Barclays Bank changed my mortgage...

MoneyMission

.... without my authorisation.

We thought to change our IO mortgage to a repayment one and saw that Barclays Bank (who we are currently with) had a fairly decent fixed rate repayment mortgage. Called up said bank and asked to make an appointment with an advisor so we could chat through costs involved, any fees, what the monthly figure would be etc. Got a telephone appointment arranged.

Then we looked online and found a really good mortgage deal elsewhere that beat the Barclays Bank one hands down. So, I emailed to cancel the appointment and left it at that.

A few days later we get through the post a revised payment plan showing our 'new' payments based on the repayment mortgage. So, I duly called them up (held on for over 30 minutes before I spoke to someone), explained the situation and said that we'd never spoken to anyone and hadn't authorised the change and could they put us back to IO. Chap hadn't a clue how this mistake could have happened and, after speaking to the team that made the change he agreed it shouldn't have happened and that he was authorising the reversal. We'd have to wait between 6 and 15 days for the new payment plan letter to come out: funny how when in their favour it only took two days but we'd have to wait up to 15!

Any road up. We had some bad news and things got rather busy round here so applying for the new mortgage took a back seat and we didn't do anything about it. Finally got round to organising new mortgage appointment today and thought I'd better ring Barclays to see where the letter was and make sure we weren't going to be charged the repayment amount in December only to be told that they couldn't get the letter out in time as the team that did it were really busy. They were going to take the repayment amount and there wasn't anything they could do about it.

Oh how I laughed! :rotfl:

I was very polite but did have to tell the poor guy that that wasn't happening under any circumstances.

Apparently, our case has now been escalated (how very kind of them!) and we should have the letter sent out to us within 24 hours.

Anyone want to hold their breath with me??

Sorry for rant. Just wanted to get it off chest. Feel a bit better now.

getmore4less

what rate are you on, Barlcays had some great tracker followon rates you don't want to lose that if you have one.

Why NOT DIY repayment with overpayments, that way you can just stop if you need the money for something else, once repayment there will be no going back.


Also check there were no admin charges.

MoneyMission

Hi getmore4less

We did go round and round in circles on this. Round and round. Round and round.

it came down to:

1) Fixing on a repayment so we knew that we were paying down the mortgage and the monthly payment wasn't going to increase for 5 years.

2) Staying on IO (at a higher rate than the repayment) but having the flexibility of not overpaying if we needed the spare cash elsewhere.

When it came to it, we have worked out a generous budget and there is surplus every month on the repayment so we thought we'd save on the interest over 5 years and have the security of knowing our payments will remain the same. A small admin fee but thats OK.

Who knows if its right but it feels it.

Oh no, round and round I go again!

getmore4less

I meant admin for the unwanted change to repayment and potentially back.

As for the actual change you want, when it comes just watch follow on rates.