Abbey (Santander) Mortgage Help - Recent Experience

jordan_gibson · 4 June 2010 at 11:20AM

Hi all,

4 weeks ago had offer accepted on our new house. Need £70K mortgage (30% LTV) so decided to go with Abbey as they offer free survey, no product fees, cashback etc to current account holders (worth £1750 approx) so lovely jubbly I thought!

All went through fine (affordability wise) but after the 3rd stage the lady said that she had encountered a technical issue and could not print the application out and therefore could not process the application any further. No problem I thought, these things happen.

3 weeks have now passed and they still have the same 'technical' issues with no sign of a fix any time in the near future!

Apparantly, I'm not the only application that has had this issue - anyone else had this recently?

Just ranting because I can't believe one of the world's largest banks can struggle to fix a technical issue in 3 weeks! I'm sick and tied of speaking to the same people (at my expense with 0845 numbers) and want to have a good rant at someone (so they can hopefully fix the problem) - can the powers of MSE find me an email/contact number for someone??

...i've tried their complaint@ email address twice but guess what - no reply to either

rsmein · 4 June 2010 at 2:28PM

I'm afraid I can't help, but I can sympathise. I am in the process of a mortgage application with Santander which is going in a very strange fashion.

I was informed that the application had been declined on account of my credit score from Experian, and if I had an issue with that I should take it up with Experian.

On checking with Experian I discovered that Santander had not actually made a credit search on my file with them, so goodness knows how they came up with my credit score. I also checked with Equifax and there was no record of a search with them either. I have faxed Santander a copy of my credit report from Experian as an appeal to the decision, but the whole situation seems very strange.

I thought it was the bank's legal requirement to tell you why a decision was made, and surely they are not allowed to lie to you!!

naked · 5 June 2010 at 9:46AM

Have you done it over the phone/internet or in branch?

I enquired over the phone at the end of last year. They agreed in principle but sent nothing in writing to take to the estate agent.
I chased and they said they'd post something out.
Nothing had arrived after 3 weeks so I phoned again and they said they'd send it out again.
Another 2 weeks later both 'mortgage certificates' arrived, one saying they would lend me £120K, the other saying they'd lend me £70K.

I had to go into the branch to change my address when I moved (mortgage with someone else in the end) and they asked if I'd tried them for the mortgage so I told them what happened and they said to always go into the branch for things like that as they will do the paperwork there and then.

Trouble is, when I phoned they couldn't give me an appointment in the branch for 2 weeks....

If you've got any correspondence/reference numbers etc. you could try turning up in the branch and asking if they can see what's going on and you're about the lose the house because of the delays.

denial2010 · 5 June 2010 at 10:31AM

I gave up with Santander! Went through the affordability with them and they credit searched me fine.

The bloke then said he was sending me out the application form for me to check and sign, along with the KFI. It took two weeks to turn up and thats after I rang them to chase them. They sent it out again, which makes me wonder if they actually bothered to send it out the first time.

When it did finally turn up, it had mistakes on it. I rang them back up to tell them. I could only talk to the mortgage consultant dealing with my case and he was on the phone. So they requested a ring back on the system. The bloke finally rang me back up three days later! I explained the issue and he said he has updated the system and will send out new documentation for me to sign.

This new documentation was a lot quicker... only 2 days this time. However, same mistakes on the application.

I gave up. No way are they getting a penny of my money. Useless. So now applied for a mortgage with The Stafford Railway Building Society. So far, they have been excellent and efficent. Santander should take note.

richardtj · 15 June 2011 at 10:57AM

We've found the house of our dreams. Now before I go into detail, lets set the ground rules:

Seller agreed £245,000 for the property
Deposit £80,000 (with £60,000 from Grandmum)- 35% deposit
Run our own business. Combined monthly income £3600.00 (net, not gross)- ie after tax and NI. No outstanding debts. Gran has loan of £12,000 with monthly repayments of £240.00 and due further lump sum of £80,000 from sale of own house, which will clear the loan and leave her with plenty of cash.

So, this house is for Wife, Husband and Grandmother. There's a wonderful granny annex to the property. Property passed the Mortgage survey with flying colours. Santander Abbey to offer £165,000 in prinicpal.

That's where it went completely awry and left us thinking long and hard about moving our business accounts away from Santander....

From the outset, our IFA made it perfectly clear that the three of us would be living in the property and that 80% of the desposit would come from Gran. We have an email thread to that effect, clearly stating these points.

So, the issues started when Abbey Santander came back to us stating that they could not lend against the property because it had 2 kitchens?!?!?! I kid you not..... it has 2 kitchens. Their exact words were we would sub-let the property!!!! We tell them again that gran would be living in the annex.

We then receive correspondance to the effect that we could not proceed unless gran goes on the mortgage, she could not gift us the deposit and live there as well. Fine, not a problem. It'll have to be a 14 year mortgage to complete before she turned 75 with monthly repayments of £1350 by our reckoning at a fixed rate of 4%- not bad really... this after being told that we'd be fine on a 25 year mortgage without gran (we'd clearly identified the fact that she'd be living in the granny annex and gifting us 80% of the deposit).

