John Charcol did manage to secure a joint borrower / sole proprietor mortgage for us, for which we're grateful, but my! What a protracted and stressful process it turned out to be! We grew increasingly concerned that the seller would pull out in view of the extended timescales: fortunately we finally received our offer just in time to meet a completion deadline set by the seller. Some of the delay was caused by the building society, for which we've raised a separate complaint. Our concerns relating to the service we received from John Charcol include: at times, no response to emails and calls going to voicemail (on one occasion, we were practically begging our broker to get in touch); lack of clear communication about the arrangement process and progress; delays in forwarding documentation to the building society (on some occasions, the building society told us it hadn't received documentation what we had been told had been provided); errors in the Mortgage Suitability Letter. Our broker voluntarily reduced the broker fee in view of the poor service we'd received but the reduction certainly wasn't enough to compensate for the stress and extra costs we incurred as a result of the extended timescales. What was very quick was the offering of additional services (insurance, moving) - but we were not inclined to take them up. And the request for payment of the broker fee was very prompt!