Secured Loan Charges

reliquit

I have a secured loan, which I assume to be a mortgage in all but name, which I took out in late 2010 with a 20-year term. The interest rate is usurious, but at the time my options were limited so it is what it is. In the early years, there were a couple of occasions when I missed payments. I was two payments in arrears on a couple of occasions, but never more than two payments, and the loan was never defaulted although the missed payments meant that I incurred a whole raft of charges. I always caught up on the payments, but of course the charges accrued. In late 2015 I finally got my act together, entered into an IVA, At the time that I entered the IVA there were no arrears on the loan, so it never formed a significant part of the IVA.

The company have always sent me statements every six months, but to be honest the statements are so complicated they would give a forensic accountant nightmares. I looked at each one as it came in and as long as the bottomline amount was decreasing (albeit slowly), I assumed that all was well. In mid-January I received the statement for the 2nd half of 2020 and I was close to simply filing it away as I had done with previous ones when I noticed an entry under charges that said  "Letters - 9 @ £30 = £270". Odd, I thought. The account has not been in arrears for about 5 years, and I don't recall receiving ANY letters from them in the last 6 months, certainly not 9. So I rang them. After the usual security questions, the conversation went something like this:

ME: "I've just checked my recent statement and I see that you have charged me £270 for letters, which I don't believe you have sent to me"

CUST SERVS REP: "Oh sorry. That's a mistake. I'll get that charge credited to your account straight away."

WHAT! No "OK I'll look into it"? No attempt to justify it? Just OK we'll refund it. The ease and speed with which they cancelled the charge suggests to me that they know the charge was not justified, and naturally this has started me wondering about the many thousands of pounds of charges they have applied to my account in the past.

I have some of the statements from the 10 years the account has been running, but not all of them. I would love to be shot of this company, but I cannot afford to pay the approx £37k outstanding unless and until I can get a new mortgage, however the fact that I have been in an IVA coupled with the fact that I will be 70 in May will make that difficult.

I am tempted to serve them with a SAR to see exactly what charges they have applied to my account, but nervous that if I upset them too much they could demand repayment of the mortgage. If I do succeed in getting a new mortgage, could I serve them with an SAR when I am no longer a customer, and if I discovered other questionable charges could I demand repayment of them even after I have closed the account?

Grateful for any advice from the experts here.

[Deleted User]

Making a subject access request doesn't give them any right to call in the mortgage unless you're massively in arrears or have committed some other very significant breach.

If you have queries over charges, simply send a SAR.