Woolwich - Barclays Joke! (loanpot problem)

dfarry

Hi all, just had a quick search around and couldn't find anything specifically here about this problem, but I am sure there must be others here that are affected and many unhappy ex-woolwich customers.

I have had a Woolwich OpenPlan mortgage since 2000, despite the occassional problem we have had a pretty good service from them and the extremely flexible Offset mortgage was ideal for our needs.

All this changed when the merger with Barclays took place, first this year we had the inconvenience of new accounts and now they have screwed up our loanpots.

We have borrowed against our mortgage a number of times and created loanpots, these were very useful as we could see what we owed and paid a small amount of to them each month thus reducing the debt.

Three months ago i think it was we got all the new account numbers, including those for our loan pots. Then a month or so ago we got a letter stating that the loan pots would be consolidated into one single pot. Now this is not idea for us but we could work around it.

Imagine my surprise today then when I found our loan pot had been closed and the remaining £5500 debit balance moved across to my current account (now with a £3000 debit balance because of the change).

We have not been informed of this so I persisted with telephone banking (got disconnected twice and then waited for 30 minutes for OpenPlan services to then be told no one was answering). Frustrated I marched to my nearest branch whereupon I was told.....

"Yes I am in the same situation sir"....
"All of the customers have been affected... you should have received a letter"
"Basically Barclays systeme cannot cope with loan pots so they have cancelled them all and lumped the balance into the current account"
"You just have to work it out for yourself now, I know it is difficult - some of our customers are not happy, some have had to take separate remortgages to cover the extra outstanding some"
"There is nothing we can do and it wont be changing"

Well there is no way I will remortgage my £5500 debt with Barclays, I'd rather pay off the amount and avoid any further interest going to them and then move everything..... current account, mortgage, savings, everything to someone else!

I can't believe what a retrograde step this is... so much for Barclays being a "modern" bank.... in my opinion they have basically undone the last 7 years of what initially had been a market leading product from the Woolwich.

I'm not sure if they can legally do this remembering that I have not been notified of the variation of terms/conditions... I don't want to start fighting over legality of their actions but it really angers me... we will cope as we are very organised with our personal finances but I am sure this will leave many in a confused mess and a very large MINUS balance.

Another thing I am unsure of is if they will still continue to take the normal monthly repayment..... it seems like Barclays are outsourcing their account management to cutomers themselves!!! :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

klewis

Hi. I to have just had this done to me. they have cancelled the agreed reserve on my mortgage/current linked account and transfered the debit to my current account, now putting this account £4500 in debt with no access now to this account until paid and of course no DD or STO will be paid either. been busy last few days trying to reverse this as now unable to access my salary. Klewis

aurora_borealis_2

Yup, same here.

I had to remortgage.