Barclays Compensation Offer.

h3rm1t9536

Hi All,

First post on here so hello to you all!

6 months ago we went to Barclays to add £5000 to our mortgage for some home improvements.

At the time we had 2 x Barclays mortgages for roughly 85k and 25k (one for the house and the second for a loft conversion) against a property worth over 400k.

Our fixed rate on 25k was up for renewal so we asked to add it to that if poss and renew with a new rate.

We were told we would have to have an internal remortgage as Woolwich now handled Barclays mortgages. We believe this to be false and think they wanted this to get maximum commision.

To cut a long story short, despite us asking for no change to the bigger mortgage they did an internal re-mortgage on both plus a new one for the 5K and we have ended up with.....

Higher payments on the larger and smaller mortgage, only pounds but over 20 years its £200+

We recieved only £4972 of the requested £5000 (we still do not know why despite them paying the balance now)

Payment dates changed from 30th month to 16th (not convenient)

5 months of writing letters

3 days taken off work to go to meetings

Severe stress for my wife (she will no longer go to the Barclays branch due to the rudeness of staff)

We wrote to the chairman of Barclays and a Piers Morgan has upheld 6 of the 12 points we made and offered us £300 comp.

My question is, should we take this? It seems paltry for the hassle we had and the stress, the 3 days annual leave I took are worth more than £300! they say its the last correspondance they will engage in so is it time for the Ombudsman?

Should anyone be interested I am happy to post the letter from Barclays.

Many thanks

mij544

Well it costs them more than that in charges if you go to the Ombudsman, so stuff it, they agree they are at fault, go for it.

h3rm1t9536

OK, thanks. Its a shame they didn't deem to offer me a reasonable amount of compensation. Ombudsman here I come!

mij544

Good luck, and keep us posted.

dunstonh

The most "inconvenience" money I have seen the FOS award is £400 (And that was based on someone who moved house and retired based on incorrect figures and then who died 12 months later due to stress - the spouse was awarded £400 by the FOS). Most common figure is £250. you have £300 from Barclays.

It is possible that the FOS may increase it by £50 or £100 but you are already over the average payout. It may also take the FOS upto 2 years to look at the case. Hopefully quicker and chances are it will be but there are cases taking that long. More likely it will be around 6 months. Technically, Barclays are allowed to withdraw the offer although that is rare. It tends to happen when they have already factored the cost of FOS referral into the redress offer. If you are going to the FOS they are going to pay it so they may decide to lower the offer. I dont think that would be likely in your case.

It may be better to haggle back to Barclays and ask them to raise it to £500 and you will not refer it to the FOS. Make it clear that if they do not agree to that, you will refer it to the FOS. Do not blackmail them in your wording (i.e. dont let on you know it costs them £500 if it goes to the FOS). Firms are more likely to dig their heels in if you blackmail them.

ACG

Would you not rather draw a line under the matter and accept the offer?
You have said yourself it has caused stress...just a thought, im not sayinf you should or shouldnt but sometimes its worth getting rid of the headache.

Trying_to_be_good

It took the best part of two years for the Ombudsman to fully consider my complaint against Barclays (from which I was £7,000 out of pocket over the five year mortgage term). They decided the £400 offered by Barclays was reasonable, and I still had to pay the £180-ish admin charge to move to a competent lender.

My advice is to accept the offer and run as far away from Barclays as you can (I left my 0.18% tracker they were so bad). We're now with the Melton Mowbray Building Society who are simply brilliant.

somethingcorporate

At best it would take a long time and lots more "stress" to get an increase and as above it won't be a big one if it is one at all.

I'd take the offer and move on with my life, there are more important things than arguing the toss over a number of years for a couple of hundred quid, at best.

Thrugelmir

h3rm1t9536 wrote: »

We were told we would have to have an internal remortgage as Woolwich now handled Barclays mortgages. We believe this to be false and think they wanted this to get maximum commision.

Barclays now sells all its residential mortgages through its Woolwich brand.

So no merit in this accusation whatever your opinion.