help!- offset mortgage nightmare

alfie788

I opened an offset mortgage with the Woolwich back in December 2006. I used an IFA to do this and he completed all the necessary forms and I signed them. A lump sum of £50,000 was sent to an offset Woolwich account.

In June this year I contacted the Woolwich in order to remortgage to raise monies for house improvements. To my horror I found out that I did not have an offset mortgage at all, but a normal repayment mortgage. Following a formal complaint to the Woolwich, which initiated an investigation, it seems that they put into place the package that was requested by my IFA and concluded that they had made no errors. My IFA has admitted that is was an error on his part (seems that he did not fill out the Woolwich electronic form correctly). The Woolwich have calculated that we have lost £1200 as a result of this error. However, the IFA now sayes he is only willing to admit partial responsibility for this error and has made an offer to repay us back £300. He claims that as we did not take out the offset mortgage then we did not pay the £595 arrangement fee. Because he has admitted not filling in the form correctly I don’t understand why he is not taking full responsibility and giving us at least £600?. (His company is regulated by the FSA). What can I do to resolve this situation and regain the monies I have lost. If I had not rung up the Woolwich for the remortgage I would not have found out that I had the wrong package?

Conrad

Check this is the IFAs final offer, making it clear your next port of call with be the FOS - Financial Ombudsman Service. You will need to demonstrate the 'loss' you have incurred.

The IFA may claim you were partly responsible for not checking the mortgage offer, although I would argue a layperson would not know what an offsett mortgage offer looked like and what a non offset offer looked like.

I suspect he will pay the full £600 before the FOS gets involved given the facts as you have presented them here.