upset - help to buy isa closed below min - lost all.

mollyt12321

Hello,
I am just posting my frustration

after a tedious process of a house buy, the last thing to do was to get a closing statement of our help to buy isa for our solicitor.
me and my partner both went into the bank and closed our help to buy isa *yay*
waiting 5 days for our letter, nothing.
called them up, they said they have sent a new letter out, another 5 days.... nothing.
now 3 weeks later our house seller / solicitors are getting impatient.
i call the bank and no explanation. i went into the bank today and sat down with someone who has told me that the isa were closed at £1400 each. instead of the minimum £1600. meaning letters are only automatically sent out when the min is reached.

we had money waiting to be put into the isa, we had no problem at all adding another £200 each.. ( we started the isa fairly late due to not knowing about it) we genuinely did not know it was £1600 minimum, obviously, we would have topped it up.

so we were told that there is no way to open it back up, there is no way we are getting the benefit of this isa.

we have made our solicitors wait 3 weeks all because the bank didn't notice this, nobody did. and risked losing the sale.

i asked why the person who closed the isas didn't warn is of this prior to closing, as we of course would not have chosen to close it if we knew this.

we were told that the person who closed the account is not trained to know this and they have put forward an investigation.

i guess its half my fault for not knowing it was £1600 min, i didn't even know what a help to buy isa was until the bank encouraged me to do this before i buy my house, i just wish the person who closed our help to buy isas had more knowledge in the job to give us a warning before closing it, just feeling a bit low.

dunstonh

we have made our solicitors wait 3 weeks all because the bank didn't notice this, nobody did. and risked losing the sale.

Did you not notice it?

i asked why the person who closed the isas didn't warn is of this prior to closing, as we of course would not have chosen to close it if we knew this.

we were told that the person who closed the account is not trained to know this and they have put forward an investigation.

Bank staff in general are not trained anywhere near as high as they used to be. A lot of the time, the staff on the counters are order takers. They just take your instructions and act on them. A more experienced clerk may have offered up the info.

The bank hasnt really done anything wrong. It's just a reality of bank service today and that you didn't know yourself either. However, banks are throwing money around at people today so you will probably get a bit of a goodwill gesture.

mollyt12321

We didn't know at all until we were told today, nobody on the phone who checked my details 3 weeks ago noticed or when i went into the back 2 times afterwards to ask, they didn't notice either,

its not even so much the money, its the frustration that nothing was noticed prior and made 3 weeks of tedious waiting and stress of potential collapse of the sale and they had told me to wait another 10 days.

im glad i know now and its over but its just frustrating that we had relied on the little help,

at the end of it she checked the name of the person who closed our accounts and said "oh, she should have known this actually, she used to work up here" .. ahhh

Rich2808

While I sympathise with the situation you didn't follow the rules of the HTB isa - you closed it before you had both invested £1600 so were ineligible for any bonus.

However the bank should not have claimed to have sent out two letters it never did.

Sorry - but I don't see there is a way round this as the initial mistakes were your faults.

The Government guidance makes this clear as do the websites of providers.

https://www.helptobuy.gov.uk/help-to-buy-isa/how-does-it-work/

'The minimum government bonus is £400, meaning that you need to have saved at least £1,600 into your Help to Buy: ISA before you can claim your bonus. The maximum government bonus you can receive is £3,000 – to receive that, you need to have saved £12,000.'

http://www.halifax.co.uk/savings/help-guidance/saving-explained/7-things-you-need-to-know-about-a-help-to-buy-isa/?WT.ac=MEH_HP_TREND4

'The Government pays out your 25% bonus on your closing balance when you are ready to purchase your property. You need to have at least £1,600 in the account to qualify, giving you a bonus of £400. Bonuses will only be paid out on balances up to £12,000, so £3,000 is the maximum.'

http://www.nationwide.co.uk/products/savings/help-to-buy-isa/features-and-benefits

bowlhead99

At the end of the day it's not the banks fault:

You closed the ISA three weeks ago, in July, because you wanted to complete on your house and the solicitor an the seller were waiting. Presumably you had already deposited the max £200 each in July to get as much deposit into the account as you could, to max out whatever bonus might be available. So, the only way to put more money in and get it over the limit to trigger a bonus would have been to wait for August and do a further deposit and *then* finally request the withdrawal.

However, you say that waiting until now almost made the house sale collapse, so there was no time to wait for another month to come along and then deposit more money and then wait some time for closure statement and for your solicitor to file a claim. You had to withdraw what you had. So, don't be frustrated that you didn't get a bonus that you were unable to qualify for, through not having enough in the product.

its not even so much the money

It *can't* be about the bonus money, because you didn't qualify for any bonus money when you closed the account in July and you couldn't wait another month to be allowed to add another monthly max top-up, because waiting until August to close it and only then requesting a completion statement, could have jeopardised the completion of your house purchase.

