Mortgage arrears - admin fees

Tiddlywinks

A friend has just had some success with a PPI claim and was talking to me about it. She then asked if I knew anything about mortgage arrears fees and then told me a bit of a horror story.

In the mid 90s she had a mortgage with a building society which went into arrears when her relationship broke down - her BF stopped paying his bit.

She said she got statements each month which showed fees for mortgage arrears.... they went up each month and one was for over £700 just for one month. They just kept adding the fees onto the outstanding balance.

She's got the claiming bug but we couldn't find out from internet searching whether she could make a claim..

If the fees were charged up to 1994, is she now way out of time?

If it is worth a go, are these kind of fees covered as being 'excessive' or unfair or whatever.

Thanks for your help - I don't really have any more detail than given here as only going on second hand experience.

dunstonh

If the fees were charged up to 1994, is she now way out of time?

The FSA rule on timebars is that you have 3 years from being reasonably aware of an issue to make a complaint. So, they could theoretically time bar her.

If it is worth a go, are these kind of fees covered as being 'excessive' or unfair or whatever.

These fees have been reviewed by the FSA and found no widespread problems and did not consider them unfair. A few non-mainstream lenders did have to take action to refund some. However, mainstream lenders were found to be ok on this front.

Any refund would be a gesture of goodwill. Not something that can be enforced by an outside body as complaints about unfair/excessive do not succeed since the banks won the bank charges court case. You have to make a case to the lender and in most cases they will reject. If you are in current financial hardship, they may consider but your friend no longer has the mortgage and its 18 years ago. So, you wouldnt be confident of a positive outcome.

Tiddlywinks

Thanks Dunstonh

Friend is up against it at the moment as her BF left a lot of touble behind him... during our chats, she got very tearful and angry about the whole thing.

Apparently the fees went up each month and were a percentage of the outstanding balance. The mortgage was around the £50k mark and each month the fees were 'hundreds' - she reckoned they must has been charged around £4000 in total and all that happened each month was a letter and phone calls.

Obviously I only have her side but it does seem a bit excessive to add that many fees on that level of a mortgage.

Would it help to find out the name of the lender?