MSE News: Mortgages hikes after Yorkshire/Clydesdale Bank glitch

opinions4u

1) You owe the money. There's no getting away from that.

2) You will have to adjust your monthly payments to the level that is now correct.

3) There is no way, morally, you should have to pay any additional interest on the amount of the underpayments.

4) You should be compensated for the stress that the error has caused.

I think you should ring the Finanacial Ombudsman for initial advice on how to proceed. The reason for this call is that they may have received similar calls and already have complaints on the go. If the error is widespread, they certainly will have complaints on the go soon!

Subject to the outcome of that call, you then need to officially complain to Clydesdale. Your opening position should be that they should write off the capital sum involved.

While the complaint is progressing, you should also make an agreement to adjust your payments to ensure that the underpayment situation doesn't worsen. Any agreement should be implemented asap but with a proviso from you that you reserve the right to review that agreement once your complaint has run its course.

Clydesdale will make you an offer. That offer may be cash compensation now, but interest charges later on the sum involved. My view is that such an offer would be inadequate and unacceptable. Even if you have to extend the term of the mortgage, you should not be charged extra interest on the sum involved. So you will need to reject any offer you consider to be inadequate and either make a demand or ask them to make a more favourable offer.

After 8 weeks, earlier if they issue a letter of deadlock, you have the right to raise the complaint officially with the FOS.

I think the FOS will side with you and uphold your complaint. But this will take many months. Keep good records of all written and verbal communications with anybody at Clydesdale!

They may not agree that the capital sum should be written off, but they will, in my opinion, award compensation and insist that no adidtional interest charges are made on the amount involved. To comply with this, it may eventually prove more administratively convenient for the lender to actually write the sum off anyway, rather than manage a realtively small interest free element on a mortgage account for 20+ years!

Good luck.

Dollydebs_2

I am in the same situation and am going to my local branch direct as thats who arranged the mortgage in the first place then follow it up with the ombudsman if I dont get a good outcome.

I am strenuously going to ask for them to waive our amount overdue (£1700) although I do realise we are going to have to up our monthly repayments.

cest la vie!

thanks to all the replies, its really helped me out personally and given me motivation not to accept this without a fight first!

DD

Sheep

Do you guys have Legal assistance on your home insurance? if so call them ASAP! I work for a bank and sell home insurance with legal assistance and this is the exact sort of thing they can help you with

jonnyturco

I'm in the same boat, i asked for and then eventually received a detailed reconciliation statement from the Clydesdale. Looking at it in detail, the problem began for me on the 1st of march 2009.

The base rate had dropped to 1% and the bank inexplicably deducted 921 pounds from my total debt when I had only paid 889

The actual interest calculations were correct (based on the lower amount) but every subsequent month a similar overestimation of payment has been made. Over the course of the year, my total debt has been underestimated to the tune of about 1300.

What is weird is that prior to the 'error' my net contribution to my repayment mortgage was about 600 quid, and this remained constant throughout the 'error'. What was actually deducted from my total and now comprises my 'underpayment' nets out to a 700 contribution - and increase of a hundred quid.

I'm amazed at how such an error could have occurred and been allowed to accumulate for a year, either way their maths seems to stack up....

anyone have any joy with the ombudsman?

getmore4less

jonnyturco wrote: »

I'm in the same boat, i asked for and then eventually received a detailed reconciliation statement from the Clydesdale. Looking at it in detail, the problem began for me on the 1st of march 2009.

The base rate had dropped to 1% and the bank inexplicably deducted 921 pounds from my total debt when I had only paid 889

The actual interest calculations were correct (based on the lower amount) but every subsequent month a similar overestimation of payment has been made. Over the course of the year, my total debt has been underestimated to the tune of about 1300.

What is weird is that prior to the 'error' my net contribution to my repayment mortgage was about 600 quid, and this remained constant throughout the 'error'. What was actually deducted from my total and now comprises my 'underpayment' nets out to a 700 contribution - and increase of a hundred quid.

I'm amazed at how such an error could have occurred and been allowed to accumulate for a year, either way their maths seems to stack up....

anyone have any joy with the ombudsman?

