Bank not honouring written promised rate (formal complaint?)

harrieteve

Hi all, 
Would love to hear people’s experiences. Long story short - we originally had a broker but ended up going direct with the bank as at the time they had the most competitive rate (my husband is self employed and has business loans with them). 

- We had a mortgage approved and fully underwritten on a property and needed to pull out of the sale. We got clarity on what would happen and have it in writing (see screenshot)
- We pull out and offer on a second property based on this info and get a call a few weeks later saying we are going to have to go onto current rate (2.8%) 
- We’ve pushed and it’s impossible to get them to honour what they agreed even though our client manager accepts fault and seems like a formal complaint is our only route 
- We could get a 2.6 elsewhere but we are already approved for this so seems like we will just have to stick with it. 

Essentially it’s not insignificant and is 18k over 5 years. Is there anything else we can do? How would you approach a complaint? What would you be expecting to happen? Our client manager says he can raise the complaint for us but should we do it ourselves? 

Thanks v much 

harrieteve

Oh and to clarify the new property fit their terms (timeline and didn’t change the LTV ratio)

K_S

@harrieteve Given point 3 in the excerpt you have posted, it definitely looks like it might be worth a formal complaint. In your place I would draft and submit it myself rather than leave it to the person you've been speaking to. 

When a purchase falls through post mortgage-offer, whether or not you can keep the original product/rate (assuming of course that it's in the same LTV band) can differ across lenders. For example Nationwide requires that a fresh new application be submitted (so you lose the rate) while HSBC will allow you to keep the same product (and expiry date). For the avoidance of doubt, this is all with reference to the respective intermediary channels, it may or may not be different direct.