MSE News: Thousands of Santander mortgage holders could get payouts after blunder

almond · 29 June 2013 at 3:35PM

Two_steps_forward... wrote: »

Excellent! To be honest I proposed a graphic timeline a while back but had put it on the back burner.

Now is the time though, as you say we could each draw branches from it to point up our particular alley.

I like this a lot!!!

lost me not sure what this is about

crusaderstyle · 29 June 2013 at 4:38PM

almond wrote: »

lost me not sure what this is about

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=whatvis+a+timeline&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari#biv=i%7C7%3Bd%7C-ifqwEmD1yGPRM%3A

Just a link showing different presentation ideas of timelines.

We could all help detail a timeline relating to santander over a given time. Add in the details such as ' December 2008 - the cap margin was increased. October 2012 the svr was increased, feb 2013 - santander announce they will cut exposure to uk housing market etc

Once we have that in place, we could all use it to do one which has our own circumstances detailed ie march 2011 - moved onto svr rate etc

I hope it would help us all to understand and detail how we've been affected personally and possibly WHY (which could only help our cause, surely!) and assist our arguments going forwards.

crusaderstyle · 29 June 2013 at 4:42PM

fishing_mad wrote: »

I for one did not receive any notification.

Your observation above supports the view that this may have been an intentional strategy on Santander's part. The root issue remains that Santander did not inform customers of the Cap Margin increase. This being the fact, why should the onus be on any customer to prove that he/she could have secured a better deal since he/she did not know of the implications of the Cap Margin increase?

I feel as if I am going round in circles!

Agree with you 100%

They took away the right to question how it would've affected any of us when they withheld the information that we had a contractual right to be informed of. I'm hoping this is a key point that the FCA would consider for all 270,000 of us when it gets to that stage.

ceegee · 29 June 2013 at 11:06PM

Blimey!

I received a letter today, reference number M014, which left me totally bewildered, so I came here to see if there was a thread about it!

I have waded through the entire thread but am still bewildered. My mortgage was paid off in July 2010 and it was in quite a few parts as I'd had further advances for vital house repairs.

All parts were on the same terms.......a discounted rate followed by being put onto the SVR which was subject to the ERC.

I am affected and affected, according to the letter......

"When we increased the Cap Margin in December 2008, all or part of your mortgage was on an SVR linked product which was subject to an ERC. We should have told you that you were entitled to exit this part of the mortgage without paying the ERC for a period of three months after the Cap Marginincrease between 15th December 2008 and 15th March 2009. Your payments were higher than they would have been had we not increased the Cap Margin.

"We have considered the information available to us about your credit history and the outstanding mortgage balance as a percentage of the value of your property at the time of the Cap Margin increase. Based on this information, we have compared the mortgage rate that you were paying at that time against other mortgage rates available to you in the market. As a result, if you had known you could have switched without paying an ERC, we have identified that you may have been able to obtain a more competitive mortgage by switching to another lender during the three month ERC free period if you had wanted to."

Well, what should I do? Are they basically saying that they overcharged me?

Could someone kindly shed some light on this, as I am so confused!

TheMightySwordfish · 30 June 2013 at 12:02AM

If it hasn't come with one, you need to ring the number on the letter to ask for a questionnaire.

The basic gist is for you they seem to have put their hands up and admitted that they ripped you off on at least one part of your mortgage.

ceegee · 30 June 2013 at 12:34AM

Thank you. I forgot to say that the questionnaire was enclosed with the letter!

My feelings are that if they have been overcharging me, then they can blooming well reimburse me the overpayments. I struggled like heck to pay the mortgage in the latter years due to a drop in my wages. I think I will write them a polite letter asking them to calculate how much I could have saved had I known that I could have got a cheaper mortgage elsewhere.

I don't know what their response will be; it would appear from some posts in this thread that peoples' requests for redress have just been turned down flat. In fact, I can't recall seeing that anybody has had any!

So, I'll write a letter and will report back when I get a reply.