If this is what happened to others

Why are they asking for money they took extra money off that you did pay why don't they just restore your ballance to what is should be.

They could waive the underpaid interest is should not be that much

The full £700 @ 5% for a year is only £35.

If the actual payment was correct to meet the repaymentt term it should not change going forward.

Still does not make sense.

Dollydebs_2

so far, I went to the bank in person - spoke to a lovely mortgage advisor who said that she asked the mortgage review centre to waive the shortfall and according to her 'under no circumstances will they do this' why? 'because technically you've already had that money'....

placed an official complaint with Clydesdale and this followed up with a letter from themselves last week stating that they are looking into it.

watch this space folks!
DD

Wulfrune

I had a letter from Clydesdale registering my desire to go through the complaints procedure regarding them c**king up my mortgage... they said they were "Disappointed" that I've gone down that route and acknowledge the receipt of the letter from me AND the F.O.S. and they will reply to me with their "findings" within the next few weeks. I nearly wet myself with laughter at the comment of their "findings"..... Like you'd have to be a rocket scientist to know how that one's going to go. I don't care how long it take, I don't care how much time I personally have to spend.... I vow this.... CLYDESDALE I WILL BE A THORN IN YOUR BACKSIDE FROM THIS DAY ON, UNTIL YOU SORT THIS TRAVESTY. Wooo, now I feel better.

getmore4less

Has anyone actualy got the details of what has actualy happened.

Nothing reported so far makes any sense since the details are incomplete.

Spotty_Betty

Hi there

We have also had the same letter - and tried to make an appointment to speak to the team dealing with the about it. We were passed on to the mortgage adviser at the local branch - who allegedly knew nothing of the matter. She hooked us up with a telephone conference call and we were told that was the best they could do. The team dealing with it were based hundreds of miles away and flatly refused to talk to us by any other means. This was an unsuitable method since we could clearly hear what was going on in the public space in the bank and vice versa.

We would not discuss the matter in this fashion and stated that we would like a letter with: -

* a full and detailed explanation of the Clydesdale Banks error
* a full and detailed (get the picture) explanation of why it took so long to pick up their error. (We also pointed out that when we were offered the tracker mortgage the application process saw us sitting with the banks mortgage adviser for 3.5hours whislt she and the online team dotted every "i" and crossed every "t". We were then subsequently called back for another half hour visit because they had not got the "full facts" and needed to confirm the information. This then was sent to "head office for checking and approval).
* we also asked for a full breakdown, year on year, showing their caluculations on additional costs.
* We queried why it had taken so long to pick up the error since, until recently, we received an annual statement from them showing the balance of mortgage and interest and we suggested that any error would have been noticed then - had there indeed been an error. They said they "did not know".

We were told that they would send out the letter and that this would take some time to put together - a 2 to 3 week period was suggested by them as being not unreasonable. They also agreed to defer the start date of the increased payments until this had been "sorted out". We are still waiting - 4 weeks later - for the letter.

During our meeting they mentioned that we were not the only ones in this situation and that it only affected "a small number of people".

We were not asked to remortgage but to pay increased amounts per month and yet during our meeting the mortgage adviser mentioned that we "were on a really good interest rate on our tracker mortgage" and that "when we changed mortgages the interest rate would go up a little bit".

We did not ask, agree, mention, or take her up on this but were left wondering what exactly was going on.

The original letter was lengthy but said little, and we then tried to work out what changes had taken place witin CB over the last few months. We believe that CB have stopped the tracker mortgage and wonder if what is happening (because we are cynics) is that the bank may not be making money off the tracker so they may be trying to increase the money they make off currect tracker mortgage holders by trying to remortage and calling it a "bank error".

Would be interesting to know if those who received this letter were only those with tracker mortgages.

Anyone had any more joy in sorting this out?

We have between us been with the CB for over 40 years and have noticed a huge change in customer service.

AJ_F

Hi
I am in the same situation, they in-effect wish to increase my mortgage by 50%, to cover their mistake.
If the payments are not increased then i will own them some £8000 extra in interest over the term of the mortgage? according to the customer service advisor.