Alliance & Leicester "administration" (!?!) charges

Rik_S

Here is the link for the campaign to get the fees reduced. Contained within is a sample letter of complaint.

I used this and threw in a few bits extra, two letters later fee was reduced to £140-00.

PDM - I think this refers to those who were initially offered fees of £95-00 or £149-00 with the mortgage. A&L bumped the fees up without informing anyone. Check your original forms to see what the original fees were. All the best.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/A&Lcampaign

pdm_2

Cheers fella - I'll have a look into that.

MarkyMarkD

Rik_S wrote:

A&L bumped the fees up without informing anyone.

It was included with each annual mortgage statement in a list of standard charges, actually.

Rickycowslip

surprised by all the "read the small print" responses to this thread - surely the question is whether A&L have acted fairly. Would they have sold the original mortgage had they clearly stated £295 exit fee from the start when the decision was made ? And why not just up the fee to £1000 ? its like signing a blank cheque. This is indefensible by A&L - financial providers live by their integrity, many people will be giving them a wide berth in future

admin charge... its like buying a can of lager and recieving a bill in the post for the can

Rik_S

MarkyMarkD wrote:

It was included with each annual mortgage statement in a list of standard charges, actually.

You are quite right, however my second annual statement came as my two year deal concluded, when I was transferring my mortgage.

Prior to that I was never informed of the increase not even by letter, only well after it had been implemented and when I had transferred.

That was possibly the main crux of my arguement with A&L i.e. that they implemented a charge without informing me, then billed me for it 10 months later.

lisyloo

surprised by all the "read the small print" responses to this thread - surely the question is whether A&L have acted fairly. Would they have sold the original mortgage had they clearly stated £295 exit fee from the start when the decision was made ? And why not just up the fee to £1000 ? its like signing a blank cheque. This is indefensible by A&L - financial providers live by their integrity, many people will be giving them a wide berth in future

I totally agree with you.

What some of us don't agree with is the claim that this charge was totally hidden from the beginning. It simply was not. All that has happened is that the OP didn't read the documents properly or ask the right questions on the phone. If he asked about penalties he would have been told about penalties and not charges.

I agree that A&L have acted badly and your points are correct.

However that doesn't mean that someone who has thrown their toys out of the pram can make whatever allegations they like.
You can actually be prosecuted for making false allegations in public so it's quite important to stick to the facts.

He has also been offering bad advise to others on other threads.
I had a mortgage with A&L (past tense).
I was happy to pay high charges and put up with poor service because I saved £6K so it doesn't mean they are terrible for everyone.

Just because the OP has had a bad experience over a few hundred quid does not justifiy false allegations.

pdm_2

Look people can we stop all this mindless tosh about arguing if it was a hidden cost or not.

The fact remains that they are charging over the odds for what they want to justify as "legal fees". Rubbish. Full stop. So no more replies about "it was in your annual mortgage statement". You're just flooding the thread with non-productive comments and slowing down an already loaded server.

I use this site as a source for help. Positive answers are much appreciated. I appreciate been corrected and I learn from my mistakes. Having several people state the same thing is non-productive :mad:

Again I refer to this link for anyone who presumes to think there is no problem what so ever (and please take into account all circumstances and not just your own) >>

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/outrage

PS: Appologies if I have come across as a little "short" in this posting but it gets my back up when people just say "tough it was your own fault so...no advice to help you out....tough"...

lisyloo

Please pm (private message) me if you would like to borrow my letters and I will see if I can dig them out (that applies to anyone).

I got my penalty waived. I cannot guarantee that it would have the same result for anyone else.

I have also added some "tips" that have worked for me on the other thread earlier this morning.

lisyloo

For ease of finding it - here's what I added earlier this morning.

I come her to help and not argue with people so here's some tips, which I hope help you and others.

1) Be very careful about the questions you ask.
Charge, penalties and fees are very specific terms.
If you ask "are there any charges" and there are fees instead then unfortunately you will get the answer "no" and you won't be offered the information you want.
I tend to ask questions like "will I have to pay anything extra at any time"?

2) If something is important then ask for it in writing.

3) If it's not important enough to get in writing but you are sensing that there might be problems then record the time, date and person you are speaking to. This has served me well many times in complaints. If they say their name is John then get a surname, some call centers have 40 Johns.

Hope that helps

pdm_2

There you go LisyLoo - a personal thankyou from me for your penultimate thread. Positive and a helping hand.

Yes i'm new on here. I've obviously right and truly messed up the first thread I've place by not been specific enough. Lesson learned :rotfl:

By all means send the letters to me if you can - I'll certainly find them useful.