NEW Mortgage Exit Fees Discussion

jeffk

Has anyone had any success with A&L?

I had a mortage with them whih I moved to Nationwide 18 months ago, and was charged the £295 exit fee from memory. However, although this has always seemed extortionate, as it was probably as per my contract can the FSA ruling or the current climate be used successfully to get back a partial amount so the true cost is charged for the administration involved?

isayoldchap

Marky_MarkD

The Britannia Bs have now replied to the £35 Deeds release fee.They won't be refunding it.

Should I pursue this with the Financial Ombudsman?

kellyf_2

wonder if anyone could help me as im a little confussed with all this.

we first took mortgage our with abbey in jan 99 and sold in nov 03
i cant for the life of me remember what we paid or where the paperwork is
is there any way of finding out?,do you think we would have been charged the higher fees?all that sticks in my mind is the extra £2000 we had to pay to leave fixed rate early.

also would we have paid anything to a&l as we had a fixed rate with them from nov 03 when that came to an end in nov 05 (stayed in same house)we took out a fixed rate for another 3 yrs would we have paid any of these fees?

many thanks

Kelly

wax

I recently contacted mortgage trust to request a refund of my exit fee which was £288.13. I only had the mortgage a couple of years but I could find no mention of the exit fee on any of the documents I had recieved at the start of the loan.
They wrote back to say they weren't obliged to refund because they don't fall under the jurisdiction of the FSA because the mortgage wasn't regulated at the time.
As a goodwill gesture they are offering me £13.13, I am unsure if I can take this further and the refund seems such a random amount
any advice welcome???

Marky_Mark_5

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

Marky_Mark (my slightly abbreviated namesake)

Noz is quite right. The reason you've paid two completion fees is that they are product related and you have had two products.

Your logic behind paying the £4834 penalty to switch products honestly has to be flawed. If you chose the flexible product in the first place for good reasons, paying a HUGE amount to get out of it into a fixed rate is madness. If you needed certainty, you should have fixed your rate in the first place.

And now that you've fixed, you've lost the flexibility you thought was worthwhile in the first place.

How long were you tied in for, AFTER March 2006, and what rate are you paying on the fix (and till when) and what rate would you be paying on the flexible mortgage?

Thanks to Noz & MarkyMarkD for clearing my 'completion fees' up.

My logic behind paying that penalty was simply due to my gamble in taking out a flexible mortgage in the first place. The original product I went with was a 'stateside tracker' which tracked the US baserate (a rate that over the last 10 years was shown to be consistently lower than the UK)....so the first couple of months I was paying under 4%! Fantastic right? However, within the first year this had shot up to 7% due to some decision Bush made on housing in the states. This, I was later informed, was totally unexpected and should never have happened.

So, in March 2006 I had my rate fixed at an excellent 4.45% for two years (this rate was unavailable at the time I took out the original product, and was offered to me as a 'sorry' for what had happened). Unfortunately there's no way of knowing what rate I would have been paying on the flexible mortgage as the Skipton Building Society have removed the stateside tracker product from their range. I was told when I took out the flexible product that it had been extremely popular (the society manager even used it)...I wonder now how much Skipton made in penalty fees after all their customers had to switch products??

Not much I can do about it now...but the lesson has been learned the hard way!

MarkyMarkD

jeffk wrote: »

Has anyone had any success with A&L?

I had a mortage with them whih I moved to Nationwide 18 months ago, and was charged the £295 exit fee from memory. However, although this has always seemed extortionate, as it was probably as per my contract can the FSA ruling or the current climate be used successfully to get back a partial amount so the true cost is charged for the administration involved?

If you redeemed 18 months ago, your original fee was almost definitely not £295 as this was introduced in August 2004. So if your A&L mortgage was for 2 years or more, your original fee was definitely less than £295 and you can claim some sort of reduction.

As I've previously posted, the FSA ruling explicitly states that "true cost" is irrelevant. Your ex-lender should charge you the originally stated fee, and the fact that the fee incorporates an element of profit is fine with the FSA. (Just like with any other mortgage fee).

MarkyMarkD

isayoldchap wrote: »

Marky_MarkD

The Britannia Bs have now replied to the £35 Deeds release fee.They won't be refunding it.

Should I pursue this with the Financial Ombudsman?

As I said before, if the deeds release fee element was £35 when you took out the mortgage and £35 when you redeemed, you haven't been overcharged. If they are just saying that they are not prepared to refund any increase in the deeds release fee, then they should do so.

But I suspect that they are saying the amount hasn't changed, as £35 is not a very large fee.

I wouldn't be taking this to the Ombudsman.

MarkyMarkD

kellyf wrote: »

wonder if anyone could help me as im a little confussed with all this.

we first took mortgage our with abbey in jan 99 and sold in nov 03
i cant for the life of me remember what we paid or where the paperwork is
is there any way of finding out?,do you think we would have been charged the higher fees?all that sticks in my mind is the extra £2000 we had to pay to leave fixed rate early.

also would we have paid anything to a&l as we had a fixed rate with them from nov 03 when that came to an end in nov 05 (stayed in same house)we took out a fixed rate for another 3 yrs would we have paid any of these fees?

many thanks

Kelly

Kelly

If you look here: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/mortgages/article.html?in_article_id=417037&in_page_id=8

it says

Up to May 2005 the fee was £99, after which it leaped to £225.

So, Abbey didn't increase their fee significantly prior to May 2005 and you are unlikely to be due any significant refund.

If you are still with A&L, and merely switched products in November 2005, you haven't been charged an MEAF yet. When you do redeem, you will be charged £295 and that will be the correct fee as that was the relevant fee implicitly agreed when you switched products.

farquarpigmix

I contacted old Mortgage company 3 weeks ago, who told me to write in asking for them to have a look. To date I have received no reply, what else can I do?

I tried to used Martins template letter but was unable to open it. Could anybody cut & paste for me please?

Cheers
Farquar

Brighton-Knight

Hello all.

Just wondering if anyone out there could tell me whether people can claim back charges levied on a mortgage when a person is in arrears similar to bank default charges.

Thanks in advance.