Halifax overpayments.

tomstickland

I have a mortgage with Halifax, as well as a current account, and it's all online.

I tried to make online overpayments from the current account to the mortgage but couldn't. I spoke to their helpline and they told that it was not possible, but that I could use telephone banking to do it.

I've done that twice in the last month.

I phoned up today to make another overpayment and was told that I could not do it via telephone banking. I had to do it in a branch. I explained that I had already made overpayments with telephone banking twice previously, but the operator told me "I know what I'm talking about and you can't do it unless you are in arrears".

I'm just wondering whether this is correct.

opinions4u

Nope.

The operator you spoke to most recently is wrong.

You can actually do it online via an external bill payment facility quoting the mortgage sort code and account number which the branch/call centre can confirm to you. (EDIT: Just tested this and it doesn't work - sorry - it certainly used to - I'd now suggest asking them to set up a 'funds transfer' option in branch and seeing if this works online).

Takes a couple of days to reach the mortgage account but saves involving human beings in the process!

EDIT: I also round up my payments to the nearest £100 above which they can organise by phone. So a £301 payment will collect £400 and reduce debt faster.

KTF

I overpay my Halifax mortgage from my Nationwide current account using the sort code and account number as above.

One thing to note is that their system doesnt seem to cope very well with overpayments as everytime the rate bank of England rate has changed Halifax sends me a letter saying that my mortgage payment is going down (despite it being on a fixed rate) so I have to phone them up and get it reset back to the original level.

tomstickland

opinions4u wrote: »

Nope.

The operator you spoke to most recently is wrong.

You can actually do it online via an external bill payment facility quoting the mortgage sort code and account number which the branch/call centre can confirm to you.

Takes a couple of days to reach the mortgage account but saves involving human beings in the process!

EDIT: I also round up my payments to the nearest £100 above which they can organise by phone. So a £301 payment will collect £400 and reduce debt faster.

Oh, I see. Send it direct to the mortgage account sort code and account number from another account. It won't allow online transfers from their own bank accounts to the mortgage.

patrick1

I'm sure you must be able to do it from a Halifax current account too.

I do my payments from Lloyds TSB as a monthly standing order.

You need the sort code, account number and "mortgage roll number" as the reference -- you can see all these if you login to the Halifax site and view your mortgage account details.

I can also make adhoc overpayments payments in the same way.

Like others I ended up doing it this way because I got sick of Halifax reducing/increasing my monthly payments whenever the rate changed (I'm on a fixed rate).

The only thing to watch out for is if you're on variable and the rate goes up - in which case you need to make sure your standing order is enough!

tomstickland

I'm just going to phone up and see if another operator will do it.They don't allow online transfers from current ac to mortgage. They told me that.
I'm going to transfer a test amount from an external account and see if that works.

tomstickland

No, they wouldn't do it.

Grade_A_Reject

Halifax seem to make it deliberately difficult to make overpayments online from a Halifax current account. Looks like they don't want to encourage it.

ashleyk

I tried paying online via my current account and they wouldn't let me do it. In fact it didn't work the first time we tried it from my wife's account with Barclays saying that the mortgage account didn't exist. We tried again using the same numbers after calling Halifax and then it worked. Perhaps Halifax are trying to make it difficult because they earn a lot more interest when we don't over pay.

Dumyat

I have had problems too over the years making over payments. They do not make it easy. I use a standing order.
I have done it over the phone but had to wait on hold while they checked with another department before I was allowed to pay. could it be that today being a holiday, not all departments are open.

mitchb

I looked into this about a year ago and found it was lik banging me head of a wall.

In the end i gave up and am saving the money to pay off as a lump sum, at a higher rate than my mortgage interest of course