My mortgage application

S1D

Hello

I want to share my recent online mortgage application experience and see what other people think. It was all going fine until the subject of arrangement fee came up.

Here’s my blog; (I can’t be bothered to re-write it all!)

http://www.thefinancialblog.co.uk/my-mortgage-application-with-the-cheshire/

seletar

My wife and I recently applied online for a mortgage with The Cheshire building society because we thought it would be quick and fairly easy to do.

The online application was detailed and took about an hour to complete which was fine, the product was a competitive 3 year fixed rate with an £899 arrangement fee that could be added to the value of the loan. I think it was actually a market leading fixed rate at the time we applied. Towards the end of the application we verified that we would only like to be contacted by phone and post. The Cheshire verified they would be in contact with confirmation of our mortgage offer.

The mortgage application was approved only in principal from the details given online and a mortgage underwriter would be assigned to the application, fair enough.

A couple of days later my wife received a call from The Cheshire asking if we were going to make £100 payment ‘to secure the rate’ we’d been offered. When my wife asked what payment? She was told ‘we should have received an email’ – an email!? We had specifically requested no email correspondence on our application, because we don’t regularly check our personal email…Anyway here is the email;

The society will hold this online application for 7 calendar days from the date of this email. In order to secure your rate you will need to pay £100 of your arrangement fee.

If you haven’t yet paid your fee, please contact our dedicated fees collection line on 01625 421 614 between 9am and 5pm Monday to Friday.

Please ensure you have your card payment details ready before calling. We accept all major credit and debt cards except American Express.

In the event that you decide to change the product on this property, withdraw your application, or submit a new application on a different property the £100 which has been paid in respect of this application is not refundable or transferable and a new fee will be required.

2 days after submitting our application I called the customer service telephone number and was told that we would receive the mortgage offer in the post and we could then pay the £100. The email above wasn’t really saying we need to pay £100 ASAP, before we actually see our mortgage offer in writing, how much the repayments will be each month etc…Fine we can wait for the offer to arrive.

So approximately a week after our mortgage application was submitted my wife received a further 2 telephone calls from The Ceshire basically asking us to pay the £100 to ’secure the rate’ - on a mortgage offer we hadn’t even had in writing! How can we pay for something we haven’t got?

I’m not particulary bothered about the £100, after all in the grand scheme of a 23 year mortgage it’s hardly worth worrying about. What I do disagree with is paying for a ’service’ when;

1. We’ve had no confirmation that our application has been approved
2. On the mortgage application being approved we would hopefully have the privilege of The Cheshire confirming in writing our new monthly payments and interest rate
3. The £100 part payment of our arrangement fee was not refundable

I don’t think we’re expecting too much before we start handing over our money and giving
our business to The Cheshire. Maybe I’m wrong??

This will save everbody having to check the blog.