Bank of Ireland tracker mortgage % increase

cs1800

smiffy wrote: »

Here ya go - I've uploaded a scanned copy of the 2001 document.

http://www.great-bentley.co.uk/bank-of-ireland-mortgage/residential-mortgage-conditions-2001/

In the later version of this document the differential can only be changed in a way that is beneficial to the customer. It appears that only some products sold pre 2004 had this 6(m) clause.

Yet they were all marketed as 0.xx% for term.

http://www.great-bentley.co.uk/bank-of-ireland-mortgage/bristol-west-available-mortgages-in-2004/

Thanks for this very useful, looks like we are stuffed. I guess the only thing we may be able to question is the fact that this information was not made available at the time as I'm not sure I would not have taken a tracker with a clause like this, I cant believe its a fair clause but then again they are a bank so I think fairness is not a word that applies to them. Fact is I think I am resolved to having to pay this. Thank God rents have gone up and having bought in 2002 my two flats have increased by 50% although I still feel I am being mugged . I also feel for people not in my position as this will cause some real hardship.

ELIZABETH_ROSE

I am sending this to bank of ireland, my mortgage was taken over from Bristol and west and this is not reasonable in a difficult time when food and fuel and heating costs are already stretching us to the limits.
Bank of Ireland cannot increase the rate whilst they look into my complaint, and they have 8 weeks to respond.

[FONT=&quot]Dear Sirs[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Letter of Complaint of mortgage rate increase.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]I have received a letter of notice of mortgage interest increase.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]This is unreasonable as you are currently through the Post office offering new mortgage clients a five year fixed deal at 2.74 %[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]There has not been an increase in the bank of England Base rate, since 2009 so there is no justification to penalise your long term clients with a new mortgage interest hike out of all proportion.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]The short term effect of this is that people simply cannot pay ! the long term effect Bank of Ireland will have thousands of property repossessions to sell off for what they can make , meaning that people that have managed to make payments during the recession, will now have to throw in the towel , this level of greed to build up bank spare reserves will likely put the Bank of Ireland in serious financial difficulty, and has not been thought through.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]I do not feel that my mortgage contract with Bristol and West allowed for this rate increase. I will be complaining to the FSA and Financial Ombudsman Service that this action is unreasonable, and unfair if the higher payments are taken off my bank account.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]You have also sent me a letter dated 1st March 2013 stipulating my new mortgage payments after my making a small redemption payment off the mortgage balance of £50 [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]In this letter you state April ,May and June 2013 payments at 1.19 percent signed by Victoria Alexander mortgage customer services. This makes the rate increase notification sent to me ambiguous , and therefore not enforceable. I will be taking legal advise on this.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]
I look forward to your response
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot].[/FONT]

Hobby

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

I'm no expert, but I would have thought that the fact that the clause was mentioned in what you got means that you were made aware of it. I would imagine that if, at the time, you had asked them what this condition was then they would have provided you with the information.

Fair point and an obvious one, but surely the BOI have the duty to ensure that they provide them from the outset , rather than the customer spot the reference , then ask for the booklet that explains what the reference terms mean. Its kinda like hiding something away. If it wasn't hidden then it would be detailed next to the reference.

Hobby

Pobinr wrote: »

Too right. I find myself repeating myself stuff I posted ten posts ago. The senible factual stuff gets buried/diluted in the noise from these twits who don't even have BOI mortgages so why don't they **** off somewhere else with their 'expert' opinions!.

You & I plus CS1800 all have the same experience with BOI.
No terms & conditions booklet was ever referred to in the mortgage offer list of docs & no booklet received.
6m in the later booklet with our further advance says they can only change differential in our favour.
We need to keep in touch in case of class action. Keep an eye out for private message because trying to talk about it here is like trying to talk across a room full of fools full of ****.

I have precisely the same situation as yours. Should the FSA or FOS fail to reverse the increase. I am up for a joint legal case in court if you are. I firmly believe that the Residential Mortgage Conditions booklet had to be contained within the original offer.

I called the BOI asking for my original offer to be posted out to me , although I still had them , in order to see what they did and low and behold they included the booklet titled Residential Mortgage Conditions. Why did they send this when I did not ask for it.

The answer is precisely because for the loan offer to make sense you have to have the Residential Mortgage Conditions to go with it.

I have not sought any legal advice yet , but from a fairness and sense aspect surely my view is more likely.

Graham_Devon

Hobby wrote: »

I have precisely the same situation as yours. Should the FSA or FOS fail to reverse the increase. I am up for a joint legal case in court if you are. I firmly believe that the Residential Mortgage Conditions booklet had to be contained within the original offer.
.

If this booklet came with the paperwork, would you have changed your mind and rejected the mortgage?

It's one thing you'd have to prove in court. It's highly unlikely that you would have changed your mind. Easy in hindsight to say you would, but then the average person would just ask that if this would have stopped you taking the mortgage.....howcome you didn't bother requesting it? You would need to prove you are that thorough that this one paragraph would have seen you reject the mortgage and possibly lose the house......yet you also need to convince them why you didn't even bother requesting the information.

It's pretty clear the BOI are covered here. If you wish to fight this, you will need to convince others that this information was held from you, but you signed to say you understood the information.

I understand that people are angry, who wouldn't be. But what the majority are saying makes little sense to those unaffected, especially when talking of court action.

Hobby

Graham_Devon wrote: »

If this booklet came with the paperwork, would you have changed your mind and rejected the mortgage?

It's one thing you'd have to prove in court. It's highly unlikely that you would have changed your mind. Easy in hindsight to say you would, but then the average person would just ask that if this would have stopped you taking the mortgage.....howcome you didn't bother requesting it? You would need to prove you are that thorough that this one paragraph would have seen you reject the mortgage and possibly lose the house......yet you also need to convince them why you didn't even bother requesting the information.

