First National

pjala

I have a 2nd charge (soon to be got rid of!!) with 1st National, and over a period of two years the interest rate rose from 7.9% to 9.5%. I rang them up recently to say how ridiculous this was, they verified that I was willing to increase the monthly amount, and they promptly advised me that they would drop the interest rate to 7.5%!

I asked them if they would backdate it, and they nearly choked but said no.

I asked them why they did not just keep the rates as they were originally, or send a notice out to say they may decrease them, and they said they only decreased rates if customers rang them up and asked them to!!
The Sharks!!

So get ringing, I am sure all of you out there with 1st National mortgages could do with the extra cash!
P

keatergreyhound

I have a mortgage with these. Does this mean your paying off a little more each month and cause of this theyve lowered your Apr? If so do you mind me asking you how much extra your paying thanks?

pjala

What I know from talking to them, is this.
I firstly rang them up to see how much it would be to pay it off, and they said there is also a redemption penalty - to compensate them for loss of interest by me redeeming early. The only way round this is to pay it off early by adding to the monthly sum. As the sum is too big for me to pay off this side of 5 years, I am taking it on the chin to move the whole of the mortgage including the 2nd charge onto a proper mortgage company.

But they dont know it yet, as they have agreed to reducing my rate if I increase my monthly sum!

How this works is that the girl I talked to on the phone said, that they could reduce the interest rate if I increased my monthly amount (hence reducing the number of years and decreasing the total sum paid). They did not say by how much - but I wanted to increase my payments anyway, so went up by just under 200 per month.
My reasoning is, and the girl agreed with me on this, is if I increase the monthly sum then they agree to me paying less interest (as well as reducing the interest rate), and therefore the redemption figure goes down at a stroke!

My impression was that they wished to keep my custom(!) so I only needed to increase my monthly sum by a small amount to get the rate reduction - probably 10 to 20 pounds or so.

Give it a try, let me know how you get on. But make sure you say it is disgusting how they have increased the rates disproportionate with the actual bank of england base rate rise, and then ask for a redemption figure. Dont say you know someone, just put them on the back foot to justify their ridiculous rate rises. Make em think a little....
All the best
P