The CLC have this morning commented on the outage that has affected the Simplify group of companies, including Premier Property Lawyers.
A message on the CLC website says:
We are advised by the Simplify Group that following preliminary investigation of systems outages, it is now aware that certain parts of its business (including Premier Property Lawyers), have been affected by a security incident involving some IT systems.
The Simplify Group responded immediately upon discovery of the incident by engaging a number of third-party cyber specialists to fully restore systems, find ways to support clients’ property transactions and undertake a thorough investigation to gain a fuller understanding of the incident. The Simplify Group have therefore taken proactive steps to contain the incident, including by taking a number of their systems offline as a precautionary measure. We understand the Simplify Group has also taken steps to report the incident to relevant authorities and to contact its clients and partners.
The current issues relate to the temporary inability to access some of the IT systems, which has regrettably prevented the completion of some transactions. The Simplify Group are working hard to find further solutions and provide all the support it can to its clients and partners at this difficult time.
Whist the recovery effort is underway, any clients who are unable to contact their conveyancer via the usual channels may wish to complete a web contact form via THIS LINK which will allow Simplify to make direct contact.
Simplify themselves have updated www.simplify.co.uk with a message when you visit the site providing a further update
We have now restored our IT systems to be able to process payments to enable clients to move.
We have been working through the night on the backlog and over the coming hours will continue to proactively contact clients who are scheduled to complete. If we have not already contacted you, please help us by completing the form here so that we can prioritise our response.
We are working round the clock to restore our normal operations as soon as possible. This includes carefully bringing systems online as part of a secure phased approach and finding workarounds to complete transactions safely. We are not fully operational in all business areas but are positively resolving the issue and working night and day to get there.
At all times we have been acting in the best interests of our clients and understand how challenging this situation has been for them.
4 Responses
I sold my house on 5th November 2021 and PPL received my money from that sale amounting to £123000. As of this moment this money has not been transferred into my personal account. I cannot contact PPL by telephone etc and have completed the much vaulted link with the promise of PPL getting back to me. HAVE THEY CONTACTED ME? NO I AM STILL WAITING!!
Concerned customers are clearly just a nuisance to PPL
Well my Daughter is due to move tomorrow (a first time buyer)… she has finally received a call to say it is not going ahead because the exchange has not gone through , although last week she was told just the money transfer to happen in completion date.. they are now saying that exchange has not happened .. I don’t know how they can say this when they can’t access there systems … plus her mortgage lender has sent the money through to them today.. she has asked PPL to transfer the money back to her lender , but they say they can’t as they can’t get into there system.. however the information they are giving out is false … her processions hVe to be moved tomorrow, luckily we have managed to find a storage unit about an hour away from where she us moving too..they have told her they don’t know when it will be sorted out … they are not saying what type of cyber attack it is . She is moving 7 hours away from where she currently lives … they need to tell the truth on what is going on
They seem to be getting a bit of a grip now but were slow off the mark and my confidence in them is smashed. Are they deploying enough resource to resolve this swiftly? Failure started mon 8th or earlier. I have been told system restoration not this week (at least the bits relevant to me). My case handler cannot see documentation, emails or even receive phone calls or texts! So what do I tell my buyer about completing well before Christmas? Do I hold off committing expense on rental and what do I tell the removal company? Could I switch to a different company to get better certainty? What liabilities will simplify pick up to compensate customers? This should drive the amount to spend to get this sorted!
We were due to exchange and complete on the 12th Nov with all 3 parties involved agreeing and the funds were in place to proceed. On the 1sr Nov our conveyancer decides to take a week off without letting us know and that no one would be looking at our case file in her absence,then on the 8th Nov we discover that there has been a security breach and their systems were shut down. Since this date we have not had any contact from JS Law or our conveyancer even after completing 7 of their contact forms on the web site asking for someone to contact and update us.This is shocking customer service.