Mortgage Exit Fees successes and failures

anniebooklover · 2 February 2007 at 3:30PM

Woo hoo!!! Just read Martin's weekly e-mail and decided to look out my old Halifax redemption statement. They charged me £175. So, spent less than five minutes on the phone to a very pleasant man who has told me I'm entitled to a refund of £100!

Thanks, Martin. You are a star!

felicity1 · 2 February 2007 at 10:21PM

Just heard about this on BBC radio 2 and it prompted me to 'phone Halifax - got £25 refunded straight away.

Have also remortgaged with Nationwide more recently but they weren't particularly helpful, all they could say was they hadn't decided how to handle claims and I should keep 'phoning.

Anyone else any experience of Nationwide?

And thank you, Martin, £25 for a brief call is well worth it!:T

Grumpyoldgit · 3 February 2007 at 1:08PM

Currently in the process of leaving Abbey, rang them up and was advised that they had yet to make a decision regarding this but I should write to the following address logging my objection and it would be dealt with :

Abbey
PO Box 287
Stockton-On-Tees
TS17 6QQ

Edit : Fee quoted was originally £99 (2005) now £225 so hoping for a reduction of £126

BindiBahji · 3 February 2007 at 1:39PM

I received a £75 cheque from Halifax this morning, with a letter saying

Thank you for confirming your acceptance of our offer in full and final settlement of your complaint.

Obviously I never accepted during the phone conversation that this was in full and final settlement - I (perhaps naively) assumed it was a goodwill payment. Anyone else think this is a bit underhand?

I'm tempted to write back saying I'm accepting their offer as a goodwill gesture only, and if the FSA rules at the end of the month that such high exit fees are unfair/unreasonable, I will be putting in another claim.

Sound reasonable?

marie67_2 · 3 February 2007 at 1:47PM

Read this thread yesterday, remortgaged in 2004 paying off our mortgage with Cheltenham & Gloucester and was charged £180.Looked through the paperwork last night and found we should have been charged £50 (1998 charges), telephoned them this morning and with no hassle was told a cheque would be sent out this week plus interest.An absolute must for everyone.

eden37 · 4 February 2007 at 6:33PM

Wrote to them 29/1/07 received a letter 3/2/07 agreeing to refund £100 , the difference between the £175 paid on redemption and the £75 quoted when the mortgage was originally taken! Thanks Martin yet another saving made scince I joined this wonderfull site:money:

raeble · 4 February 2007 at 7:55PM

I remortgaged from the Abbey last year. They charged me £225 for the privilege. I was not happy because the first I knew of any redemption fee was when they sent the first annual statement. I used a letter template posted by another user (I think in the A&L thread) and amended it as appropriate.

Customer Satisfaction
Abbey Centre
PO Box 5129
Milton Keynes
MK9 2YN

Thursday, 21 September 2006

Mortgage Account: *******

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to complain about the £225 mortgage account closure fee that Abbey is planning to apply to my account.

I am fully prepared to pay a fee that reflects the genuine costs incurred by the bank in closing my account. But as £225 is more than twice the amount charged by many of your rivals, and is greater than the maximum typical fee quoted by your regulator the Financial Services Authority, I do not wish to pay it.

This letter is a complaint about the scale of the fee, its recent and unexplained increase from £99 to £225 on the 11th May 2005, and about the fact that this fee or potential increases in the fee were never explicitly communicated to me at the time I took out my mortgage with the Abbey. I can find no reference to any such fee in my mortgage offer letter or any of the corresponding documents.

Abbey has to abide by FSA regulations which stipulate that charges of this sort must be fair and not excessive. I believe that the scale of the £225 fee, plus the fact that the original fee and latest increase was not explained or properly communicated, means that Abbey is in breach of both these requirements.

I request that you reduce my fee to the sum that I understand from your customer service centre was in use in May 2004 when I took out my mortgage. If Abbey is not prepared to consider reducing my fee, as requested, please send a deadlock letter at once so that I can pursue my complaint through the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Yours faithfully,

I got back a letter from them basically not agreeing to this and explainig that the fee was fair. The thing that really irritated me about abbey is that they admited their mortgage discharge fee is a combination of two fees (the original discharge fee and a fee for using their legal services).

This was my reply.

Ms *******
Customer Relations Assistant
Customer Relations
P O Box No 287
Stockton on Tees
TS17 6QQ

Your ref: ******
Account: ********
Friday, 29 September 2006

Dear Ms ******,

Many thanks for your prompt reply to my complaint however, I remain dissatisfied for the following reasons.

1) There is no mention of any such fee on my mortgage offer. There is however mention of a Standard Mortgage Conditions 2002. This was meant to be enclosed with the offer letter. However, as I have two copies of the offer letter in separate envelopes and no copies of the booklet I can only assume that my offer was sent out at a time the Conditions leaflet was being reprinted.

2) The tasks you list are mainly menial or can be done by computer. For example putting deeds into an envelope is an unskilled task and as someone who worked in a Dispatch Department I know that this task would not take more than a couple of minutes. The listed tasks do not justify the high charge given the unskilled nature of the work.

3) As I understand from your letter, the Disclosure fee was only applicable to customers who wanted to discharge the mortgage with Abbey’s solicitors acting on their behalf. As this fee only applied to those customers who used Abbey’s solicitors, I do not understand how you can justify charging all your customers this fee.

4) I believe that all of these tasks were necessary before the increase and you have not justified the massive increase at a time when wage inflation is in the range of 3% - 4% and the Bank of England’s measure of general inflation is 2.5%.

Please provide me with your final response in order that I may pursue this with the ombudsman.

Yours sincerely

I then got a letter informing me this was a stalemate and they were passing my complaint on to the relevant department. I then got a letter from the relevant department informing me they were looking into it. About a month went by and I was just wondering what on earth was going on when I got a letter telling me they were still looking into it. Then a few days later I got a letter saying that because I had been a long standing customer (Hah! I was only there 2 years) they were going to refund the £225 as a gesture of goodwill. I got the cheque the next day.

annie42 · 4 February 2007 at 9:00PM

I had four mortgages with Nat West, one taken out in April 04 and the other three in September 04. I changed to a different lender in May last year and was charged 4 x £225 exit fees. I have the redemption statements but not the original agreement. Please can anyone tell me what they were charging in 2004 when I borrowed from them, unfortunately I have discarded the original documentation with that information. Many thanks.

isayoldchap · 5 February 2007 at 9:07AM

I would also want intrest for the overcharge.

gallygirl · 5 February 2007 at 10:21AM

:j :j :j :j £125 plus £1.21 interest :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: from C & G on its' way, wish all phone calls so productive:j :j :j :j !!!!

Same coming to OH as well!!!!!:T :T :T :T

Mortgage Exit Fees successes and failures

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