Abbey took another payment after redemption

rob.jarvis

We redeemed our mortgage with Abbey and it completed last Monday. On Tuesday they took another unexpected £1948.88 mortgage payment.

I realise Abbey would need to set up the direct debit a couple of days before but they must have known the mortgage was about to be redeemed. At the very least they should have informed me of this further debit.

As a consequence, there were insufficient funds in our account to cover this amount and our bank (A&L) charged us £25 (but that's another thread).

I rang Abbey to complain but the turkey in customer services said there was nothing they could do to stop the payment and it's not their responsibility to ensure we had the money in our account to pay for it. Cheek!

A strongly-worded letter is heading their way.

dunstonh

I realise Abbey would need to set up the direct debit a couple of days before but they must have known the mortgage was about to be redeemed.

Actually it would have been submitted about 10-15 days before. They cannot stop it in case the redemption doesnt go through that day.

You could have cancelled the direct debit mandate. I would have expected your mortgage broker to mention it.

ukmonkey

rob.jarvis wrote: »

We redeemed our mortgage with Abbey and it completed last Monday. On Tuesday they took another unexpected £1948.88 mortgage payment.

I realise Abbey would need to set up the direct debit a couple of days before but they must have known the mortgage was about to be redeemed. At the very least they should have informed me of this further debit.

As a consequence, there were insufficient funds in our account to cover this amount and our bank (A&L) charged us £25 (but that's another thread).

I rang Abbey to complain but the turkey in customer services said there was nothing they could do to stop the payment and it's not their responsibility to ensure we had the money in our account to pay for it. Cheek!

A strongly-worded letter is heading their way.

Ring your bank and ask them to complete a "direct debit indemnity claim" (use that phrase). They will give you your money back. If they get "funny" with you, quote them this line:

"The Direct Debit guarantee states that if an error is made by the payee or your Bank or Building Society, you are guaranteed a full and immediate
refund from your bank or building society".

If this was the ONLY thing that incurred the charge, they will refund this too.

minimike2

Its quite common. A refund will come to you - you can wait for it (could be up to 14 days) or just go to the bank as ukmonkey says and claim on the direct debit guarantee.

A&L are under no obligation to refund your charge though, as it wasnt thier fault. They might do as a goodwill gesture, but technically its not thier error.

MarkyMarkD

It's not an error by Abbey either, so to make a DD indemnity claim is wrong too.

It is the OP's fault, or more directly their solicitor's fault for settling the wrong amount as the correct amount, on the date the payment was made, would have taken account of the DD payment in the system.

minimike2

Its not to do with the solicitor. The figure would have been correct, the direct debit will already have been goigng through. It happens all the time when a completion is the day before the DD due date.

inca_2

In all fairness they ought to have advised you somewhere that your DD could still be taken if it was close to the redemption date. It happens many many times and customers won't necessarily realise this because as far as they are concerned the mortgage is redeemed and no further payments are owed. Sometimes a letter to the lender along with a bank statement showing the charge may work, it may not, but its worth a try. I've seen this be successful in the past. Your DD will be refunded but it usually takes a couple of weeks.

doelani

To be fair to Abbey when I changed mortgage a few months ago I called them and asked about the DD and they said I had 2 options, let the payment go through and it would be refunded ( think this is normal in case you do not complete) or I took responsibility to cancel DD if I was 100% sure we were going to complete.

I would guess that they get mortgages failing at last minute, our first one was pulled on 27th of april and mortage payment was due on 28th April. We did not cancel the DD on that occassion and just as well as we would have then ahd a late payment on our mortgage.

Second time we cancelled once we knew Solicitor had funds and got it done in time before the payment left our account.

Your payment being due so close to redemptionw ould not have given Abbey time to cancel it.

happybroker

if the direct debit was bounced then there's no point claiming on the dd indemnity.

banks send enourmous numbers of redemption statements out that don't result in redemption within the period of validity so you couldn't expect them to assume that your loan was going to be repaid.

your mortgage adviser could have mentioned that you might want to look into cancelling the direct debit when you were sure that the mortgage had completed, if you had cancelled it before completion and there was a delay you would have been in arrears which would probably have upset you more.

I would love to give you more positive news but it's a bit of a "live and learn" one is this I'm afraid and whilst the turkey at Abbey could have been more tactful they were not far off the mark I'm afraid.

dunstonh

our mortgage adviser could have mentioned that you might want to look into cancelling the direct debit

I mentioned that as well. However, re-reading the first post and it looks like no mortgage adviser was used from the wording. The OP said she was complaining to Abbey. If a mortgage adviser was used you would go to them.

If no adviser is used then you do have to accept that you are not going to get told things as you are taking on responsibility for the transaction.

terryw

rob,

This is a niggle but as the other posters say, you will get this back.

A niggle of mine to do with this when a house is sold, is that no-one actually checks to see if the interest charged by the lender up to redemption is correct! The solicitor merely requests a redemption figure and pays this from the proceeds of sale, and the seller just accepts that this is correct because he has paid a solicitor to deal with the sale. Take five minutes to actually check the interest charged.

bw on your move.

the poster formerly known as
terryw