It's pretty clear the BOI are covered here. If you wish to fight this, you will need to convince others that this information was held from you, but you signed to say you understood the information.

I understand that people are angry, who wouldn't be. But what the majority are saying makes little sense to those unaffected, especially when talking of court action.

It is far from clear that the BOI are covered.

I did not sign to say I received the Residential Mortgage Conditions. Due to the poor wording of acceptance in the final paragraph this information was not listed as duly received......and the obvious reason for this is it was not there!!

I am sure you have seen the posts and other threads including the actual terms of the final acceptance paragraph.

The rest of your post is simply your view. You are not a judge making a decision on a case , you are allowed your opinion of course , but that's all it is.

cs1800

Hobby wrote: »

It appears that many customers , me included , never received the Residential Mortgage Conditions , with the original BTL loan offer and it it these conditions that the BOI are now using to shaft us all. Please can you all contact your local MP and also copy in Andrew Tyrie MP who is the Chairman of the Banking Standards Commission. The more contact his researcher gets the more likely it will be mentioned at the treasury. Don't forget to also tell the FSA and the BOI you never received the Residential Mortgage Conditions with the offer. The more customers that state this fact , the more it confirms each others account.

The fact that the Residential Mortgage Conditions were never supplied , albeit there is a clause making reference to them in the offer , is likely to be of critical importance at any legal hearings.

The fact that we didn't receive these terms is noted in the Applicants acceptance that I signed at the bottom of my T&C. It talks about having read the product brochure and various other stuff but does not mention the Residential Mortgage agreement as it would if it had been included. My understanding of 6(m) at the time was that it was a clause to protect me and that the differential could only go down, this was pointed out to me by my mortgage adviser (no longer alive) he was a good bloke who would have acted in my best interest. He clearly so no importance in the clause.

JimmyTheWig

cs1800 wrote: »

I guess the only thing we may be able to question is the fact that this information was not made available at the time as I'm not sure I would not have taken a tracker with a clause like this

My view on this (others may disagree) is that if the information wasn't pointed out at the time then it can be argued that it was mis-sold (assuming you were advised by a professional to take this mortgage).
But that, itself, doesn't help you personally. To get anything after proving that you were mis-sold to you need to show how you have lost out by being mis-sold to.
That doesn't mean comparing the current situation to the situation you would have been in if the terms were as described. Because the terms as described was never an option. It means comparing the current situation to what you would have done it the terms were described correctly.

To do that, you need to follow what I said yesterday:

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

I believe that it was claimed, towards the start of this whole discussion, that the clause was industry standard.
Customers have rightly said that, not being mortgage industry experts, that wouldn't have helped them know about it.
But it does mean that the chances are the other trackers around at the time would have had the same clause.

I think that it is worth looking in to as to whether that was the case or not, but if that is the case then I don't think that you would be able to claim that had you known about the clause you would have picked bank X (who haven't (yet) changed their differential) over BoI because of this clause that they both had.
If you do find a mortgage was available at the time without such a clause then you may be able to claim that you would have chosen that one had you known. But you would need a fairly convincing argument that you would have found this clause important. Given that no-one in the industry (e.g. your mortgage advisor) would have said there was any realistic prospect of a bank using the clause, do you honestly think you would have picked the more expensive (at the time) mortgage because of it? And do you think that you'd be able to convince someone (e.g. ombudsman) of that?

JimmyTheWig

Hobby wrote: »

Fair point and an obvious one, but surely the BOI have the duty to ensure that they provide them from the outset , rather than the customer spot the reference , then ask for the booklet that explains what the reference terms mean. Its kinda like hiding something away. If it wasn't hidden then it would be detailed next to the reference.

I believe it was hidden away because at the time it seemed like an irrelevance.
Lets say, for example, that you arrange to meet your friend but you are having car troubles. You might say "I'll see you at 7pm, unless the car won't start." You don't say "I'll see you at 7pm, unless the car won't start or I break my leg this afternoon or an unexpected meteor shower blocks my path or I fall asleep in front of the TV or ...". All of these things are true. All of them are implied by the agreement to meet up. But you don't need to draw attention to them because you don't see them as likely to happen.

No-one expected the base rate to go so low for so long. Poster cs1800 agrees, where he says

cs1800 wrote: »

my mortgage adviser (no longer alive) he was a good bloke who would have acted in my best interest. He clearly so no importance in the clause.

This sounds to me like the mortgage broker (a) knew what he was doing and (b) wouldn't have screwed cs1800 over. But had no qualms in recomending this product and didn't even bother to mention about the fact that the differential could go up.

smiffy

I think it will be difficult to establish what T&C's were with each product back in 2004 especially when they were advertised as Rate for Term products.

I've a letter from my IFA who was originally offering a Woolwich Tracker for Base Rate + 0.95% for the term of the loan, but switched over to the B&W offering at Base Rate + 0.89% for Term.

I don't know if Woolwich had the same clause, but this differential shift was never highlighted by them (the IFA) or the solicitors (supplied by B&W).

Having spoken to the FOS, they look at all cases individually unless they have a larger volume of complaints. So I'd like to encourage as many mortgage holders to complain to BOI.

If you need evidence of how the products were marketed then I've posted some info here:

You can write to:

Bank of Ireland
PO Box 27
One Temple Quay
Bristol
BS99 7AX

or you can email

mortgage.services@boipluk.com

The issue was mentioned on Radio Five Live yesterday .

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/5live/consumer/consumer_20130307-1323a.mp3

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