Lack Of Info From Halifax

Bleata

I believe I have been conned by the Halifax. They gave me bad advice on the phone, telling me I was safe to stop mortgage payments for many years because I was so far ahead with my mortgage. This is because when I was in full time employment I never reduced my monthly payment when mortgages came down. I was paying at least twice as much as I needed to for many years. The Halifax told me there would be no problem unless I defaulted. Someone at the Halifax obviously gave the nod that I should receive no warning letters if I stopped my monthly payments. For I now know that this telephone advice was wrong. But of course I couldn't prove anything about that phone call, as phone records don't backdate that far. So the only indication of the state of my mortgage was my yearly statement. It took two years for me to realise that the figure I owed really was going up. Then another year of trying to get satisfaction from the Halifax. A load of fobbing off from dept to dept. In the end they refused point blank to recognise my complaint and shunted me off to the Financial Ombudsman. My case has been there for well over a year. And all this time the interest is mounting up. The Halifax refused to freeze the interest during the dispute. No wonder they're in no hurry to resolve things. If I'd known how I would be penalised I would have found a way to pay the whole mortgage off 3.5 years ago.

My case is still with the Financial Ombudsman. I hope the Halifax will be proved to have been negligent in their duty of care and information towards me. They have already been found to have charged me £1,000 too much in interest - I was surprised it wasn't more. But meanwhile the mortgage has skyrocketed compared with what it was 3.5 years ago, when I took their lousy advice.

How fair is the Financial Ombudsman?

Dan_Collins_2

Good luck!

Jonbvn

I am a bit confused. All the relevant mortgage T&C's I have seen have made it clear that when you take a payment holiday, interest will continue to accumulate. Why would you think that no interest would be added to your mortgage?

Good luck with your case, but to be honest I am not optimistic. Have you considered writing to the newspapers? I know the Torygraph has a "Dear Liz" column which helps out consumers with financial problems.

nobblyned

Ha Ha! You are joking aren't you? Interest making things go up? Who'd have thought it!

In all seriousness, you were told you could stop making payments because you were ahead of plan, the amount of time you could stop will be in relation to the amount you had overpaid. At the end you would be back on track with you original mortgage schedule. In the meantime interest on the amount owed will continue to accumulate as per your agreement. You aren't being penalised in any way.