First Direct letter

kaz18

Hi
Can I ask if anyone else has had a letter from First Direct recently? We had a mortgage from them in the Summer of 2010 and the letter we received yesterday advised they have reviewed their processes and it states that cost information was missing from our documentation ie Admin Fee, Setting Up Fee and Closure fee - totalling over £800.

There was no amounts next to the fees so I rang them up to be told - not to worry but the error has recently come to light, we owe an additional £800 for these fees but we are still "on track" with our payments, however where it stated that every £1 we borrowed we would pay back £1.10 - this should read £1.11. Both the letter and the lady I spoke to apologised for their error.

I have checked our paperwork and the fees are there (we had paid some of these in 2010 separately - not in the mortgage repayments - so I am querying this) However, how can they change the £1.10 to £1.11 when both they and us had signed the "contract" paperwork with this in?

Can anyone advise who I should approach with regard to querying this - I can't get First Direct to understand my concern (I'm not a finance person). I'm a little angry as this £800 may have made the difference between going to another provider for the mortgage and confused as this info is showing in the paperwork so I assumed it is included in their final calculated figure in the document.

Thrugelmir

Do the fees appear on your last annual mortgage statement?

kaz18

No they don't.

In fact, I need to ring them back again as I've just realised from looking through the documents, that she said we originally owed £60,000 + and now owed £60,800. However, the mortgage we had taken out with them was for a lot less than that. I can only assume they've got their wires crossed.

I'm just trying to check my bank statements for that time in 2010 to see what payments I did make in advance ie the valuation fee etc - but the website is down at the moment.

Talk about a day going from bad to worse!!

Thanks anyway.

maninthestreet

I had the same letter from them yesterday as well. I haven't yet checked my mortgage documentation to see if they are correct.

siksplit

I had the same letter from them yesterday. Its very sneakily worded to suggest everything is fine and its not a big deal but fundamentally, what you signed up to is not what you have ended up with. Surely that cant be right?

kaz18

I spoke to someone again yesterday who advised that in the Mortgage Offer section 5 indicated the fees:

• arrangement fee
• valuation fee
• closure fee

these had been omitted from the box in section 8 - which indicated the interest rate payable on the mortgage, total amount to be paid and also that this equated to £1.10 for every £1 borrowed.

I advised that I could provide the evidence that we had paid the first two fees on taking out the mortgage so that means it shouldn't be showing in the total amount nor affected by the interest rate and therefore, means we should still be paying £1.10 for every £1 borrowed and not the new figure he identified.

He advised that the new figure quoted was more than what we had borrowed as it included the interest ie over £60k owing, but I couldn't get him to understand that the fees should not be included as they are "admin" charges and not part of the mortgage borrowed.

I've now tried putting this (with my evidence) in a private message via my online account and awaiting a response.

I still don't believe that what they are changing/changed hasn't altered anything re the mortgage term/payments.

kaz18

This is getting worse.
As I couldn't get them to understand my concerns when I phoned, I sent them an electronic message and clearly explained my worries.

I have now had a response. It appears that the fees (which we paid separately and up front) should have been included in the mortgage figure.

They have also changed the figures again - that the sum calculates to £1.12 per every £1 borrowed and an interest rate increase of not .1% to .2%.

This is frustrating as we were not given the correct figures and this means that if we had been given the correct figures initially, we may have found a cheaper mortgage elsewhere - I feel as though they have misrepresented their mortgage deal and have lost my confidence.

Can anyone advise who I can approach to check whether these changes do (or not) have an impact on our mortgage - First Direct don't seem to think so.

maninthestreet

The money they say was omitted from the intial figures has already been paid by you, so FD is correct that there is no impact.