URGENT: Were my parents shafted?

hobo28

OK, so basically the issue is the £900ish. Phew, thought at first the endowment only returned £600 in total!

during the late 80's/early 90's, the interest and charges exceeded the payments, so the amount owed annually was increasing!

Did your parents get any warning or letters detailing the charges or the fact that they were in arrears? I would have thought if they had, it would be difficult to get any money back, especially after so many years.

In addition, the mortgage statements they should have been sent over the years should have shown that. Since it was an interest only mortgage it should have the outstanding amount should have been quite obvious.

Appeal to their better nature. They may give you something back as a gesture of goodwill.

and so the amount should have been adjusted automatically - right?

Just read this. Was the DD a variable mandate? If not then the Lancastrian would not have been able to take any more money. I know mine is and I get a letter from the bank each time the rate changes to tell me my new payment rate.

dunstonh

Direct debits have been around for a heck of a long time - we were certainly doing them in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

They certainly were. However, they were not as widely used as they are today. I remember the number of ammendments and mandates that used to come in to the bank evertime a rate changed. Abbey, A&L, Leeds, N/wide and Halifax were using standing order as the main method when i was doing it (circa 1987)

cattie

quote:
>>Was the DD a variable mandate? If not then the Lancastrian would not have been able to take any more money. I know mine is and I get a letter from the bank each time the rate changes to tell me my new payment rate>>

This was true of the DD to Halifax for my mortgage up until 2002, but I didn't always get a letter & after finding myself a little bit in arrears I was advised by them to call them at intervals to ensure the monthly amount I was paying was sufficient. When I moved I changed the DD to enable them to vary payments as the interest rates altered.

It does a possibility that your parents DD is not a variable type, which has led to accruing arrears.

Did your parents never query the fact that the charges by the companies (the Middleton and then the Lancastrian BS's) exceeded the amount your they paid if these charges were showing back during the years 85-92?