortgage offer the current owners were very impatient. My credit score had also taken a hit from being checked 3 times and I was concerned I would never get a decent rate.

I lodged a complaint via the online feedback form they had the cheek to send me but over a month later I still have not heard anything back.

Also they are not a 'whole of market broker' but they will not tell you this unless you ask directly.

Different lenders pay them different amounts of commission and it is unsurprising that they go for lenders who pay more rather than finding products which are suited to the customer.