Woolwich Mortgages - Pls post your current experiences

icklepez

Woolwich have managed to mess up absolutely anything and everything they can at every stage of my application.
I had a choice of 2 lenders as I need a shared-ownership mortgage and they are rarer than rocking horse poop, really wishing i'd gone with the other one now :-(
Started application in November nice and early as flat would be completed in Feb, availability date now moved to March and still no mortgage even though the product fee was taken out my account in January, I could go on, my current complaint letter runs to 3 pages.
They even managed to set up my insurance as live rather than a quote and sent the paperwork to a house that hadn't been built yet!
'Stevenc1979' don't count your chickens, my first offer letter had the wrong address and wrong values in it - pretty worthless!

londonowner

too many to list from Barclays/Woolwich mortgages

1) more than 5 weeks for a survey instruction to take place.
2) money withdrawn for a survey never done.
3) money withdrawn from personal account for a mortgage interest payment before the mortgage was even activated or property purchased!
4) no direct contact with Woolwich apart from an Indian call center and the Barclay adviser was never available. With no communication during process; no calls, emails or texts ever returned.
5) 2 months before the mortgage was in place and the purchase process to start.
6) total incompetence.

They have caused so much stress in a process thats already stressful, DO NOT APPLY FOR A WOOLWICH MORTGAGE!

Apples25

When do people get put through to the Indian call centre? All of my contact so far has been in Wales or in Leeds (I think...) Is it after they send your app to the underwriters?

Received a text today saying that they have received my application...wonder how long it will be before they instruct the valuation...

Apples25

Am now beginning to understand why people get so annoyed with them!

Great example of incompetance today (I suspect just to get me off the phone!): 'I can see that this has been authorised and offered'

Me: 'It can't be as you haven't even instructed a survey yet'

Them: 'Ok, I'll have a look through the notes'

5 minutes later...

Apparently my application has been selected for an 'Internal quality check' which they could not give me any more info about, only to call back after 24-48 hours.

Great!:(

pete_buchannan

Just wanted to post about our dreadful mortgage application problem experience with the Woolwich.

As a first time buyer with nearly half house value deposit we were initially told a mortage would be staright forward- this was mid August.

It is now December, we have submitted required application proof documents, for instance bank statements- on posting out it takes up to 9 days for the underwritters to review it. If there are any things missing we have waited and only by calling back we find yet another document is required- this has happened now an unbelievable 9 times!!

Finally a mortgage offer was sent out to us, settlement date arranged, only to find from solicitor- woolwich had the funds on hold why...? on the same day as sending the offer an underwriter had decided to request item 10, proof we had lived at our address more than 2 years?! Firstly this information is clear from my barclays statements and secondly to send the offer implied we were clear to buy the house and closure fees finalised by us.

We are I would hope a safe mortgage risk- however it almost feels with the reluctance of banks to lend money the under*****writters have been briefed not to issue or delay lending- we are at wits end with the service, contact via an indian call center of automaton muppets with prescripted answers.

My only advice to first time buyers - DO NOT USE THE WOOLWICH, save yourself the stress go elsewhere
:eek:

Biscuit_Nikki

We have had a good experience with them so far, however this might be because we originally tried to use Northern Rock and their service was enough to make a loan shark look good. I have already posted many times on here about the NR process so wont retype it all as it's irrelevant, but they messed us around so much that we got fed up and cancelled the application.

We filled out an application with the Woolwich, as we both bank with barclays, and within two days the survey was instructed and the mortgage underwritten. Obviously we still have a lot of the process to go before receiving a formal mortgage offer, so I will hold back judgement until we have completed. However at the moment I am very pleased with their service, including the calls I had to make to the call centre - which was in India but the staff were still able to help and answer my queries. I am hoping this continues for us, as reading above it seems like they can be a bit inconsistent to say the least!

RedFraggle

I swapped my mortgage from Nationwide to a Barclays/Woolwich offset earlier this year and had no problems. I also bank with Barclays though and was using a broker.

katejo

I switched to Woolwich/Barclays through a broker in Jan 2006. Perhaps that isn't recent enough for you but my experience has been fine. I have an excellent lifetime base rate tracker. Perhaps they have gone downhill since then?

picardygirl

We changed from NRAM to Barclays just over a year ago ..... had no problems at all ...... we both bank with Barclays too (and i have a business account with them as well).

Application went smoothly, within 3 weeks from start to completion ....... havent needed to contact them since start of mortgage, so had no problems at all .

curiousftb

So far, so good. After an awful experience with HSBC, Woolwich OK'd me on the phone. Just sent off the paperwork today so hopefully the application will be processed next week. V curious about the comments about an offshore call centre though. Every time I call I go through to an English one and my contact there has been brilliant and helpful (Sarah) so far. She's called back every time she's promised and kept every appointment as well as answering questions. Hopefully I'll get the letter quite soon - it appears from the above that they've improved their service?