Mis-sold mortgage complaint - over 6 years ago

dunstonh

Well, the pension linked to the mortgage was just my partners.

It would be.  You cannot have joint pensions.

I was sold a pension too at the same time, but neither of us realised that the mortgage was only linked to one of us.

We are going back to a period when you used local face to face conveyancing and your solicitor would go through the offer letter and explain the risk warnings.     I struggle to see how you could not fail to see whose name the mortgage (and property) would be in.

Are you sure the mortgage was only in one name?  Normal scenario would be joint mortgage but sole pension (sometimes split between two pensions).

Not far into the mortgage, we had to stop contributions to the pension because they were set so high (I seem to remember £200+ per month), and we'd got several policies sold to us at the same time - that within a few months of moving into our home we were really struggling to pay everything. In fact, that's the first time we got into debt. Not to mention the Abbey Life advisor who stung us for a cheque for £500 - for his fee - just one week after moving in.

This changes things significantly.   Had you been on a repayment mortgage, your monthly mortgage payments would have been higher and you would not have been able to reduce them.      You cancelled the method to repay the mortgage by choice.

What was your plan to repay the mortgage knowing that you had done that? -  From what you have said, you had no plan and appear to have forgot to do something about it.

Also, you agreeing to pay them £500 for a service (which was expensive but we are talking abbey life so that is not a surprise) does not mean they sting you for a fee after the event.   You must have agreed it before you started.  Fee disclosures, even back then, had to be issued prior to taking up a service. 

About a year ago, we transferred our Abbey Life pensions (now called Phoenix Life) into pensions with a better deal. I think, after all these years, my partner had about £20k in the pension - which we know could have been far higher had we done our homework at the time and not got suckered-in to the deals we were sold by Abbey Life.

Abbey Life was a sales company.  However, even though they were well known for their activities, they are not responsible for you cancelling the repayment vehicle.