Woolwich Mortgages - Pls post your current experiences

UK007BullDog

Hiya,

Please post your current experiences with the Woolwich if you have just taken out a NEW mortgage with them either through Woolwich or Barclays.

I am just interested in your experiences on the mortgage side. Please do not take the post off topic posting about a current or savings account move from Woolwich to Barclays.

Thank you!

I expect to hear a lot of complaints :rolleyes:

MortgageMamma

Can brokers post too? I have quite a lot to say on this matter

herbiesjp

Not sure if want client expereinces, but here goes

Used to be very bad. Has a notorious reputation for poor service

However all cases submitted to them since around the end of last year, have been very quick indeed.

Maybe they have turned things around

HTH

grade15

any news is better than no news!!
so go for it! :dance:
btw ..I'm NOT a mortgage adviser!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

runmartin

I have had two Open Plan Mortgages with the Woolwich. At present I am trying to redeem the mortgage to be finally mortgage free but it seems to be taking forever!! Last Friday (early morning) I transferred the remaining balance from my online current account to the mortgage account but it took until yesterday morning (Wednesday) to clear. Then I found out that I also needed to transfer £275 exit fee to mortgage account plus £26.49. They could not tell me where the £26.49 came from but that figure also appeared on the redemption statement of my first Woolwich mortgage as interest. Both times I had more money in the linked accounts than money owed so there should be no interest. Also the £275 exit fee should be £195 (as per my contract). They said they would have to refund it later!!!!!. Yesterday my mortgage balance showed £0, this morning it showed £26.50 (1 pence more than the unknown figure quoted yesterday) - are they trying to drag this out!. Some operators are very helpful but one yesterday just would not listen (kept rabbiting on without a pause). I had to put the phone down and phone up again so a got a different operator. I also had problems when I moved house two years ago. I wanted to move (port) my Open Plan mortgage from my old house to the new one. The Barclays adviser told me shut the existing one down and open a new one (hence two Open Plan mortgages). This ended up costing me and extra £600!!! as the mortgage had not in operation for two years (22 month). After complaining I managed to get £300 back.


Once the plan is set up it is OK. You can easily overpay into the mortgage via online banking. It did the job for me. The problems seemed to happen when opening and closing the account and not when the mortgage was running.

Martin

pusscat

I am on my second openplan offset mortgage with the Woolwich (Barclays from last week). The last one was started just about 2 years ago so I am not sure if that counts in your question - but here is my experience anyway!

Both times the approval process was quick and easy.
Both times there was an initial problems setting the right offset accounts up - the first time this was resolved pretty quickly, the second time it took almost 6 months, but once a formal complaint had been raised it was dealt with and sorted out pretty well.

The call centre is better than some, but also worse than some. There is not the ability to make any decisions, but at least you can understand the operators and they are usually polite and helpful.

Once the initial set up problems were sorted out both mortgages have run fine - the statements take a bit of getting used to, but they arrive on time, have always been correct and we have had no issues.

The interest rates are a bit higher than I could get elsewhere, but the offset mortgage suits Mr P and I because of our lifestyle - so we are prepared to have a less competetive interest rate at the moment as the mortgage balance is pretty low.

The internet banking site is good - no complaints there.

All in all they have been one of the best I have used.....

Don't know if that was what you were expecting?

Puss

xx

Mr_helpful

The service at present is terrible I spent 2 hours on the phone to them yesterday and the battery in the phone ran out before I got to speak to them Then at 20 past six I was no 4 in the queue but they cut me off at 7 pm due to call centre closing then.
Been waiting 25 mins now and no 7 in the queue
Wouldnt be so bad if I hadnt just taken an exam on treating customers fairly do the have anything on treating brokers fairly?

apk1

Must admit I left Barclays earlier this year, one of the reasons being I could'nt keep defending Woolwich poor service. In fairness lasy year they took all the processing in house, but did'nt realise they would need extra staff to cope, and so it was taking 2-3 months to get an offer, this has all been sorted, and when I left the phones were being answered immediately, although as previous comments have stated the offset mortgage particularly was horrendous, potentially a brilliant product but 2/3 of the time accounts were not being linked, the statements are so confusing and the call centre staff do not understand them.

Overall although they are flexible on some things I found them very much a "tickbox" operation, i.e. if an irrelevant question is missed on the applaication is will be rejected by processing before even getting to the underwriters who would not have worried about it.

MortgageMamma

I agree with helpful, only last week I posted that I'd been on the phone 1 hr and 22 mins, and guess what? I got to number 1 in the que, the call was answered and I could hear the call centre chatting away in the background but i was just left hanging on the phone no one answered me. This was an 0870 number so cost me a fortune and I had to make a further three calls like this before I got through. I emailed my BDM who came back with a response pf "please be patient whilst we have extremeyl high business levels" to which I responded perhaps you should consider making sure you have the resources to deal with high business levels. The worst thing about this was my clients remortgage was completed 3 days prior and woolwich had not communicated with him whatsoever. absolutely disgusting service they should be closed down.

Addiscomber

We re-mortgaged to the Woolwich in February and it went very well. I needed to ring the call centre once to check something, and I don't recall having to wait in a queue. This early into the mortgage period we haven't tried out making a capital repayment (IO mortgage) so cannot comment on anything like that.

UK007BullDog

I have cases sitting in queue not being looked at. They do not call their own advisers to update. We also suffer from the bad service.

They say they have a high level of mortgages to process, I just wonder wherefrom as the rates are not the best compared to some others on the high street if purely going by rate. I think it is more due to the fact that the Woolwich staff got made redundant. The call centre in India reads off a script and is totally unflexible.