Mis-sold an unwanted re-mortgage deal by Santander - verbal contact binding?

simon.law789

Hi, last Summer I was trying to negotiate an additional lending mortgage agreement with my bank, Santander, so that I could purchase an additional percentage of my shared ownership property.

I had a number of hour-long conversations with a mortgage advisor at the bank (it was at the time that the Government tightened lending guidelines) during which time - unknown to me - Santander claims that I verbally agreed to remortgage my existing mortgage deal with Santander that was coming to an end in October. At the time I thought the advisor was running me through the deal that they would offer me if I had agreed the additional lending - I presumed that the remortgage and additional lending would be a single produce. I believed I had made it clear to the advisor that I would only remortgage if I was approved for the additional lending.

In the end I didn't take the additional lending forward and assumed that when my existing mortgage deal came to an end in October 2014 that I would move on to SVR.

I did receive written confirmation of the re-mortgage deal in August, but stupidly, in and amongst the dozens of pieces of paperwork I received at the time associated with surveyors, conveyancers, other lenders etc, I didn't pay enough attention to it and didn't read it properly. In my defence, I thought I'd explained to the advisor that I didn't want to re-mortgage unless I got the additional lending agreed, so I wasn't looking out for this and assumed it was confirmation of the offer not confirmation of the agreed deal.

I then made an overpayment into my mortgage in Jan 2015 and found out the news that I had been put onto another 2 year fixed deal - this incurred a charge for overpayment.

I then started a complaints procedure and the complaints team at Santander agreed with me that there had been a confusion - they have all the recordings of the conversations - and so they would move me back on to SVR as a goodwill gesture, refund the £999 fee that had been added to my mortgage for the new deal as well as my overpayment charge.

A week after the complaint team confirmed this to me verbally, I've just recieved another call from them to say that management at Santander are refusing to let me go back onto SVR and the complaint has now been closed.

I have requested copies of the tapes and now intend to take this forward to the Financial Services Ombudsman. I suspect however that I must have said something in one of those calls (there were probably more than 20 calls over the space of three months) that the bank feels it is legally secure in telling me that it has a binding contract with me that it is not prepared to give up.

Any MSEs been in this situation before or can offer any advice?

Thanks in advance.

Simon