Re-mortgageing error by Halifax??

Wigans_warrior

Hi, I re-mortgaged with the Halifax last April when I decided to consolidate a loan for nearly £6000 that my wife had with the Halifax and increase my mortgage repayments with the "spare cash" she was left with in order to reduce the overall length of terms of the mortgage.

Great idea in pricipal, as I asked for (and got) a projected length of term repayments if I increased my repayments by certain amounts (around 12 years left to pay my mortgage off from 21 years).

The bad bit, the morgage adviser "cocked-up" and simply kept the terms of the repayment exactly as they were (still with 21 years to go) and simply added the loan onto the mortgage, and extended the length of that to nine years!!! Not what I wanted AT ALL. At the time I also reduced (assuming the length of terms had dropped) my morgage protection down to the relevent length of remaining time.

I have now ended up with protection that does not last the full terms of my mortgage (no real deal I agree), BUT the loan (we received not one penny more money for paying of the loan and transferring it to my mortgage - and this was not the idea of what we wanted to do) is now extended to 9 years which was exactly what we did not want.

I understand I can complain (and will), yet what sort of recompense or satisfaction should I be "looking at". Please advise. What exactly should I write in my letter - all details printed off at the time are still in my hands.

Tiddler_2

Recompense will probably be them putting it back to the term you want, and possibly £25 as a goodwill gesture.

Remember, you will have received a copy of the mortgage offer with the term and monthly payments stated on it.

You will have also had the extra money in your account each month. You could offer to give them these payments and ask them to back date them to the original payment dates so that you would not be out of pocket on the interest charges.

Knocking 9 years off the mortgage should make a significant difference to your monthly payments for you to notice on your bank statements each month, so you should have noticed within the last 8 months.

feisty1

The first thing to do is refer back to yr original documents/illustration/KFI.........Section 2. Which service are we providing you with?.......Which box is ticked? It will either be "we are recommending" or "we are not recommending"..........Did you use an adviser or was this with Haifax direct by fone, branch etc?

dwsjarcmcd

TBH, I'm not sure that you can expect them to compensate you at all, I think that you can expect them to reduce the term and waive any fees if they have them.

With the money you have not paid them (via increaed repayments caused by a shorter term) you should also be allowed to pay that to the Halifax without any penalty, although in all likelyhood you could do that anyway.

David

Rick62

It shouldn't be a big deal, you've not actually lost anything, just been paying a bit less than you intended. If you want you could make an overpayment to reduce the capital and if you still want to change the term then Halifax should be able to do this if you give them a call.

Wigans_warrior

feisty1 wrote: »

The first thing to do is refer back to yr original documents/illustration/KFI.........Section 2. Which service are we providing you with?.......Which box is ticked? It will either be "we are recommending" or "we are not recommending"..........Did you use an adviser or was this with Haifax direct by fone, branch etc?

This was done "in person" with the Halifax mortgage advisor. Was told this was what was required to happen when consolidating a loan with a mortgage.

What you have to understand is that my repayments increased (with the additional payments for my wifes ex-loan), so did not suspect anything greatly wrong. Especially as I understand most mortgage repayments are interest payments over the major part of the start of any mortgage, so I DID expect that with a lowering of interest (with the length of terms being reduced), that my repayments wouldn't "shoot" up too much - this appeared to be vindicated with printed off documentation at the time. So I didn't expect any errors - I even phoned the Halifax mortgage advisor at the time to double check the figures and she was adamant that they were correct.

I would now have seen my wife's loan virtually paid off (in another 7 months). Yet am left with another 8 years of a loan (that I had to pay a charge for to re-mortgage) that neither of us wanted and were originally misled into believing that was added to the (new) 12 years remaining on the length of terms - which is now not the case.

dwsjarcmcd

Yes but as has been mentioned, it will be fairly straightforward to change the term so you don't have to pay extra interest for your wife's loan.