NEIN! (No Excellence In aNything)

Posted by Justin on Feb 5, 2011 in Abaddons Musings, cynicism, service | 0 comments There are, it seems, a large number of (usually large) organisations that simply cannot be bothered – they have, and aspire to, no excellence in anything A prime candidate seems to be BT – reliable, trustworthy, customer-friendly, value for money? Not in my experience! Can you suggest other candidates for the NEIN list?
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Lawyers are rubbish …

Posted by Justin on Jan 9, 2011 in Abaddons Musings, conveyancing, cynicism, lawyers, legal system, professionals | 2 comments … well, too many of them are, anyway. We often wonder why we get so many irrelevant or unnecessary additional enquiries from buyers’ conveyancers (including solicitors). In the last couple of weeks, the answer has dawned on us: not only have they not read the paperwork we already sent them – they don’t care. They want us to answer their own standard questions; they then...
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New conveyancing protocol

Posted by Justin on Dec 22, 2010 in Abaddons Musings, conveyancing, cynicism, lawyers, legal system, suits | 0 comments According to Clutton Cox, they were one of only 12 firms to respond to the consultation by the Law Society on its new conveyancing protocol: http://goo.gl/uhpYhAs I also responded, that means only 10 others throughout the country did – what a disappointmentWhat is also disappointing is that the Law Society has not included in the scheme a requirement for member firms to (for instance)...
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Quality standards?

Posted by Justin on Nov 21, 2010 in Abaddons Musings, conveyancing, CPD, cynicism, estate agents, lawyers, legal system, professionals, risk | 1 comment Research by the Consumer Panel – which advises the Legal Services Board, the regulator of lawyers – finds that “consumers assume all lawyers are technically competent and are subject to more regulatory controls than is the case. This means that quality considerations do not strongly influence consumers’ choice of lawyers and people erroneously consider that all legal...
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Another school governor monitoring visit

Posted by Justin on Mar 18, 2010 in Abaddons Musings, cynicism, governor, local, small towns, Tenterden, Tenterden Infant School | 0 comments I have carried out another monitoring visit, this time focusing on “Community Cohesion”, which is a formal way of saying, “We all have to get along together, so play nicely” – I understate for effect, of course, but it does seem to require a lot of input for something that, in 90% of schools, must be taught and experienced automatically anyway. Ah, well, it ticks...
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Referral fees – are they actively destructive?

Posted by Justin on Feb 20, 2010 in Abaddons Musings, conveyancing, cynicism, estate agents, HIPs, lawyers, legal system, service | 0 comments We are currently finding the firms that rely heavily on estate agent referrals are incredibly slow – it can take literally weeks to get a draft contract out of them, and on more than one occasion we have offered to draft the contract for them, based on the information in the Home Information PacksAssuming they are not being lazy or incredibly incompentent (though … – no,...
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