Accord Mortgages and L&C broker combo has been a lengthy nightmare! Is this normal?

Giggidy

thebratprince said:

Yes, that's what I'm beginning to suspect to be honest. We used L&C last time too, and while the service was quick, we had a few problems with our broker going on holiday without handing our case over to someone else (happened this time too!), hard to contact, etc. But as our mortgage went through quickly, we had to reservations about using L&C again. Regretting it a bit now but we're so close to the finish line it probably isn't worth switching/dropping them. 

My sympathies to you! I hope that you get the result you need out of it, in spite of L&C. My only advice after being months into the process is to never get off their backs - no news is not good news, and they need to be pushed to push things. I'm sure you know this already though from your experience so far.

That's exactly what happened to us too, the case manager was off last week and I was told someone else would deal with things, but nothing happened until their return. I will definitely be on the case, especially since I don't get any notifications for updates on the portal. I was told to just keep checking the portal for updates in case of messages. Sure, no problem.

The mortgage adviser I couldn't fault at all, he was really efficient, and I think we naively assumed he would be handling our case all the way through. Had we known about case managers, and their huge workloads (which I truly empathise with) we would have thought twice. Hey ho, you live and learn.

Good luck to you and fingers crossed all ends well, hopefully you are closer to getting things finalised now. Keep us updated!

thebratprince

Giggidy said:

thebratprince said:

Yes, that's what I'm beginning to suspect to be honest. We used L&C last time too, and while the service was quick, we had a few problems with our broker going on holiday without handing our case over to someone else (happened this time too!), hard to contact, etc. But as our mortgage went through quickly, we had to reservations about using L&C again. Regretting it a bit now but we're so close to the finish line it probably isn't worth switching/dropping them. 

My sympathies to you! I hope that you get the result you need out of it, in spite of L&C. My only advice after being months into the process is to never get off their backs - no news is not good news, and they need to be pushed to push things. I'm sure you know this already though from your experience so far.

That's exactly what happened to us too, the case manager was off last week and I was told someone else would deal with things, but nothing happened until their return. I will definitely be on the case, especially since I don't get any notifications for updates on the portal. I was told to just keep checking the portal for updates in case of messages. Sure, no problem.

The mortgage adviser I couldn't fault at all, he was really efficient, and I think we naively assumed he would be handling our case all the way through. Had we known about case managers, and their huge workloads (which I truly empathise with) we would have thought twice. Hey ho, you live and learn.

Good luck to you and fingers crossed all ends well, hopefully you are closer to getting things finalised now. Keep us updated!

Thank you. Obviously the promised survey write-up hasn't seen the light of day despite being promised by yesterday at the latest, but we live in hope! Currently waiting on a query I logged with my case manager yesterday morning, who then had to ask someone else, who we're waiting for a reply from - typical tale it seems. 

At least our solicitors are literal gold dust, they've been perfect from start to present, all searches are back and they reply to all my queries immediately or within hours, and we always get a call back. Lovely!

I'm sorry you seem to be experiencing the same woes as us when it comes to your case manager - our situation was similar. Pretty good advisor but completely overworked case manager who has been spread too thinly to do a thorough job.

JellyphantCastle

Just wanted to say L&C aren’t the strongest of links - I really struggled with the document upload / review / reject / repeat cycle and we lost days upon days because the case manager wasn’t picking stuff up. In the end I stopped trying to reach my case manager, I phoned up every single day and whoever answered the phone would get my list of questions. At one stage someone told me I needed to stop being a “pest” even though they’d failed to upload a supporting statement to the lender, just a ton of documents out of context, if I didn’t “pester” I think I’d still be waiting for an offer now! You will pop out the other side soon by the sounds of it but don’t be afraid to call them every single day, even if you end up speaking to the entire call centre! Good luck. 

Giggidy

The document review / satisfied / rejecting status is vexing, because it never seems to change. Someone from L&C called to confirm my bank statements were rejected because they were not current (they were when I uploaded it two weeks. Doh!) which I uploaded straightaway, but still no change in document status. Fortunately Natwest has a tracker, so I was able to see on there the valuation report has been received, as well as our documents. And yet on L&C the status.... Grrr. 

