Independent adviser / broker

buffy500

No, nothing else arranged.

Dan_1976

buffy500, could it be you found the IDD bit a little dull and did not pay attention?

IDD's are stadard, if the firm is with a network it would be cleared. A call to the FSA or the companies network could the IDD being correct or not off very quickly.

The WoM and independant thing will go on until the FSA change the way brokers declare status, somebody was being paid a lot of money to come up with all the jargon and got a little to flash with it all.

We dont know all the facts, but if you were done out of the money a complaint to the FSA should sort it, if not them maybe you should accept you did not pay attention!

buffy500

Dan_1976 wrote: »

We dont know all the facts, but if you were done out of the money a complaint to the FSA should sort it, if not them maybe you should accept you did not pay attention!

To be honest I already accept I probably did not pay attention at the right time, I was in no rush to go to the FOS, right up to the point they mentioned being independent and the fact that meant we'd been given a choice. This rang alarm bells as I recalled the article here and that choice was most certainly not given, or more importantly was not recorded on the all important paper work...

feisty1

buffy500 wrote: »

or more importantly was not recorded on the all important paper work...

You must have been given a document called Key Facts about our services
look at:

4. What will you have to pay us for our services?
Mortgages
No fee. We will be paid by commission from the lender.
A fee of xxxx and we will be paid by commission from the lender.
A fee of xxx and we will refund to you any commission we receive from the lender

dunstonh

The FOS doesnt place a lot of faith in certain documents. Not because they are prone to being incorrect but because they know people dont read them.

You have a good case based on what you say (noting that there is always multiple sides to every story). You thought you were seeing an independent adviser. They have responded to your complaint that they offered the fee option because they are independent. Yet they havent offset or rebated any commission.

If they hadnt mentioned the independent bit, then you would have had a hard case. Now they put their foot in it.

buffy500

feisty1 wrote: »

[quote=buffy500]
or more importantly was not recorded on the all important paper work...

You must have been given a document called Key Facts about our services
look at:

4. What will you have to pay us for our services?
Mortgages
No fee. We will be paid by commission from the lender.
A fee of xxxx and we will be paid by commission from the lender.
A fee of xxx and we will refund to you any commission we receive from the lender

[/quote]

You've taken that comment out of context sorry.
It was in relation to being now told that the broker was independent, when there's nothing in their paper work that states this is the case, an the fee we were given options do not reflect independent status. The fact is we were given no fee options and the whole subject of fees was not ever mentioned. It was specifically stated that there was no fee for the advice, which on reflection I guess IS true. The advice was free, the setting up a straight forward mortgage was not.

The key facts do say..

4. What will you have to pay us for our services?
Mortgages
No fee. We will be paid by commission from the lender.
A fee of xxxx and we will be paid by commission from the lender.

I have already explained/admitted that we clearly did not read the documents before we signed them, but we did have each and every line verbally explained to us. Although the section of fees was absolutely 100% not explained that we were paying the fee, it was suggested that this was the commission that would come from the lender. I can be so sure because if I'd been sprung a £700 fee I would have investigated options for doing the deal with someone who was not charging, and that conversation simply did not happen.
If the documents had just been dumped in front of us and we were told to read them and sign them when we agreed then I would accept 100% responsibility, but we were at least made to feel as if we'd had it all explained to us by someone supposedly working in our best interest and signing it was just a formality.