My remortgage experience - Do lenders prioritise certain applicants?

remortgager_2

Hello all
I have just successfully remortgaged with a high street lender. The experience more stressful and drawn out than I expected. I just wanted to share my experience and see if there are any others out there that have been treated poorly too, or was I just unlucky? Or is this actually what brokers have to put up with?

Background. I needed to remortgage as my other mortgage was a joint mortgage with my ex. My ex, since being my ex has accrued debts, and now has a poor credit history. In 2014 I bought him out of our jointly owned property, but at that time I could not remortgage.

My earnings have gone up and I have an excellent credit record, however I was aware that I am financially linked with my ex which is an issue.

Having been a reader of these forums for some time I knew that using a broker looked like the best way forward for me. However I was unable to get a broker in my area in the time scale I needed, so I decided to go it alone.
With the documents I sent a friendly covering letter explaining my situation.
Timeline
Applied online 10 April - Decision Referred (no suprise to me)
All documents requested received by lender 19 April
Between 26th April and 25th May see below
26th May official compliant lodged by myself with lender
27th May 11.30am DIP accepted
27th May 12.30pm AIP recevied
27th May 2.30pm Full mortgage offer issued

Between 26th April and 25th May.
About 7 days after the documents were received I called for progress. The next day more documents were requested. However these were documents that they already had, so I called to point this out. So they accepted this and promised to pass it on to the next stage.

So this issue kept arising, and also my application kept getting lost in the system as each time someone looked at it they forgot to "put a flag on it".
My application was looked at someone incredibly clueless who misinterpreted a document, this delayed my application as suddenly the mortgage was unaffordable in their eyes.
There was endless school boy errors being made with my application, too many to list.
The next issue I had was when I called, as they had made errors my case would be "Expedited" or "Escalated". Now after about 2 weeks of being told my application was being "Escalated" this meant nothing to me as it clearly wasn't, so I had to resort to an official complaint.

Having googled reviews on the lender, there are a lot of bad reviews from people that have been declined, but similar to my experience. I am left wondering do lenders fast track some applicants over others? This would seem unfair. I ask this question as one of the advisers pointed out to me that "I am what they call a self applicant" This made me feel second class.

Do lenders process applications made by brokers over self applicants? As I guess they are more likely to be approved?

Thanks for reading.

ACG

Lenders have to treat all customers the same. Its called TCF/Treating Customers Fairly. It was an initiative set up by the FSA.

Also an AIP/DIP are the same thing.

Thrugelmir

Out of curiosity how many times did you call the lender?

PDF

Sounds like nationwide, speedy when all is straightforward then terrible if even a minor problem arises!!

amnblog

Were you surprised by receive poor service from a Bank?

Service is poor across the whole sector.

Mortgage applications via brokers are not immune to poor service by the Lenders.

Goldiegirl

Applicants applying via a broker may be dealt with by a different team to applicants applying direct to the lender, but broker cases aren't prioritised over direct applications.

remortgager_2

Thank you for your replies.

A little reassuring to hear that I probably would have had the same delays if I went through a broker.

Thrugulmir - I'd estimate 25+ calls, I didn't keep a record and they didn't have a record of all my calls either. Every other day in the last two weeks, when they kept failing their 48hr SLA.

PDF - Correct. I do wonder if they even read my covering letter.