A sickening tale of Santander Abbey:

Oh and to rub salt into the wound, on the day we recieved the call from our solicitors telling us all this, a mortgage contract for 25 years arrived from Santander Abbey for the full £165,000 for just myself and my wife to sign........ At that point, I decided my 3 year old son could probably run Santander Abbey better and wondered whether this Bank was in a slow steady decline (is Santander going to be the next failed Bank due to more incompetence?).

So, we go back through our IFA, telling Abbey Santander that a 14 year mortgage would be our preferred choice. We proceed to contact Abbey Santander's internal Complaints dept and the Chief Executive, both of whom were nice..... The Complaints Dept started to deal directly with our IFA to get us the mortgage and stonewalled us again and again. The response again and again was that it was with the underwriters. Our IFA was finally told last Friday that the decission would be available yesterday (Tuesday). He contacted them yesterday and guess what..... the person he was dealing with was not available....... all day...... Then today, Abbey Santander contact our solicitors to let them know that they're no longer dealing with us.

So, here's my recommendation... If you're UK based, Go with a British Bank, who abilde by UK regulations and forget about any bank based outside the UK.... it's not in your best interest.

dollpiggy · 15 June 2011 at 4:35PM

They knocked me back for a remortgage saying I couldn't afford it even though I am overpaying my current mortgage by £100 pcm and save £150. They weren't the only lender who knocked me back so I deduced that no one wanted to lend. My LTV is now under 70 % so I am going to try again.

DMB1973 · 17 June 2011 at 4:37PM

They are abysmal and border line criminal, after myself and my wife being assures over a 3 month period by their UK Folkestone Branch mortgage advisor that we could increase the amount on our Mortgage to purchase our dream house and keep the same deal, being a fixed tracker, tracking at 1% above base rate. The Mortgage advisor called us 36 hours before the deposit was due to be paid on the house we were purchasing, all this after being Credit Scored and details sent to their Underwriter and she told us that they had made a MISTAKE, admitting it was THEIR ERROR and informed us that the extra we were borrowing could only now be offered on a new product with a two year tracker rate of 3.09% above the base rate, they admitted upto Regional Manager level it was their error BUT will do nothing to resolve it ! Meaning that it real terms our monthly payments would have to increase by OVER £200 as a starting point, they wouldnt budge despite saying it was their error and will not help us out, only claiming that nothing was signed. Well they assured us it was the terms of our Mortgage several times before then dropping this Bombshell. The result is we have now lost our Dream House and sale on our current property and have left us with nothing more than a shrug of their corporate shoulders and a well S**T happens attitude. They are nothing more than government protected criminals.

thrifty_totty · 11 August 2011 at 12:42PM

Having read through the posts I would like to add my own 'exprience' - perhaps this is something the MSE team would like to investigate further as searching the internet there seem to be hundreds if not thousands of cases like ours...

Exisiting mortgage with Santander, now wish to move, mortgage portable so obviously first point of call Santander.

Mortgage application competed over telephone.
All kinds of supporting docs supplied as requested, P60's, wage slips, bank statements, etc etc

Verbal agreement of application. Survey carried out on property. All ok.

However, written mortgage offer never arrived. Chased and chased and chased - for weeks (fortunately vendor of the property we were purchasing hadn't yet found herself...)

Eventually a letter arrived from Santander - 'our mortgage lending criteria have recently changed and you no longer match our lending criteria...early redemption penalty £2,340....'

So we contacted them, explained we applied to them as we knew the existing ortgage had an early redemption penalty but that the mortgage was portable.
We were just stonewalled.

Spoke to the original telephone mortgage consultant - polite but again stonewalled.

Written complaint to Santander - acknowledged.

In the meantime vendor had found - a property with no chain and the move had picked up speed.

Still nothing from Santander.

So we approached HSBC, Mortgage Manager fantastic, couldn't be more helpful, mortgage application approved in 5 days!!!!!!!

But still £2,340 redemption penalty to pay Santander.....or pull out of sale and purchase and incur expenses...?!

Anyway, this week we have received a response to our complaint - 'Santander have recently changed our lending criteria and you no longer meet it'. So basically £2,340 early redemption penalty please.......

Maybe, but not before I have taken this further! Obviously our complaint is off to the obudsman. And Watchdog. And MSE. And all the press I can find that will cover it. Santander are doing this to hundreds of people from what I can research on the internet. Agree to their existing portable mortgage increase request, people go and negotiate on houses and then Santander 'change their lending criteria' and raise thousands of pounds in the early redemption fees.....

WE HAVE GOT TO STOP THIS!! If this post helps just one more person getting ripped off then it is worth it.

