Ground rules we set ourselves
Writing publicly about a company you are in a live dispute with only works if the account is disciplined. Three rules govern every entry below:
- Dates come from records, not memory. Every date is taken from a bank record, a document VakilSearch issued, or a timestamped message.
- Quotes are verbatim. Where we quote a VakilSearch staff member, the words are theirs, copied from the message. We have not paraphrased inside quotation marks.
- We describe conduct, not motive. We say what happened and what we were told. We do not assert what anyone intended, and we do not characterise any of it as a crime — that is a question for the forum where our complaint is pending, not for a web page.
Names of individual staff are withheld
Several individual employees appear in this record. We have deliberately not published their names. Our dispute is with the company that assigned them, took the money, and set the process they were working inside — not with junior staff, several of whom were plainly doing their best with a file that had been handed around.
The record
Quoted a "final", all-inclusive fee — then given one hour to pay it
A VakilSearch representative quoted ₹65,000 as a discounted, final professional fee for an end-to-end succession/legal heirship certificate covering a jointly-owned flat in Thane and an ancestral property in Kerala. We were told the special rate would hold for one hour before reverting to a higher price.
We were also directed away from VakilSearch's own payment gateway and asked to transfer the money to a bank account held by a separate entity, Trishula Consultancy LLP, on the stated basis that paying that way would allow a "GST waiver". We paid ₹65,000 on 21 January 2026.
The "all-inclusive" fee turned out not to be all-inclusive
On the same day we paid, VakilSearch's own Case Brief disclosed that court fees — separately estimated at over ₹75,000 — were not included in the ₹65,000 and would be quantified later.
This directly contradicted what we had been told on calls before payment, when the figure was described to us as fixed and covering the matter end to end. The document that corrected it arrived after the money had already left our account.
Supported by EXH. 2Told our mother could be presented to the court as a "widower"
When we pushed back on the surprise court fee, the advocate who had negotiated our rate told us the cost could be brought down by presenting my mother to the court as a "widower", in order to access a lower, capped fee category.
We did not act on that suggestion. Separately, a different member of VakilSearch's own team, during an in-person visit, told us the concession did not apply to our case at all — leaving us with two contradictory answers from the same company about the cost of our own matter within days of paying.
Supported by EXH. 4Basic case details had to be re-explained from scratch
A newly assigned "Legal Executive" asked us to re-confirm the location and ownership of both properties — information we had already given at the point of sale in January.
On 28 February, the assigned advocate arrived at our home for a meeting scheduled at 5:00 PM at 8:45 PM, with no advance notice of the delay.
Supported by EXH. 4Three months of silence
We had flagged from day one that the Kerala property was part of a live, time-sensitive sale discussion. Between the end of February and early June we heard nothing from VakilSearch.
No status update, no draft document, no call. Nothing in this period was initiated by them.
Supported by EXH. 4, EXH. 5The Kerala property was sold without the documents we had paid for
Because no succession documentation was ever prepared, the ancestral Kerala property — a specific, named part of the service we engaged and paid for — was sold by the family without it.
That portion of what we paid for became permanently impossible to use. It cannot be delivered late; the transaction it was needed for has already happened.
Supported by EXH. 4My sister flew in from Canada. Nothing was ready.
My sister, one of three legal heirs, travelled from Canada and stayed two weeks specifically so a Power of Attorney could be executed in person — avoiding the far slower embassy attestation route.
VakilSearch did not prepare the document at any point during her stay. After she had flown back, their team suggested she use the embassy route after all — the exact outcome the trip had been arranged to avoid, and the reason its timing had been coordinated with them in advance.
Supported by EXH. 4We asked to cancel and be refunded. No one owned the request.
After another unanswered status request, we formally asked to cancel the engagement and receive a full refund, citing the lack of ownership on their side.
Each person we raised it with redirected us to someone else. No single person at VakilSearch took responsibility for the refund decision or gave us a timeline for one.
Asked to resend documents we had sent six months earlier
In August their team asked us to resend documents that had already been shared with them in February — indicating our file had not been tracked or retained on their side.
A Power of Attorney draft was finally produced on 18 August 2026: ten months after payment, two months after the visit it was meant for, and three months after the Kerala property sale had already made it moot.
Supported by EXH. 4, EXH. 5Refund still unresolved; complaint filed
As of the last update to this site, VakilSearch has not refunded the ₹65,000 paid, and has not delivered the succession certificate we engaged them for.
We have filed a formal consumer complaint on these facts with the District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, Thane. It is pending. See the complaint page for where that stands.
Supported by EXH. 1, EXH. 2, EXH. 3, EXH. 4, EXH. 5What we are not claiming
It matters to us that this page is not read as more than it is. So, explicitly:
- We are not saying a court has found against VakilSearch. Our complaint is pending and undecided.
- We are not saying every VakilSearch customer has this experience. We can only speak to our own file, reference #5509082.
- We are not attributing intent to any individual. We describe what was said to us and what did or didn't arrive.
- We are not publishing the underlying chat exports, bank details or staff names. Our reasons are set out on the evidence page.
What we are saying is narrow and, we believe, fully documented: we paid ₹65,000 upfront on 21 January 2026 for a defined service; ten months later that service had not been delivered; and the refund we requested on 27 July 2026 has not been paid.