Thanks again.

.

TheMightySwordfish · 30 June 2013 at 12:37AM

It seems the higher the M number on the letter the higher the chance they will capitulate.

charlie3090 · 30 June 2013 at 5:20AM

ceegee wrote: »

Blimey!

I received a letter today, reference number M014, which left me totally bewildered, so I came here to see if there was a thread about it!

I have waded through the entire thread but am still bewildered. My mortgage was paid off in July 2010 and it was in quite a few parts as I'd had further advances for vital house repairs.

All parts were on the same terms.......a discounted rate followed by being put onto the SVR which was subject to the ERC.

I am affected and affected, according to the letter......

"When we increased the Cap Margin in December 2008, all or part of your mortgage was on an SVR linked product which was subject to an ERC. We should have told you that you were entitled to exit this part of the mortgage without paying the ERC for a period of three months after the Cap Marginincrease between 15th December 2008 and 15th March 2009. Your payments were higher than they would have been had we not increased the Cap Margin.

"We have considered the information available to us about your credit history and the outstanding mortgage balance as a percentage of the value of your property at the time of the Cap Margin increase. Based on this information, we have compared the mortgage rate that you were paying at that time against other mortgage rates available to you in the market. As a result, if you had known you could have switched without paying an ERC, we have identified that you may have been able to obtain a more competitive mortgage by switching to another lender during the three month ERC free period if you had wanted to."

Well, what should I do? Are they basically saying that they overcharged me?

Could someone kindly shed some light on this, as I am so confused!

Hi,
Your letter is worded exactly the same as mine (MO13)and I am as confused as you are.
I have filled in my questionnaire and am now awaiting their letter to tell me why they think I was not affected lol.
My only arguement is that I was not given the option to opt out when I should have had a chance to move mortgage without paying fees.
Would I have moved?,probably if I could have saved money,who knows,I didnt even get the chance.
Charlie.

ceegee · 30 June 2013 at 11:27AM

I have slept on it and re-read the letter several times.

Here is another particularly pertinent extract:

"On 15 December 2008 we increased the Cap Margin linked to your mortgage from 2.50% to 3.75%. This meant that our SVR could go no higher than 3.75% above the BoE base rate. By making this change we were able to increase the amount of inerest charged to customers paying an SVR linked rate. For example, in April 2009 when the BoE bank rate (I think they mean base rate!) was 0.5%, the maximum SVR we could have charged was 4.25%. If the Cap Margin had not changed, the maximum SVR would have been 3.00%."

It would seem to me, therefore, that they were overcharging me by 1.25%, as they were discounting from a higher SVR than they should have been. As I no longer have any mortgage paperwork, I wouldn't know what timescale is involved.

Re the questionnaire and particularly questions D1 and D2....had I known at the time that they were overcharging me I would have phoned them up and asked them to put me on the discounted rate linked to the correct SVR. I do recall that they made charges for being on the SVR linked discounted rate.

Am I making any sense here? I am rambling a bit, but it is helping me to sort it out in my own mind, as well, I hope, as putting more information into the general pot of the thread!

Phew!

PS More ramblings, I'm afraid, but.....am I right in thinking that the ERC is irrelevant because they themselves should have been charging people a lower rate anyway and so people would not necessarily have had to transfer their mortgage to another provider?

ceegee · 30 June 2013 at 12:09PM

Two_steps_forward... wrote: »

Santander are trying to say that the only scenario where customers would have been interested in switching or selling up and paying it off is when they were not liable for the ERC. This is a very narrow view and untrue, as I have said countless times;

THE ERC IS NOT THE ONLY ISSUE!

I have said before, the ERC is a smokescreen.

I agree with this. The ERC is almost an irrelevance. The issue is much bigger than that. The issue is that they increased the Cap Margin and by doing so overcharged goodness knows how many people.

Greedy bankers.......

MSE News: Thousands of Santander mortgage holders could get payouts after blunder

Comments

Categories

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free