Awful customer service from Platform. What can I do?!

clairee101

[FONT=&quot][/FONT]Hi,

Looking for some advice.

My father died in December last year, and I inherited a property from him. He did not have a will so for the last 10 months we have been going through probate. He had an outstanding mortgage with Platform, who we had contacted to notify of the death, and also to try and come to some kind of decision with how we should repay the mortgage whilst we was waiting for the grant of probate to obtained.

We had written several letters to over making interest only repayments, as originally they froze the repayments and said they would be charging us monthly interest, whilst we are trying to sell the house. Obviously the housing market isn’t great at the moment, and the house has been on the market since February.


On every occasion they ignored the request, and not offered any kind of repayment plan. Now we have obtained letters of administration we have been told that the outstanding repayments are in excess of nearly £5000, and we have 7 days to make this full payment or legal proceedings will begin. I called yesterday to be told I was despicable that I had allowed these arrears to build, and it was disgusting that my house hasn’t sold.

My solicitor has now been contacted by their legal team.

What can I do?! I thought Platform where part of the The Co-operative Bank p.l.c, who from my understanding where ethical and the peoples bank!

Hanky_Panky

I'm a bit confused; you state that Platform froze repayments and only charged you monthly interest - which is good, but then state they ignored all your requests - for what ?

10 months is a long time for a lender to go with no payments at all and it sounds like they have been very accomodating. I appreciate that you have had to go through probate but even so the house hasn't sold since February. I'm guessing but they probably think you aren't doing enough to sell quickly and bearing in mind how long they have gone without payments have probably decided to take matters into their own hands. Not nice but probably to be expected.

Thrugelmir

The repayment plan they would expect is for the property to be sold. This is of course is something that they have no control over.

Reduce the price of the house to a level it will sell at, alternatively sell the property at auction.

clairee101

Hi

Sorry if i didnt make it as obvious as I thought they did, they have ignored all requests for us to make payments.

We have been offering to make the interest payments since December. We have also reduced the price of the house 4 times in this period, held an open house, and considering auction next month.

JimmyTheWig

Hi Claire. Sorry to hear of your loss.

Have you got a record of requesting to make payments? (e.g. letters / emails sent, times and dates of phonecalls, etc.)
It sounds like the person you were speaking to wasn't aware of this.

I'd say complain about this and tell them what you want to happen (e.g. start paying monthly interest from now, old interest to be added on to the loan, plus a gesture of goodwill for your troubles).

In terms of the general solution, I suspect you just need to get the house sold. It sounds like you know that and are doing what you can. Whether an auction is the right place to sell it or not I have no idea. But ultimately you don't want it and so you've got little choice but to take the best price someone else is prepared to pay.

clairee101

I do have copies of these letters, my solicitor has also been writing to them since March offering payments.

I just dont understand how, when we have offered payments, they can refuse to acknowledge them, offer no alternative repayment scheme in 10 months, then ask for a payment with 7 days to pay off 10 months of arrears before taking out legal action.

Personally I think Platform are behaving disgustingly. We have only held the grant of Probate for 2 weeks, so we would not have been able to do anything regarding the property until the letters of administration came through anyway.

Thrugelmir

clairee101 wrote: »

We have only held the grant of Probate for 2 weeks, so we would not have been able to do anything regarding the property until the letters of administration came through anyway.

Then neither would Platform. As they would have had no legal obligation to correspond with you.

Hanky_Panky

clairee101 wrote: »

I do have copies of these letters, my solicitor has also been writing to them since March offering payments.

I just dont understand how, when we have offered payments, they can refuse to acknowledge them, offer no alternative repayment scheme in 10 months, then ask for a payment with 7 days to pay off 10 months of arrears before taking out legal action.

Personally I think Platform are behaving disgustingly. We have only held the grant of Probate for 2 weeks, so we would not have been able to do anything regarding the property until the letters of administration came through anyway.

So as Thrugelmir states they would be unable to communicate with you.

It's also still unclear to me - you state they froze payments and only charged monhtly interest - this is what you wanted, why was it necessary to write again offering the same thing ? Did you make payments of monthly interest ?

clairee101

They have been writing to us on a monthly basis, threatning legal action if payments were not made to both the mortgage and arrears, which goes against what they originally told us of freezing the payments, but charging interest. We wrote to them to ask how much interest was being charged per month, and when we could start making payments.

They have ignored every request from us to make a single payment in 10 months.

handytips

In my experience Platform have always been a very good lender, however this is a totally different situation, the difficulty lies within the terms and conditions of the mortgage, they should have allowed the estate to continue making the contractural monthly payments until the property was sold, i would phone them and ask to speak to thier compliance department and basically offer a payment solution ie interest only until the property is sold, i know you have approached them with this solution but i suspect you need to talk to compliance who will explain what needs to be done, this must be a common thing with lenders so there has to be guidelines. This is a vivid lesson to those on interest only mortgages and come to the end of their term, what happens if you cannot sell. I wish you well with what must be a heartbreaking situation for you. Good Luck