Has anyone got any similar experiences I can add to the case that I am compiling...?
Thank you :j

ahol80 · 24 August 2011 at 9:38PM

All of these complaints about Abbey Santander sound very familiar!!

We applied for our first mortgage with them on the basis that they told our MA they could process it quickly. They were told at the outset that my partner owned a 25% share of his dad's house and his dad was buying him out and he was being taken off that mortgage ASAP. It went through the underwriters twice (after they made us jump through hoops to prove he could 'buy out' his share of the mortgage on his dad's house) and we finally got an offer - but they left in a clause stating that there could be no other outstanding mortgage - despite being clearly told in writing before the final trip through the underwriter that this would not happen.

His dad's mortgage is in process but Lloyds are really dragging their heels with that one!!

It took Santander 5 days to decide they wouldn't remove the clause (despite numerous verbal confirmations it had only been included due to an oversight on their part), but that the mortgage offer itself still stood. So we could take it up if my partner got out of his other mortgage. We imposed hugely on a personal friend who offered us his life savings to pay off the mortgage until my partners dad's new mortgage came through and we instructed our solicitor to apply for the mortgage funds and exchange (as we could now meet all the conditions of the mortgage offer).

When she applied for the funds our mortgage offer was withdrawn!!! No explanations, no reasons, Santander won't even return our IFA's phone calls anymore and we are at risk of losing the first house we've tried to buy as we scrabble around trying to get another mortgage and all because Santander are incompetent!!

GMS · 24 August 2011 at 9:57PM

richardtj wrote: »

We've found the house of our dreams. Now before I go into detail, lets set the ground rules:

Seller agreed £245,000 for the property
Deposit £80,000 (with £60,000 from Grandmum)- 35% deposit
Run our own business. Combined monthly income £3600.00 (net, not gross)- ie after tax and NI. No outstanding debts. Gran has loan of £12,000 with monthly repayments of £240.00 and due further lump sum of £80,000 from sale of own house, which will clear the loan and leave her with plenty of cash.

So, this house is for Wife, Husband and Grandmother. There's a wonderful granny annex to the property. Property passed the Mortgage survey with flying colours. Santander Abbey to offer £165,000 in prinicpal.

That's where it went completely awry and left us thinking long and hard about moving our business accounts away from Santander....

From the outset, our IFA made it perfectly clear that the three of us would be living in the property and that 80% of the desposit would come from Gran. We have an email thread to that effect, clearly stating these points.

So, the issues started when Abbey Santander came back to us stating that they could not lend against the property because it had 2 kitchens?!?!?! I kid you not..... it has 2 kitchens. Their exact words were we would sub-let the property!!!! We tell them again that gran would be living in the annex.

We then receive correspondance to the effect that we could not proceed unless gran goes on the mortgage, she could not gift us the deposit and live there as well. Fine, not a problem. It'll have to be a 14 year mortgage to complete before she turned 75 with monthly repayments of £1350 by our reckoning at a fixed rate of 4%- not bad really... this after being told that we'd be fine on a 25 year mortgage without gran (we'd clearly identified the fact that she'd be living in the granny annex and gifting us 80% of the deposit).

A sickening tale of Santander Abbey:

Oh and to rub salt into the wound, on the day we recieved the call from our solicitors telling us all this, a mortgage contract for 25 years arrived from Santander Abbey for the full £165,000 for just myself and my wife to sign........ At that point, I decided my 3 year old son could probably run Santander Abbey better and wondered whether this Bank was in a slow steady decline (is Santander going to be the next failed Bank due to more incompetence?).

So, we go back through our IFA, telling Abbey Santander that a 14 year mortgage would be our preferred choice. We proceed to contact Abbey Santander's internal Complaints dept and the Chief Executive, both of whom were nice..... The Complaints Dept started to deal directly with our IFA to get us the mortgage and stonewalled us again and again. The response again and again was that it was with the underwriters. Our IFA was finally told last Friday that the decission would be available yesterday (Tuesday). He contacted them yesterday and guess what..... the person he was dealing with was not available....... all day...... Then today, Abbey Santander contact our solicitors to let them know that they're no longer dealing with us.

So, here's my recommendation... If you're UK based, Go with a British Bank, who abilde by UK regulations and forget about any bank based outside the UK.... it's not in your best interest.

Your adviser needs to take most of the blame for this. 2 kitchens is a big issue for lenders as is the deposit coming from somebody who will reside but not be party to the mortgage.

Their processing can be shocking at times but this one is not all down to the lender

Have you managed to find a mortgage elsewhere?

leedom · 25 August 2011 at 12:59PM

Not sure if I am in the minority or whether only people with problems post but I have a mortgage offer from Abbey/Santander and it all went smooth (so far

).

My mortgage advisor (countywide) has been brilliant and has been since day 1; she continues to help me/advise on various matters and as a FTB it is just what I need.

Sorry to hear so much woe about Abbey/Santander but from my experience it has been fab.

Abbey (Santander) Mortgage Help - Recent Experience

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