How far back can we claim unfair mortgage arrears fees (if at all)?

Dottiedonut

First post, so please be gentle!! Cutting a very long story short, my husband and his ex-partner owned a house which was subsequently repossessed in 1998. He still owes about £25K as the house was in negative equity. A few years ago, the bank (Bristol and West) finally caught up with him and started chasing him for the money. He now pays £30 a month rhrough the CCCS towards this debt. At the time,we submitted an SAR request and there were massive charges added on for all sorts of things, late fees, letters, gardening once the house was repo'd, solicitors fees etc etc. This was probably in about 2003 ish and tbh we'd pretty much resigned ourselves to having to put up with it. However, I am now in the process of reclaiming ppi on some credit cards and came across a MSE article from 2010 specifically about reclaiming these types of fees. Does anyone know how far back you are able to go to reclaim these? 1998 is obviously over the 12 year rule, but my reading of the article was that you could claim as far back as you want, as long as it was within 3 years of finding out you could. Is this right? I can post the link to the article as a newbie! But the title of it is "reclaim unfair mortgage arrears fees, FSA says" from 26 Jan 2010. Look forward to some replies.

dunstonh

Who says mortgage arrears fees are unfair?

Whilst there has been limited success by some people in getting some refunded, it is not an area where lenders have typically rolled over easily. Some have even gone to court to defend the claim and won leaving the individual with court costs to pay.

The FSA did look at arrears fees and found some firms had issues but these were mainly sub prime lenders. The prime (mainstream) lenders were not reported as having issues.

You can ask the lender if they will refund some but you are largely reliant on their goodwill.

tifo

the limitation for mortgaged properties is 12 years.