Claiming Loan And Mortgage Charges (merged)

lilmisscomper

We currently have our mortgage with Alliance and Leicester and for the first time in 4 years the direct debit for last month was refused due to us reaching our overdraft limit. We have just received a letter from Alliance and Leicester who have informed us that 'as this direct debit payment has been returned unpaid, an administration fee of 30 pounds has been debited to your mortgage account'. Does this classify as an unfair bank charge? Can I claim it back? Thanks for your help!

G-G_4

Well.. if the terms and conditions say they are going to charge £30 then they can do. The ruling was on bank charges, not sure if it covers mortage charges? Someone will clarify i'm sure.

Maybe ring them and ask for you to be 'let off' this time as you have been an excellent customer up until that point.

Otherwise you will have to take it on the chin and prepare better for next months budget. x

jset

Hi Newbee here, have looked for ages for a thread for these can someone point me in the right direction please....

chelsea290

Hi all, not sure if this is a stupid question or even if it's in the right place but here goes.
I have a joint mortgage with my ex partner, he left last year and i havent' been able to pay the mortgage by myself so they've been adding "arrears monitoring charge" @ £54 a month and a "non society insurance charge" @ £25, £37 for a solicitors letter! Can i claim any of these charges back or should i let it go?
Any advice would be great.
Thank you

patmac1968

Hi folks need some help on this reclaiming business,

Have already sucessfully reclaimed on two business accounts even though i settled for substantially less than was charged.:j
However I have many other angles to cover.I need to know can I reclaim charges on the following; mortgage account:mad: ,HP on a Motor Vehicle :eek: or personal loan with Black Horse a subsidiary of LLoyds:T

P.S arise Sir Martin (surely some day soon) :money: :kisses:

morningfield_2

I just returned from some time away to find that a mortgage direct debit payment didnt leave my account in December, due to insufficient funds (all to do with somebody else paying me late - my account has been healthy ever since).
Anyway, Alliance and Leicester have sent me, in my absence, a letter every two weeks asking for back payment and charging me £35 each time for this automatically generated letter.
Thats roughly £420 for something that if I'd known about I could have dealt with immediately. I work abroad a lot and I have explicitly asked A&L to phone me if they have any issues like this (as they dont have an online service and letters are no use to me). A similar thing happened once before and it was also a case of if I had known I would have sorted it immediately. This is why I asked them to call me.
In their last letter, instead of automatically charging me £35 they stated that if I didn't clear the outstanding payment then I would be charged to cover the administration of sending me letter and making telephone calls, so they even state telephoning as an intented way of contacting me. (I did wonder aswell if this new tack was also a response to bank penalty charges being deemed to be illegal?)

A&L whinge over... the point is surely these charges are as similarly unfair as bank penalty charges? Are they covered by the same rules? Can I make a similar claim?? Is there a precedent? Any help would be appreciated...

As an aside, what would a reasonable charge be for their automatically generated letter, paper, postage, man hours (seconds)?

borgbaiter

hi there

Mortgage charges are a lot more difficult to recover. in essence they are the same to my mind. However you should be aware most Mortgages include an indemnity clause. This basically makes you liable for their legal costs should they have cause to repossess your property thro the courts. they can be worded to include any court action, this would mean you could be liable for thier court costs as well as your own, even if you win, so you pretty much be paying for them to defend any action you try to bring against them.

I found this out too late in my case :-(. Despite my claim being under £5K the courts deemed it far too complicated to be a small claim.

If you do want to pursue this i would personally recommend taking it to the Financial Ombudsman Service This shouldnt risk any costs to yourself.


Good luck

Borgbaiter

ps with the information provided in my case i calculated a fair charge as being between £5.00 and £7.50 per missed/late payment

flipmode_2

Hi Guys,

if you have missed payments on mortgage payments can reclaim back the charges plus the charges for sending out letters to tell you have been charged??

Thanks

:beer:

infocom

Hi.

For the second month Mortgage Trust have charged me £50 because I did not have enough money in my bank to pay the mortgage. Its only the third time I paid them as I only moved to them a couple of months ago. Its a buy to let mortgage and the reason I didnt have enough money is because Mortgage Trust only take DD on the last day of the month, whereas everyone pays the rent a couple of days later beginning of the month. My previous mortgage lenders were flexible, I always paid a few days after I collected all the rent.

So 2 months in a row its happened. The first moth was OK they collected on the 10th so I thought that would be the norm. I've now credited the account with my own money to keep it in credit so it wont happen again.

So I think £50 is excessive, I have never been charged that much before. So wondered if they can charge this much (i.e. whatever they want!). Obvioulsy it wont cost them £50 because of the failure so they are profitting from it. To make it worse my bank then charge me £30 for failure to making each time an £80 fine!

I have written letters to both companies explaining why I did not have money in the account, its due to the inflexible date MT take the payments, and kindly asked for a refund. But I bet they wont.

I know its not as much as some people are fined, but it still riles me up that they can do this.

borgbaiter

hi

The case with mortgage recaliming is much more difficult. yes in theory it is the same penalty charge situation. however do not take it to court!!!

i have gone through this process but do not want to go into detail here. if you message me i can explain more fully.

i would recommend writing a letter and see what the mortgage company say in the first instance.


Borgbaiter