MSE News: Halifax to repay £500m to 300,000 mortgage holders

tjnutman

:(Got a letter this week saying that I would get £250. I went onto SVR on Jan 09 so thought I would be entitled to full refund.

I rang them up and they said that I was only entitled to £250 quid because in Feb 2009 they sent out a letter stating I was moving onto the 3.5% rate and as they had informed me about this, they were only going to pay the difference of one month from Jan 2009 to Feb 2009.

Again very confusing, Halifax are really not very clear about who is getting which type of goodwill payment.

If anyone succeeds in challenging their payments can they post how they did it please.

curlygirl1971

PureExile wrote: »

Would really appreciate a little advice from those who understand these things better than me.

We've had a letter from Halifax stating that we are getting a £3.5K goodwill payment. This is being credited to our mortgage account but it seems from looking at the FAQs that we could also get this paid into another account.

What I'm not sure of is what benefits us more in the long term. We have other debts that it would be wonderful to clear - but if the longer term benefits are greater if we have the money credited to our mortgage a/c then we'll leave it there. We'll keep paying the other bits and bobs off as we are at present.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Thanks

It's entirely up to you and your circumstances and also what your priorities are.

For my circumstances I feel that my payment is best in my mortgage. I don't need the money - I have some savings and I don't have any other debt; so I'm happy for the payment to stay where it is. (It was also a low payment hardly worth bothering about anyway )

You don't give any details, but it is likely that your other debt is costing you more (ie. a higher interest rate) than your mortgage. So some would advise you to pay this off first and therefore pay less interest in the long run. The fact that your non-mortgage debt is likely to be for a shorter term is irrelevant - just look at the cost of the debt per month (%) to compare the benefit.

The effect of keeping your payment in the mortgage is only that your future standard payments will be smaller than they would have been without the payment. The Halifax will keep the term of your mortgage the same unless you instruct them otherwise.

For example - say that your standard payment is £500 pm at present. Say that when the SVR rises your new standard payment might have been £520. However with the good-will payment the new standard payment may be calculated at £510 instead. So your monthly budget might be slightly better off but you won't pay off your mortgage any quicker unless you plough that extra £10 back into your mortgage as an over-payment.

Hope this helps. I was completely baffled by my mortgage a couple of years ago. I'm less baffled now but only because I did my best to try and understand it. I read through my paperwork and messed around with a mortgage calculator so that I could understand the effect of different factors.

Thrugelmir

PureExile wrote: »

What I'm not sure of is what benefits us more in the long term. We have other debts that it would be wonderful to clear - but if the longer term benefits are greater if we have the money credited to our mortgage a/c then we'll leave it there. We'll keep paying the other bits and bobs off as we are at present.

If you take the cynical view this money (HBOS have made provision for £500 million) has to come from somewhere. As with all customer goodwill gestures and settlements it is all the remaining customers that foot the bill. So in some form or another this money will be clawed back. Possibly with slightly higher mortgage rates than would otherwise of been the case.

senza7

Hi Mark James

still waiting for them to get back to me, said would be within 48 hours and that was monday, rang back and now saying will write to me, have you heard anything

danchapman888

Got my letter today and Halifax are giving us £2470 woop woop! The funny thing is I still don't really fully understand why they are giving me this...ha ha ha

Thanks Halifax!

opinions4u

Thrugelmir wrote: »

If you take the cynical view this money (HBOS have made provision for £500 million) has to come from somewhere. As with all customer goodwill gestures and settlements it is all the remaining customers that foot the bill. So in some form or another this money will be clawed back. Possibly with slightly higher mortgage rates than would otherwise of been the case.

Although it's a hit on capital. So the immediate impact was on the share price. So shareholders pay for it.

Ah, I suppose we're all shareholders .... damn!

elbutre

LondonLass wrote: »

Well done you! Were you on the SVR for the entire period (from Jan 2009)? It must feel great to have got back money that you should never have paid to them in the first place!

Fix rate ended march 2009 and then went on svr

dbone79033

Has anybody who is no longer with the halifax for their mortgage received a goodwill payment letter??

cloudberry45

Received my letter last week - had no idea about this news story so was a bit of a shock. Had to read the letter several times to try and understand why they were giving me £2800 but im certaintly not complaining. Currently paying £750 a month in mortgage payments and £866 a month in overpayments so the £2800 is a big help to get the mortgage payed off sooner rather than later

LondonLass

dbone79033 wrote: »

Has anybody who is no longer with the halifax for their mortgage received a goodwill payment letter??

I have now left them, and not received a letter although i thought i qualified.