Mortgage Overpayment Mess-up??? Help!!!

Louise20000

HI There and thank you for viewing my message - it means someone is listening

Okay so I have my mortgage with Nationwide and with them I can make overpayments of £500 a month which is the maximum. I have been making these overpayments for over two years now and always make them on the first of every month (to beat the daily interest) and I advised Nationwide to reduce the term of the mortgage as opposed to reducing the payments (which is what they did with the very first overpayment - I'll get to my point in a minute). Well for around 8 or so months we got a letter through after every overpayment telling us how long we had left for our mortgage to run and quite excitedly we could see that by overpaying the £500 each month we were knocking off 2 months of the term in addition to the one month of which our payment is £1098 so we were saving a lot of money long-term then after about 8 months it started to knock 3 months off each time - oh happy days we thought but then in November of last year a letter came through and it had just knocked off 2 months but Decembers and this Januarys were back up to 3 months - so I being astute and careful with my hard earned cash wanted to know what had happened to November's money -why had this only reduced it to 2 months - surely we'll turn a corner and it will then knock off 4 months and then 5 months over time. Can anyone out there see what I am saying??? I've called Nationwide's un-helpful line and they couldn't help so I went in to my local branch and spoke with their Mortgage adviser in there - he couldn't help so he called the Mortgage Un-helpful line too. No-one knows why this happened and I am not a happy bunny - the bottom line is nothing was different - I made the overpayment on the first of November like I do every month and if the 1st ever falls on a Sunday - (like January just gone) I take the cash into the branch on the Saturday and they hold it in their safe and then when they next go into work they put the money on my account and backdate it.

Can you all see what I am saying - do you think that unless Nationwide come up with an answer I should go to the Mortgage Ombudsman???? I've discussed it with the guy at the branch and he thinks its an idea - what does everyone else think - remember that one a difference of one month will cost me £1098 plus interest.

Would love to hear if there could be some possible explanation for this

TheTraveller_3

Hi,

It's highly unlikely that each time you make an overpayment of £500 it would reduce the term of your mortgage by an exact number of months. I think you'll find that it's just an estimation. For example you may find that your overpayment reduced the term 80 days but has their system doesn't allow them to quote in day they rounded this up to 3 months. So the time they showed 2 months they are just reajusting the term.

Louise20000

Thanks TheTraveller - I wish that Nationwide could have put it as simply as that - I've since spoken to an accountant and he also said something very similar - I thought that maybe some of my money had gone towards a staff christmas do or something (Just kidding). I'll continue to make the overpayments after all it means that I will pay less interest in the long run.
Thanks for replying
Louise