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

linaraman

GB350 wrote: »

You received the letter that I and many others should have been sent then. They were informing you of their intention to increase their marginal rate and giving you the 3 month period to pay off your mortgage without ERC's.
Had I received this communication I'd have jumped ship quicker than an Italian captain and grabbed a far better deal elsewhere. This forms the basis of the complaint I've made to them which has cost me a great deal of money.
Unfortunately it looks as though they have kept to their T&C's by giving you written notice of their intent and for that reason I doubt you have much of a case. The thing I don't understand is why you were sent that letter but I was not.......

Any way, my complaint is off to the Financial Ombudsman, dated 16/01/2012 so really now depends on how they will look into it and how many of the similar complaints they already have on the file against Halifax. As soon as I hear from them, I shall post the outcome.
Thanks for your views and comments..
LR

linaraman

By the way, my sister was with Halifax too, she was on SVR at the time. Last year in November she has received a letter from them notifying of good will payment of £5646 (including interest) towards her mortgage account. She was shocked and happy that it did bring her monthly payment slightly down. I am very happy for her, but gutted for myself...

walker1627

Just to let everyone know, I have also had a letter saying they have corrected the wrongs and will not be paying anything else. They claim that of the people they DID inform, 95% stayed with the existing product so they do not believe we would have all moved mortgages and made a saving!!! Its a pity they are not as good at customer service as they think they are at mind reading!

Calling the ombudsman this afternoon.........

GB350

walker1627 wrote: »

Just to let everyone know, I have also had a letter saying they have corrected the wrongs and will not be paying anything else. They claim that of the people they DID inform, 95% stayed with the existing product so they do not believe we would have all moved mortgages and made a saving!!! Its a pity they are not as good at customer service as they think they are at mind reading!

Calling the ombudsman this afternoon.........

Their defence gets weaker by the day.... Its quite unbelievable that they have thrown that statistic at you... Pathetic..........

smitchy73

GB350 wrote: »

Their defence gets weaker by the day.... Its quite unbelievable that they have thrown that statistic at you... Pathetic..........

I agree, make sure these statistics are put in with your Ombudsman information, unreal.

GB350

Finally received a letter today regarding their decision on my complaint. One day before the deadline they gave me.
Unbelievably they have now said that they will respond again within the next 4 weeks, citing the reason.... " we are unable to fully investigate and respond to your concerns because we are awaiting additional information. "
Quite what additional information they can possibly be awaiting baffles me..??? The facts are all there on the table as far as I'm concerned. I sense that they know I have them over a barrel and are just stalling.
Come the end of February I will have waited the obligatory 8 weeks and assuming I don't hear what I want to from The Halifax I will be going in all guns blazing to the ombudsman.

smitchy73

I received the same letter as walker above, basically stating that they have awarded what they feel was right and 95% of the customers who were contacted stayed.
So it's off to the Ombudsman we go, or maybe try another letter back as they didn't say it was a final response but could go the FOS if we weren't happy with their response.

GB350

smitchy73 wrote: »

I received the same letter as walker above, basically stating that they have awarded what they feel was right and 95% of the customers who were contacted stayed.
So it's off to the Ombudsman we go, or maybe try another letter back as they didn't say it was a final response but could go the FOS if we weren't happy with their response.

I'm wondering why I did'nt receive the same letter..?? Our complaints are pretty much based on the same principle fact are'nt they. That they denied us the chance to pay off and move our mortgage, fee free during the 3 month period from Oct 31st 08 to Jan 31st 09.
Will post again as soon as I hear anything....

Chutzpah

Hi everyone,

My parents have received a letter from the Halifax about this matter, and having not understood it have passed it on to me as I'm "good with these things".

They finished paying off their mortgage in July 2010, and the letter has come out of the blue. It contains a "goodwill payment" of £10. Of course, the letter is written in such as way that you (probably purposefully) can't make head nor tail of it.

Main text of the letter is below:

We are making this goodwill payment because our mortgage offer may not have explained certain details as clearly as it could have, for which we apologise. These details related to a cap that limited interest rate rises where the rate you paid was based on the Halifax standard variable rate ('Halifax SVR').

The cap only applied in certain circumstances and did not apply to your mortgage.

Our goodwill payment relates to the balance of your mortgage charged at the Halifax SVR from 1 January 2009 up to the date you closed your mortgage. If you accepted a new offer (which did not include the cap) after 1 January 2009 and before closing your account, it is instead up to the date of your new offer.

You may wish to read the full explanation below, and there's a question and answer guide on our website at https://www.halifax.co.uk/mortgages. If you have any further questions, or believe that your circumstances are different to those outlined above, please contact us on 0800 085 0649 and have your letter to hand when you call. The Financial Services Authority is aware we are writing to our customers about this matter.

The bit that confuses me is the "did not apply to your mortgage" - why are they writing to them in the first place?

I've had a read of quite a lot of the comments on this thread, but it appears that most of you currently have mortgages with Halifax, whereas my parents are in a slightly different situation.

If there's any other info you need on their situation then let me know

Thanks in advance everyone!

SneaksyWhippet

I realise this issue is quite old now but I was wondering if anyone could help me. I only found out today that I received a goodwill payment last year; I never received their initial letter, I don't have internet banking with Halifax and my annual mortgage statement isn't due until later this month.

My query is with the amount I have been credited.

I took the £129k mortgage out in Jan 2007, fixed rate for 2 years. Originally it was in mine and my then boyfriend's name, but we split up and transfered his half of the mortgage to my brother's name in December 2008 (keeping everything else the same). This was just before we started paying the SVR in January 2009, at which point the mortgage amount was roughly £125k and the remaining term was 23 years.

I did some rough calculations based on what I have read in this thread and estimate my payment to be around £1700. This is based on:

£125K over 23 years at 3.5% = £660 per month
£125K over 23 years at 2.5% = £596 per month

Difference of £64 per month over 27 months = roughly £1700

However, I'm told the actualy payment I received was £740.

Is this right? Have I done my numbers wrong, or does the fact we changed one of the names make a difference?

Thanks in advance if anyone is able to shed any light on this for me. They are sending me out another copy of the letter I should've received last year, which may explain things a bit better. But seeing as their letters have a tendency not to arrive I thought I'd ask for some info here too!