Optima Legal Avis 

Excellent service

Kept me informed on the progress of my remortgage every step of the way.

If I could give less than one star I would

This company were not of our choosing, they were that of our mortgage company

A painfully slow organisation that appear to use part time conveyancers backed up with an admin team of young kids who are unable to give any answers or have the ability to pass you on to someone more senior who could

I would genuinely advise anyone to push for an alternative if they are forced on you

I'm reporting this disgusting firm to the SRA for the service you're "supposed" to be providing, instead you're lying about not getting emails, only replying to some days later, taking money before you've actually done anything. I've been waiting to complete for a week now, taken unnecessary time off work, etc. This firm should be struck off!

Was referred to Optima by Halifax for a remortgage, well, actually a porting of the existing mortgage (something Optima seemed to struggle to get their heads around). This involved the removal of one of the existing mortgagees and replacing with a new mortgagee so there was a transfer of equity involved too. Maybe the 4/5 star reviews are for simple first purchase/mortgage transactions but their handling of our case has been atrocious. We are now 3 months into the process, having provided Optima with every bit of information they wanted as soon as it was requested and still do not have a completion date. Apparently they are meant to have a 1 week turnaround time on messages sent through the portal, but this is total rubbish. Optima deliver truly appalling customer service. As others have noted, messages are ignored for weeks on end. Calling them is a waste of time as they either tell you that they are not able to put you through to anyone actually handling your case or else if they do put you through, you are likely to be on hold for 30 minutes minimum and then there's every chance that your call will mysteriously "drop". Even tried emailing their customer services team to get an update and complain - again no response.
Having your conveyancing paid for by the lender (in this case Halifax) sounds great, but as the saying goes "you get what you pay for... (or what Halifax pay for)"
If I could give them zero stars I would. Best advice? Pay a few £100 and get your conveyancing done by a solicitor that you know, someone you can actually speak with, email etc and will actually give you some service. Property transactions can be stressful at the best of times without having your conveyancer being as difficult to reach as the dark side of the moon.

I disliked the waiting time for a remortgage of my home. But I was on the whole satisfied with the remortgage application.

First class service. We were kept up to date throughout the process

Absolutely shoddy and would never go through L&C and these guys again. Don’t respond to messages, my mortgage application started 4 months ago and I’m simply waiting for my completion date of 1st September to be confirmed and to pay a small shortfall which they have not sent me details of where to pay because they haven’t produced a completion statement. I’ve been in pushing for these for the past 2 weeks and have been getting fobbed off with promises made and not kept.

Absolutely amazing service. Stress free ! Highly recommend

Di was wonderful very helpful and friendly and it was straightforward once I got on the portal

Easy to communicate, fast and efficient service.

The service provided by Optima Legal fell far short of what I expected. Despite sending everything over in early June, they claimed not to have seen documents id uploaded until early July. They then missed the completion by date id requested which meant we had to not only pay for documents to be extended, but we also moved from our fixed rate with our old mortgage provider and had to pay almost double for our mortgage that month! To make it worse, we were on holiday when we were told we needed to pay a shortfall on the completion, which we panicked to pay and interuprted our holiday, only to be told 2 days later that there was an excess due back to us far greater than what we’d paid. I asked to log a complaint about this, and was told I’d be contacted on completion (which happened 7th August). I didn’t hear back so sent an email via the portal on the 14th and have still heard nothing. Attempting to call just gets you put into a queue with an estimated wait time of 0 minutes and never answered. I would highly recommend avoiding Optima Legal.

Optima kept me informed every step and were very helpful and nothing was too much trouble.
I would definitely recommend them.

USELESS interactions with people who clearly do not seem to know what they are talking about.
I am remortgaging a loan and they are the conveyancing solicitors chosen by the mortgage broker/ new lender - not me.
TIME is the essence, I need to have a completion date very soon. Last hurdle: we need the redemption figure from my existing lender.. In order to gain time, I obtained the statement myself and uploaded it on the portal.. NO, they do not want it because it is written in my name (well, I am the customer!) and "not in the right format"!, despite the fact that this statement is totally valid and the figure is correct.
On the portal they wrote that they requested it on the 19th August (by fax as indicated by my mortgage broker???).. I phoned my existing lender.. They never received any request last week from OPTIMA, only this morning. So their update was incorrect.
They are wasting very valuable time.. it is going to cost me a fortune in the interim before the completion. One OPTIMA employee last week told me that it would take only a few days after they have received the Redemption Statement, the other employee this morning, told me "about 4 weeks"..
THEY ARE USELESS AND TIME-WASTERS.
Avoid!

UPDATING AFTER RESPONSE FROM OPTIMA LEGAL
1. You wrote a long paragraph explaining why you cannot accept my own requested redemption statement. Fine. That does not solve the rest of my complaint.
2. Why did you wait that long to request your own then??
3. Why did one of your employees wrote in my file on the 19th August that they requested it when THEY DID NOT!! My current lender NEVER received the request.
4. Current lender received the request yesterday at 8.22am ONLY, not before. I am pushing for them to send it ASAP but they have a 5 working days turnaround.. Hopefully they will send it on Friday.

I am NOT INTERESTED in your excuses and explanations as to why your staff is so incompetent.

I am INTERESTED in you making sure that my completion date happens on the 1ST SEPTEMBER 2026.. Try to push your co-workers to redeem themselves and sort it out.
Thank you in advance!

All communications are done online via their system. There is no human contact whatsoever, and it is almost impossible to speak to a human when clarity is needed. It is a very impersonal, faceless process. They clearly do not want to have any contact with their clients. If I had a choice, I would not use them. The only good thing was the online dashboard to track the progress of our remortgage.

Job completed for remortgage, however there is very little pro-active chasing for documents etc, therefore weeks go by with nothing happening. Felt I was constantly chasing them. The portal is all good though and you can see everything. Just took so long for small jobs to be completed.

Very simple to use portal

Little bit to slow service