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

GB350

It is barely believable how this is panning out.
I am still waiting for a letter from the Halifax regarding my complaint about them not informing me of the last SVR marginal rate increase. An oversight which has cost me in excess of 10K and counting to this date..... Their final decision on this complaint should have been received 2 days ago.
Low and behold, today I get a letter from them telling me they plan to move the proverbial goalposts again. Am I supposed to be grateful that at least this time they have adhered to their T&C's by informing me as they should have done last time.
Strangely enough I'm not.. If they can't make a margin of profit charging 3% above base then quite frankly they don't deserve to be in business.

Thrugelmir

GB350 wrote: »

If they can't make a margin of profit charging 3% above base then quite frankly they don't deserve to be in business.

Banks don't borrow mortgage funds at BOE base. Cost of retail deposits to LloydsHBOS was 2.85% when last years half year accounts were published.

Gross margin lending was just over 2% in 2011, lower than 2010. With 2012 forecast to be lower again as well.

Thrugelmir

SneaksyWhippet wrote: »

but we split up and transfered his half of the mortgage to my brother's name in December 2008 (keeping everything else the same).

Would be a new mortgage. Mortgages are not transferred. So you would have received updated terms and conditions at that point in time.

GB350

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Banks don't borrow mortgage funds at BOE base. Cost of retail deposits to LloydsHBOS was 2.85% when last years half year accounts were published.

Gross margin lending was just over 2% in 2011, lower than 2010. With 2012 forecast to be lower again as well.

Thanks for that insight...
I'm well aware that this is the case, but there is no good reason why mortgage rates should not be more closely linked to the BOE base rate. The Libor rate is not massively above the BOE rate at this time and bearing in mind the amount of money we have all pumped into this abysmal company, if they could actually invest some of it wisely we may be able to stop subsidising their incompetence........................

Poundnotepaul

Hi everybody,I'm just coming to the end of a 7 year fixed(I'm quite cautious), with lloyds (4.89%),in October,at which time I'm due to revert to their svr of 2points above bank rate.(as long as they don't up it).apparently it's written into my mortgage as 2%above from when I took mortgage out.i understand that more recent fixed rates with lloyds have reverted to svr's of approx 3.99%.
I just wonder if lloyds will do the dirty on me and revert to small print,upping the svr written into my small print ?
I wonder if anybody can give me any advice as to when would be a good time to take another fixed or tracker out when my current deal ends in oct?or stick with svr if they don't up it

Poundnotepaul

To add to above ,whatever my mortgage goes down by,I want to use to overpay

LondonLass

SneaksyWhippet wrote: »

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!

I don't think its as simple as that. I had worked out that i would get about £3500 for ended up getting just under £2500. They eventually sent me a spreadsheet which made my brain want to escape out of one of my ears and run away. I persevered, and when i looked into one of the many mortgage spreadsheets where you can compare the effect of payments etc it turns out that they were right.

Of course none of this answers the question about how they *should* be compensating us since if they had notified us of the change of terms then we could have paid off our mortgage without suffering an early redemption penalty and got a much better deal elsewhere. I suspect that is the real reason behind all of this... they were scared to lose so many customers locked in at a nice profitable level. they figured lose the money now, or pay it back to them if someone finds us out later.

GB350

LondonLass wrote: »

I don't think its as simple as that. I had worked out that i would get about £3500 for ended up getting just under £2500. They eventually sent me a spreadsheet which made my brain want to escape out of one of my ears and run away. I persevered, and when i looked into one of the many mortgage spreadsheets where you can compare the effect of payments etc it turns out that they were right.

Of course none of this answers the question about how they *should* be compensating us since if they had notified us of the change of terms then we could have paid off our mortgage without suffering an early redemption penalty and got a much better deal elsewhere. I suspect that is the real reason behind all of this... they were scared to lose so many customers locked in at a nice profitable level. they figured lose the money now, or pay it back to them if someone finds us out later.

Your last paragraph details exactly the argument and complaint I have made to them. I have been waiting for over 2 months now for some kind of decision from them. I was promised a response before the end of February, which I have'nt received.
I sense that more people are wising up to the stroke that they pulled back in October 08 by withholding that vital information. They are also doing themselves no favours by missing deadlines for correspondence regarding their decisions. It's just adding more ammunition to the case I expect I will be taking to the Ombudsman shortly..

Lisadt

I would expect to have a long wait when you go to the ombudsman. We put our complaint in over a month ago and received a letter stating it will take 12 weeks before they can allocate anyone to investigate our case as they are so busy! Haven't heard anything since so just have to wait.

Lisadt

Ironically, after my earlier post this morning, I've just received a call from the ombudsman. My case has now been allocated but they are awaiting information from the Halifax. He did indicate though, that the ombudsman's hands are tied because of the involvement of the FSA so I'm not holding out much hope now!