Santander mortgage porting problems

Islander5

I had a very good rate (1% above base), and wished to port it to a new property. A year earlier I had taken out an additional mortgage with Santander, at a greater rate than I was paying on the original mortgage. This was approved very quickly, without any fuss.
When it came to porting, the situation was totally different. There was inordinate delay in doing anything. They refused on income grounds to lend the amount I wanted to port (even though a year earlier there was no problem when I increased my mortgage).
My suspicion is that they had no intention of porting the mortgage. They were looking at it as an opportunity to end the mortgage. They could then lend the funds at a higher interest rate to another borrower.
They denied this, and said it was in line with their lending criteria. The problem is that these criteria are secret, and as a borrower I am not entitled to know what they are.
In the end I went with another lender (Nat West), but obviously not at such a good rate. Nat West were happy to lend. They completed the whole process in 20 days (Santander took 90 days).
The Financial Ombudsman agreed with Santander. They said it was because I did not meet Santander's criteria. But to my knowledge, they also had no sight of these secret conditions.
I am interested to hear from anybody else who have had similar experiences from Sanatander, with a view of representing the information to the Ombudsman.

kingstreet

Santander's criteria and affordability modelling changed around January 2012, so it's possible you got your previous borrowing on the old system and failed to justify the existing lending on the new one.

The FOS is not going to take hearsay about third-party experiences into account in your complaint.