Alliance & Leicester ( Yet Again )

I switched to Britannia.
The fees are only £99 and there is no tie in at all.
http://www.britannia.co.uk/mortgage/tracker/2_year_discount_remortgage_package/index.html

I complained about the A&L exit fees. I'm pretty good at complaining and got them waived completely.
Most people got them reduced.
You can search this board for my letters.

How good were they ? Were they quick ?

I found the service to be very good.
However you need to be aware that if you apply for any great deal then they can get very busy (this is true with any company).
Bear in mind that re-mortgages can take up to 12 weeks.

When you complaned did you call or write ?

Putting things in writing is better in my view and you need to follow their complaints procedure.
Definitely make it formal.

If you wrote to them do you have copies of your letters ?

Sure, but I recommend you get familiar with the "search" facility as you'll get a lot more out of the site.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=100358&page=3&pp=10&highlight=alliance+leicester

Post number is #22 in that thread.

I would obviously put my own slant on it !!!

No worries.
You may actually find some of the facts and figures are a little out of date.

BTW - they will of course try and fob you off, so expect to have to write several letters (I did three).

Ultimately they won't want you to take them to the ombudsman because that costs them more than £295.
If you keep going you'll get a result (however note that most people got a reduction and not a fuill waiver).
My case may have been individually treated as I had experienced other problems too.
Expect a reduction.

A&L have charged me a £295 redemption admin fee, whatever that is!

It is for the administration involved in closing your account and the admin involved in sending out the deeds.
Many have successfully argued that the charge is out of propertion to the tasks involved and increased hugely from when they took out their mortgages.
It says in the terms and conditions something along the lines of they can charge you "reasonable costs" for their admin.

also, the woolwich (my new mortgage lender) has charged a £495 'arrangement fee.' this seems to be a typical charge

This is harder/impossible to argue about.
Firstly it could cover a great deal more work (the industry was regulated a few years ago and there is now a lot of work to be done with form filling etc).
Also at the point before you take out the mortgage you have no contract with them - so it's a case of take it or leave it.
This is different to the previous scenario where you can threaten them with the ombusdsman, plus you have a contract which you can argue about.
If you don't like the deal being offered then take your business elsewhere.

however, i have taken out a 10 year fixed product with woolwich, so i can say goodbye to fees for years to come...hehe!

Looks like a good deal, but remember for some people with large mortgages it can still be worth paying the fees, so there is no "one fits all solution".

You may as well start now.
Any decision they come to will be valid in the future.

If I was to say anything, closing an account must have become a lot easier more recently due to the fact that most mortgage companies these days seal with Electronic Notification of Discharge (ENDS). This is simply the lenders computer talking to HMLR's computer saying that they are prepared to release the charge.

Gone are the days of having to legally seal a document (which for the best of the last 10 years was placing a label on a standard form and indenting it with the official stamp of the company)..

Gone are huge packets of deeds and the requirment to have them where title numbers are involved and even if they do have to send them, it dont cost that much.

As far as closing an mortgage down goes, that too is just a case of applying a cheque/tt payment against an account, doing any necessary interest adjustments to ensure enough has been paid etc and placing an indicator against the account to say the account is no longer live.

I would say that you could justify 5 hrs work in closing a mortgage down with postage costs and a small fee for the END.