Offset Mortgage - possible mis-selling?

ohab

Hi!

Does anyone have any experience of submitting a complaint for the potential mis-selling of an offset mortgage?

Ours is with the Woolwich and we had been told / understood that any monies we overpaid would be maintained in a reserve account and would remain available to us at all times and would just be debited back onto the mortgage, if used. As it transpires, whilst we can take the money out, it is not debited off the mortgage.

For arguments sake, if mortgage was originally for £100k, built up £10k in overpayments, balance of mortgage currently showing as £90k; if we take the £10k out for something else, we can only port the £90k figure, not £100k as we had understood.

Any help or advice very gratefully received!

Thrugelmir

Are you saying that you've only been offered a £90k mortgage on porting? If so, the offset balance has no impact on the new mortgage. This is merely tighter lending criteria by the Woolwich.

dunstonh

The lenders did tighten up on lending criteria since the credit crunch. Plus, values dropped so the maximum loan to valuation fell back. Some on offset mortgages found the amount they could borrow was reduced. Mainly those that had not benefited much from the house price gains of the early 2000s.