Complaint to my mortage company - please read and tell me what you think

emma_lewis84

We've had a terrible experience with our mortage company - which is explained in the complaint letter to them below. Please let me know what you think before I send it off to them! I was so upset and distressed when they called up telling me we owed them money when I had already paid!! The woman was so rude and unhelpful I really feel the need to complain!!
It's sorted now but I wish to complain to them...


To whom it may concern;

I am writing to lodge a formal complaint about our XXX Mortgage, and more specifically the complexities surrounding our first mortgage payment.

On the 28th August 2007; our first mortgage payment was due to be collected, by Direct Debit, by yourselves. Unfortunately – due to a bank error with XXX – this was refused. I hold my hands up to admit that this is a problem we have with XXX , which I will be pursuing with them.

As soon as I realised that the first payment had not gone though as planned; I called and spoke with XXX, on 31st August and paid the first instalment of XXX by Debit Card, which was confirmed by letter and the money cleared from our account on 3rd September 2007. I was assured by XXX that this matter was now closed and we were up-to-date with payments; and no further action would be taken until our second mortgage payment was due on 28th September 2007.

However, on 6th September 2007, a second payment of XXX was taken from our account by yourselves, by Direct Debit. Once I had noticed this, I called yourselves and a customer advisor was apologetic and explained that “as soon as the direct debit had cleared, and funds were received by Scarborough, we will refund that payment.” Sure enough, on 10th September, XXX was repaid into our account.

Case closed as far as I was concerned; as we had made the required payment of XXX by card.

However, on 12th September 2007, I received a ‘courtesy call’ from XXX at Credit Control (I believe her surname was XXX), who was “acting on instructions” apparently received by my bank saying that the Direct Debit from 6th September never actually cleared and that in we still owed XXX

Immediately distressed at the thought of being in arrears with our mortgage payments, I got straight on the phone to XXX for confirmation of this; but as far as XXX are concerned – the second direct debit was processed no issue; and after the refunded money (received from yourselves on the 10th September), we are up-to-date with our payments.

On the morning of 13th September; I called XXX first thing; to ask if the matter was resolved; but my phone call was not helpfully dealt with – rather I felt chastised for phoning ‘early’ when in actual fact I was calling within advertised opening hours to try and resolve the situation, which has caused both myself and my partner a great deal of anguish and distress, with no more information, I had no option than to leave the matter with XXX , who was trying to get information from your finance department.

After speaking with my bank once more – who were excellent at reassuring me and clarifying that they had certainly not contacted yourselves in relation to the direct debit payment on the 6th September; I once more called up to speak with XXX – who informed me that the whole matter had in fact been a mistake by your finance department, who had ‘picked up the wrong information regarding the direct debit’ and, as I had stressed all along, we were up-to-date with our payments.

My complaint surrounds two major issues:
1) After I paid the amount in full, by card on August 31st, XXX should never have taken another payment from my account by direct debit. This was agreed by your advisor on the phone, and left us severely out of pocket, with no money left after having paid 2 mortgage payments in one month.
2) The treatment which I received from XXX at XXX was most unhelpful; rather than listening to my explanation of my situation, backed up by evidence I obtained from the bank; I was continuously told that I “didn’t understand the situation” and that we needed to pay another instalment of XXX .

This is my first ever mortgage, and what should me a very happy time for myself and my partner; sadly this whole matter has caused us a great deal of upset and anguish – I was left most concerned at the effect this matter would have on our mortgage and on our financial records in general. We try our utmost to maintain debt-free and, indeed I made every effort possible to pay this mortgage payment –contacting you and making the payment before we’d even been informed by yourselves of any problems surrounding the first direct debit payment (28th August).

We are now most concerned about the fact that we may face similar situations over the course of our mortgage with yourselves; we took out our mortgage with you on the understanding that you are a reputable company with high-levels of customer satisfaction – something which we have not experienced to date.
I would expect a mortgage provider such as yourselves to be maintain accurate customer account records, which advisors, such as XXX who I dealt with, can access at any time – if this was the case; by entering my mortgage account number – XXX would have been able to see that we were in credit and up-to-date with payments.

I would appreciate information soon about how you will rectify our disappointing experience with yourselves, and restore our faith in our mortgage provider,

Best wishes,

alfiesmum

Really good. Perhaps you could include a time frame that you expect them to work to? "I look forward to hearing from you within xxx days from receipt of this letter." Something like that maybe? Mind you, my letter writing skills were last used writing to Santa, and I never got a reply to that either, so maybe I'm not the best person to be answering. Best of luck with it all, hope there's a good result at the end, and it's gets sorted for you,
alfiesmum. x

dragonsoup

Just one point - it's a complaint so don't end it with "best wishes", use yours faithfully.

Ok and another - if you can address it to a named individual so much the better.

riad_2

excellent letter! seriously it's really good!

Just one minor thing... there's a small spelling mistake at the beginning of this paragraph:

This is my first ever mortgage, and what should mea very happy time

"me" im guessing should be "be" ?