advice required on re-mortgage fiasco pls

yalders5

Hi new to this, so bear with me!

In brief - fixed rate was coming to end of deal at end of May. Applied to re-fix on new deal during April. Told 2 weeks maximum to put in place. Remortgage didnt happen in time so went on to variable rate for June, July, August and Sept. Kept being given wrong mortgage offers and one !!!! up after another.

Finally mortgage sorted and was refunded the overpayments, but no interest returned as yet. Over 130 logged phonecalls made, letters sent special delivery, phonecalls to premium lines for up to an hour at a time and after 21 weeks of hell they offered me £200 compensation. They took 12 weeks to respond to my formal complaint. Have refused the £200 as this would barely cover the cost of the phonecalls and letters let alone the time taken to chase them on a lmost a daily basis, feel we have a case for Ombudsman. They will respond with final written response shortly.

Would you continue through to the ombudsman, depending on what they have to say?

PS I Actually have in writing a letter from them accepting full blame for this fiasco and agree it should never have happened.

chivers1977

How much compensation are you expecting? Any figure between £200-400 would seem acceptable for this problem as they have backdated the rate. Which lender is it, Barclays?

yalders5

Hi, it is lloyds C&G. The overpayments were over £500 per month for 4 months. They did not repay the interest on my money for all that time. We actually had a mortgage with them anyway so it should have only taken 2 weeks to re-fix. We did not apply on line (stupidly it now seems) and paid a further £100 on the product fee for personally going in to the branch to see the mortgage specialist who cocked up from the start and admitted it.

I just feel £200 is a bit cheeky considering we paid 100 quid for the non-service (!) plus around £80 in phonecalls and letters. not including the hours spent writing to them and waiting for them to call me back. So to me, the £200 they are offereing is basically getting my money back, and they walk away without a problem.

Really dont know what they should be offering but do feel I should be compensated over the top of my expenses incurred.

chivers1977

FOS guidelines are £10 ph for time spent resolving your complaint although you are expected to be "robust" in resolving your complaint. ie you should not expect to be paid for every hr spent.

I would ask for the £100 product fee refund, interest on your £500 pm (not going to be much) and £250 "gesture of goodwill". At the end of the day, you now have the product that you requested and have been put back in the position financially that you should have been in.

Debt_Free_Chick

I think you need to establish what extra interest you've paid.

It sounds like you paid a higher interest, but surely the overpayments offset the capital you owed?

You need to work out the actual interest charged and compare it with the interest that would have been charged, had the remortgage been put through in good time.

You might find that the difference is not as much as you imagine - it really depends on all the numbers.

The aim is that you are put in the position you would have been, had things gone smoothly.

After that .... look at compensation for the "distress and inconvenience" which covers all your incidental costs (e.g. phone calls, postage etc) with a bit thrown in for the "emotional aggro".

Pursue it ... if you get no joy, use the formal complaints procedure and if you still get no joy, use the Financial Ombudsman. All of this should be laid out in the complaints procedure, should you need to pursue that option.

HTH

yalders5

Thanks for that chivers - most helpful, I shall report back once I have had my final response and take it from there.
I think what you have said would be a fair request.
cheers

chivers1977

If they are stating that they are issuing their Final Response then they are prepared to take the hit for a £450 FOS fee. Aim to come in on your claim at £400 and you may be successful once C&G take into account the extra work involved in a FOS case.

yalders5

debt free chick, thanks for the post.

We should have paid a rate of 5.69 % for those 4 months, instead had to pay 7%. We agreed the amount of overpayment and did have that refunded last week, they have said they will re-pay the interest too, which although I can see is not much, it is the principal, and that if I had owed them the money all that time, how they would have loved to have sent me letters charging me all sorts of extras for it!!

The formal compalints procedure was started on 30th June, once it was inevitable we were heading for a 2nd month of overpayment. They concluded in their report last week, that they had been ad fault, and several times in their letter mentioned that ti should not have happened.

Once I phoned them to say the £200 was barely covering my costs, they were more than happy to go away and look again, and said they hoed I would not need to take it to the FSO.

RecoveringAlcoholic

FOS guidelines are £10 ph

And the fat cats who run these organisations get paid £1,000 per hour.

yalders5

Hi, a quick update on this! Passed everything over to the ombudsman who have been fantastic. keeping us informed every step of the way. Have received all overpayments back plus interest and a £500 compensation lump sum.

Thanks for all your advice on here, and would recommend you do take things to the ombudsman!

mazza2711

Hi new to this, but wondering of anyne can advise. I wanted to look at re-mortagage to raise extra funding for some work but due to my existing mortagage on a variable tracker of 0.23% above base my port of call was my existing lender Barclays/Woolwich and asked for a loan to run alongside my current mortagage. As I already had two other loans running alongside one of £5k and other of £10k and their internal systems couldn't facilitate 3 loans they forced me to re-mortgage the £10k loan taking it to £20k keeping my other loan as is and porting my variable rate but charging me £995 for doing it!!! and they will also get the £275 exit fee!!!!

This was back Oct 2008 and I have still not got any money, they posted offer letter last week. I have made numerous phonecalls and I have had to send information numerous times to them, I have logged two complaints with them and nobody knows where the complaints are, it has been escalated to level 1 three times!!

Have I got a case to get all my fees back, cos I do not think they worthy of having them?