Really, the bank staff didn't need to advise you to keep the account for longer - you had already told them that you needed to close it because you were completing on a house, and as soon as you have become a home owner you can't qualify for a bonus from it anyway, so is no point them recommending you keep it - even if you were paying them for personal financial advice, which you weren't. You could have asked here about the terms, if unclear.

These sort of rants and moans are all very well to get something off your chest and to serve as good advice for others - but to be a bit blunt, you weren't even aware the scheme existed until over two years after it was announced in spring 2015, and you didn't read the rules properly, so you are not someone who had their eye on the ball and can firmly lay the blame with the bank. The good thing is that at the end of the day, you didn't need the bonus to be able to afford the property anyway, so as it wasn't something that had been in your plan for long (you didn't know it existed until a couple of months ago), there's no harm done really

Probably when you went back to the bank after waiting the first five days and said you needed a letter to confirm your qualifying status for the bonus, they pressed whatever buttons needed to generate the required closing statement from any recently closed and qualifying accounts that you'd had. As there were no qualifying accounts, it probably didn't work...

I guess the lesson for others is, as Dunstonh suggests, if you're relying on some terms and conditions or rules to qualify for a particular outcome, it's on you to check and double check that you really will get that outcome if you take the action you want to take. Bank staff will often go above and beyond the bare minimum if you catch them on a good day but being self sufficient is better.

mollyt12321

Yes, this is a also correct -
When I went to the bank to talk about a mortgage as we had already put an offer in,
We were sat with the person creating us an isa and also the mortgage advisor,
We asked how long the whole process would take from start to finish and they made it clear a specific number of weeks is unlikely to go past for a sale.
The person creating the isa said this to us and didn't do the math of dates that the isa wouldn't be open long enough anyway,
If I had known this then obviously I wouldn't be eligible for it,
It's knowing they were telling me they have sent a letter over and over and asking me to wait another 10 days for a letter, for something which wasn't even valid.
I have skimmed through every piece of paperwork and I have found my isa paperwork,
There is no mention of £1600 in the paperwork which is weird,
It literally just says start with £1200 and add £200 each month.
It's over now and at least there is no more waiting, it's the not being told about £1600 that's the annoying part,
And then allowing me to close it below that when they could have warned me beforehand which would have prevented the waiting for nothing.

mollyt12321

Just an update -
the bank has called me and said that they have had a meeting and agreed that £1600 wasn't clearly stated to me and that's it's not clear to customers coming in as it only shows on the terms dn conditions sheet ( small writing) and also that the person who opened the isa has agreed that she just didn't think our house would have been completed yet - and if we had waited just 4 days or isa would be valid ( but we didn't know about it )
They have said their staff have been told to make it clear in future before closing isas as they had plenty of opportunities to let us know even if it wasn't valid. It allowed us to wait 3 weeks for nothing.
So they have agreed to compensate the current isa amount.

gycraig_2

Personally happy the bank have done this for you but surely your solicitor should have told you this / you should of done a quick google before closing.

mollyt12321

Thanks,
Yes I was willing to suck it up as I " should have known" and I didn't expect anything from it,
But the manager spoke to me today and she said
Even she didn't notice why it wasn't completing and the other staff didn't notice either, and so I could have been going weeks and weeks without being told why I'm not receiving these letters. It was 2 phone calls / bank visit and online chat, which nobody knew.
So she said even though it would be invalid ( unless I waited 4 days before closing which I wasn't aware of)
she agreed that it needs to be changed. If I'd waited 4 days ( which I could have if pushed if I knew )
Then it would be fine. She said that as a first time buyer the house sale usually takes much longer and so they had just assumed that everything will be fine and didn't expect the house sale to be so quick and so she has told staff to make it clear in future.

all good in the end and now just waiting on the keys

barginfinder

thats great news, the bank did the right thing, even though they probably didn't have to - pleased for you both

bowlhead99

barginfinder wrote: »

thats great news, the bank did the right thing, even though they probably didn't have to - pleased for you both

Perhaps the wrong thing for the banks shareholders or other customers though, because as a 'goodwill' gesture for free the compensation will impact profitability which means that other customers will face higher charges / lower interest rates to recoup it or the bank's investors will miss getting their target profit and be less willing to provide financial support in future.

If the OP is so pleased by the gesture that she does more business with the bank in the future and recommends her friends and fellow forum members to do the same, generating several hundred pounds extra profit for them than she would otherwise have done if she didn't get the compensation and simply 'sucked it up' as she was willing to do - then obviously it's the right thing for the bank to have done.

Well done to the OP for pushing it in the standard way that MSE encourages, but I really dislike the general 'compensation culture' through which people who 'should have known better' are continually bailed out; it doesn't do much to encourage them to put any more effort into things next time around, and breeds a lazy entitled society. For example, the OP couldn't even be bothered to use capital letters in their thread-opener here, but because they said they were 'feeling a bit low' we all went out of our way to evaluate the situation and help educate them (and others who may later find this thread) about how the scheme works and the practical issues.

Sorry, that's just my Sunday afternoon moan so I can go into the next week with a nice clear and friendly positive attitude