Completion deadline missed due to bank error

Christyt

Hi all,

I have been suffering through the process of buying a house with a First Direct mortgage.

They have made errors from start to finish - they ordered a survey on the wrong property delaying things by a week.

They sent out the wrong deeds documents and the updated docs took about 3 weeks to arrive.

BUT WORST OF ALL on the day of completion they forwarded the deposit money from my First Direct account into the mortgage account instead of to my solicitor.

This means I cannot complete today (Friday) and miss a crucial weekend of being able to clean/decorate/sort plumbing to make the place liveable.

I have to cancel and reschedule a plumber at a v difficult time of year, take an extra 2 days off work (to catch up with the cleaning and decorating) and live with the chaos in the meantime.

Luckily we did not end our tenancy today so have somewhere to stay this weekend.

What sort of compensation can I expect? Will they only compensate stuff that costs money?

They have messed me upso many times andn caused me no end of stress and already delayed completion of the process by at least 2 or 3 weeks.

Any advice gratefully received.

sonastin

Have you exchanged contracts already? If you have exchanged and failed to complete on the agreed completion date, you've got more to worry about than missing a couple of days of decorating time. You should be able to pass any compensation owed to the vendor onto bank if it is their error but your solicitor should be advising you on this. What does he have to say?

Christyt

Thanks Sonastin. We hadn't exchanged thankfully - due to do that on same day as completion. But I'm going to have to plead with my work to let me take two days holiday to do the work I would have done over weekend. This is essential work to make the place liveable for an 18month year old baby.

I'm thinking they at least owe me the cost of two days pay plus something for the inconvenience of it all/??

Hippychick

I doubt they will pay you that much compensation, to be honest if the date was so crucial you should have arranged for the money to be transferred a couple of days prior to completion, not on the actual day, that way any problems could have been ironed out in time.

Worth a letter of complaint but they will probably only offer a small amount for the trouble.

olly300

I'm actually surprised that your solicitor didn't insist that the money was with them before they would allow you to complete. Most people's now demand it to stop problems like this.

As HippyChick said write a letter with the title "Formal Complain" to the bank but don't expect your expenses to be covered.

p00hsticks

Unfortunately, this is yet another thread demonstrating why it ISN'T a good idea to complete on a Friday....

Christyt

To be honest my solicitor has been useless. SHe seems to work on the best case scenario principle all the time - the post will always arrive 'tomorrow' and the seller's solicitor will get back to us 'soon'. She could have warned me about the 3.30pm cut off at midday when I chased her about it. Then I would have hassled the bank earlier and possibly might have sorted it out in time.

I'm outraged that a bank can fall down on its responsibilities and not compensate people fairly for the consequences...

olly300

Christyt wrote: »

To be honest my solicitor has been useless. SHe seems to work on the best case scenario principle all the time - the post will always arrive 'tomorrow' and the seller's solicitor will get back to us 'soon'. She could have warned me about the 3.30pm cut off at midday when I chased her about it. Then I would have hassled the bank earlier and possibly might have sorted it out in time.

I'm outraged that a bank can fall down on its responsibilities and not compensate people fairly for the consequences...

Banks make mistakes all the time.

In this case the fault is not entirely the bank. It's all the parties involved.

If you had come and post a few weeks ago asking what could go wrong with exchanging and completing on the same day AND on a Friday then you would have got some personal experiences.

I actually asked people I knew before I brought my place who had brought and sold a few houses in the past 10 years so I knew not to complete on a Friday.

Christyt

Thanks Olly300 - I'm sorry but I'm going to have to have a little rant here.

The only mistake made in this instance was the person who put in the wrong account number details in the transfer box.

While I can see that if things go wrong on a Friday it is the worst day because you have to wait through the weekend before it can be sorted out - I think it's ridiculous that it should be considered a mistake that I, or the solicitor made. It's a risk. And I feel aggrieved that my solicitor wouldn't flag up the best course of action in a more timely manner - after all she's the expert getting paid, not me.

If the bank's computer systems broke down, or there was a massive security alert and the they couldn't complete the transaction for that reason, I would say, well that's just bad luck and hey, it's an added bummer that I organised it for a Friday.

But they made a stupid but extremely crucial clerical error and one that I think a bank should be embarrassed about making in this sort of transaction.

It's a sad state of affairs when you have to ask up front what can go wrong in order to make sure it doesn't.

It seems to me everyone tolerates a level of deceit, incompetence, ignorance and lack of professionalism throughout every stage of buying and selling a property which I think is shameful when you consider what's at stake.

p00hsticks

Out of interest, what made you choose that particular solicitor ?

Christyt

She had lots of good feedback on a Conveyancing solicitor website (way more than anyone else) -www.theadvisory.co.uk....she was good in that she was always accessible by phone and email and was generally prompt with replies. But as most seem to be, passive, naively optimistic about post/banks/the seller's solicitor.