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.

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.

It all sounds so good doesn't it, free independent mortgage advise. So I thought I would give it a try and made a huge mistake. Clearly they are too busy and when you eventually get to speak to someone just want to sell you add on's like conveyancing services. Save yourself time and hassle and go a pay for a decent broker that has your interests in mind. I would never recommended a fee free mortgage broker

I wanted to buy a flat with my boyfriend and decided to contact L&C for mortgage advice. We both work full time and earn enough to afford to buy the flat and pay the mortgage and we also have a deposit. The only problem was that my boyfriend's Credit Score was Very Poor as there was a Default on it. We was told that we have to fix this Default which we did and then come back to them. I contacted L&C straight away after the Default was fixed, but I still haven't received any reply. It has been more than 3 months already since I contacted them. Very, very disappointed as I thought that this was a big and reputable company, but it turned out to be completely useless. I guess they are only dealing with easy cases, don't bother to contact them if your case is more complicated. We are buying the flat now with no mortgage advice after such an experience and everything is going well so far.

Words can't describe how awful L&C are - they've ruined the experience of the purchase of my first place. The only thing that would make the hell I've gone through a little worth it is if my experience saved someone else from using them. They quoted the wrong price and gave the solicitors the wrong information so that two months into the process, I had a increase of over 40% in legal fees. The guy who was responsible? Didn't even express an apology. What makes it worse is that I knew he was bad from the get go and I expressed my concern to L&C but they still kept him on my case. Fast forward two months later and he's cocked up remarkably without apologising once and I'm left to deal with the stress of the fallout including finding a new solicitor. The solicitor's they recommended? Criminal. So ridiculously criminal I can't help but laugh because they're so bad it has to be a joke. The solicitor's are Premier Property Lawyers by the way - AVOID AT ALL COSTS. And when I outlined very clearly to L&C everywhere that the solicitor had gone wrong , the very same solicitor that they themselves had recommend, they told me to take it up with the solicitor's not them. That's exactly the kind of support, accountability and responsibility you can expect from L&C. Oh and don't forget that however bad they or the solicitor's are, L&C are still going to get a cut of the legal fees you pay. Same for whichever mortgage lender they recommend. So if they stand behind the 'we're free!' banner to excuse their shoddy work, rest assured, they're getting paid. And what of quality? They incorrectly completed the HTB forms with the wrong address so that the simplelest valuation of the property didn't complete until two months after I'd put in the offer. Trust me - find a friend, family member or colleague who has bought a property and do it yourself. If you have to use a broker, don't use L&C. Find another who can search the market but take it from there yourself. As for solicitor's - it's unfortunate that they're compulsory. I actually had to download the contracts and all documents related to the purchase from my seller's solicitor's myself because my painful, completely useless solicitors couldn't get the files. And they were prepared to charge me £150+VAT if the seller's solicitor's had had to post them. I won't even get into the number of documents I had to chase and collect myself that both the solicitor's and L&C should have gotten. If I requested L&C get the document, my email would go unanswered for hours. If I managed to chase and get ahold of the document myself and email L&C to tell them to to worry about getting it, I would receive a reply immediately acknowledging that email. So I'll close off by reiterating what I said at the beginning - L&C have ruined the purchase of my property, but although I may have gotten the short end of the deal, it'll be worth it if my review here helps anyone else avoid falling into the trap I did. Happy purchasing x

Submitted application online and over the telephone. Was told credit check need to be done. Didn't hear anything for 4 days then got a call saying I couldn't have the mortgage the had recommended. Suggested I completed another application and try for a different mortgage, Said no thank you. Especially since all my information was given. A waste of my hime!

We found a house we liked a few months ago and the estate agent recommended we get qualified by L&C their affiliated broker so we could put an offer in etc. They took full details of all our income/debt etc, told me over the phone they would have no problem securing us the amount we needed and sent us a formal document saying application in principle. The service was fantastic at this point, quick response and could not do enough for us! We had the offer accepted on the house and as L&C had been so good until that point we decided to proceed with them. BIG MISTAKE!! Turns out their 'application in principle' is not worth the paper its written on. My husband had two late credit card payments two years ago which I had told them about when I submitted all our information. All of a sudden we were transferred to their bad credit department where we told the amount we could borrow had now plummeted. We had to pull out of the sale on the house we wanted. Having been told we could get a mortgage but just a much lower amount, rather than give up hope we started to look at ways to make that work for us. Thats when all contact stopped, they stopped responding to emails, didn't answer the phone and basically lost complete interest. We went elsewhere and found another fantastic broker who could help us and got much closer to what we wanted to borrow and with a much lower rate!

I intially rang them flustered about a urgent mortgage requirement and was told it was not possible, frustrated I hung up then rung back later to be offered one of the few lenders on the market offering what I needed, they saved my bacon

The service I received was super excellent, the staff were honest from the beginning, they kept me well informed. I am a naturally anxious human being and they were able to reassure me and respond to my queries and requests in timely manner. They also seemed to have a good relationship with the lender as they were able to push things through and send queries which were responded to promptly navigating blockers/ barriers to progress. It took roughly 2weeks business days to get the mortgage offer, that excluding my delay to send supporting documents required by the lender. The staff I dealt with made me feel like I was their own customer and I liked the fact that I could see the staffs faces on my case tracking, it made me feel like I had actually met them. Guys, I especially like the photos with you smiling whilst working, it made me feel less guilty when pestering you for updates as those photos indicated that you were enjoying your work which you are fantastic at. I can't believe it was free to me :-)