Was I ****med by Rawson, Olivier O’Connor and First National Bank??

I was in the process of buying a property through Rawson(Brakenhurst Branch) servicing the southern suburbs of Johannesburg. We signed the the offer to purchase unaware of a clause that we took for granted to verify since the standard we are used to, is that payment of commission is done at registration of the property. But in this transaction once the suspensive sale agreement terms were met by us the buyers(deposit of R550000 plus securing a loan which was granted in part therefore we had to pay in the balance or R 1 150000), the transfer attorneys(Olivier & O’Connor) paid the commission fee to the agent months before transfer process began and suddenly things started going downhill with the seller who then decided to cancel the sale of the property, walking away from the transaction scot free and us the buyers left with paying transfer attorneys wastage costs of about R45000 and the bank(First National Bank) also claiming from us cancellation costs of about R75000, on top of the agent’s commission of R250000!! is this a fair practice by these organizations or was i ****med?! i need some clarity from all these organizations.