Frustating as it is, hopefully the solicitor being on the ball has made up for that @thebratprince and one less thing to worry about. 

@JellyphantCastle the audacity! Sounds like you made it out the other side thankfully. I will definitely be 'pestering' them too if it gets things done sooner.

thebratprince

JellyphantCastle said:

Just wanted to say L&C aren’t the strongest of links - I really struggled with the document upload / review / reject / repeat cycle and we lost days upon days because the case manager wasn’t picking stuff up. In the end I stopped trying to reach my case manager, I phoned up every single day and whoever answered the phone would get my list of questions. At one stage someone told me I needed to stop being a “pest” even though they’d failed to upload a supporting statement to the lender, just a ton of documents out of context, if I didn’t “pester” I think I’d still be waiting for an offer now! You will pop out the other side soon by the sounds of it but don’t be afraid to call them every single day, even if you end up speaking to the entire call centre! Good luck. 

Thank you! I feel like we're getting there, albeit slowly. Our survey has come back and we're pretty much at offer stage. Except our solicitor isn't on Accord's panel and they have been gathering all the information they need to submit the panel request for quite a while - apparently it's quite a lot compared to most panel requests. Accord won't give an offer until our solicitor is on the panel so our hands are tied at the moment! Fingers crossed it won't take long.

Solicitors being a little slow I don't mind, since they actually reply to my emails and give me clear answers to queries. L&C on the other hand, I totally get you on the document upload stuff. The document submission process to almost a month due to our case manager taking days to do anything... during which time our seller made a very serious threat to collapse the chain and pull out, and we had almost daily calls from his estate agent urging us to hurry up. I called L&C's head office several times a day and threatened to complain before someone finally contacted me.

Good on you for being a pest. Sometimes it's the only way isn't it.

thebratprince

Giggidy said:

The document review / satisfied / rejecting status is vexing, because it never seems to change. Someone from L&C called to confirm my bank statements were rejected because they were not current (they were when I uploaded it two weeks. Doh!) which I uploaded straightaway, but still no change in document status. Fortunately Natwest has a tracker, so I was able to see on there the valuation report has been received, as well as our documents. And yet on L&C the status.... Grrr. 

Frustating as it is, hopefully the solicitor being on the ball has made up for that @thebratprince and one less thing to worry about. 

@JellyphantCastle the audacity! Sounds like you made it out the other side thankfully. I will definitely be 'pestering' them too if it gets things done sooner.

That document process is excruciating! The initial document submission took almost a month (reasons in my reply above but essentially our case manager was very slow) by which time, Accord had requested an additional payslip and bank statements because the original ones we submitted we out of date. Of course, they were current when we uploaded them.

Lucky Natwest has a tracker! We're current customers of Accord already, I wonder if we can get on their online portal to see our application. 

Our solicitor has been a little slow but responds to all our queries promptly and is generally much easier to deal with. We used them a couple of years ago and have had the same good service again, luckily.

Giggidy

thebratprince said:

That document process is excruciating! The initial document submission took almost a month (reasons in my reply above but essentially our case manager was very slow) by which time, Accord had requested an additional payslip and bank statements because the original ones we submitted we out of date. Of course, they were current when we uploaded them.

Lucky Natwest has a tracker! We're current customers of Accord already, I wonder if we can get on their online portal to see our application. 

Our solicitor has been a little slow but responds to all our queries promptly and is generally much easier to deal with. We used them a couple of years ago and have had the same good service again, luckily.

Oh gosh, a whole month! That is shocking. I am considering just contacting Natwest direct to see if I can send the documents to them myself. We're back to document review stage, payslip I resent I was told they still waiting for 2 days later when someone confirmed when I sent it it was fine. 

Hopefully your solicitor will get on the panel expeditiously so you can start thinking about exchange dates, exciting!

thebratprince

Update: We are so close! Our solicitor's panel application finally went through but now apparently there's some kind of issue post-submission. It's the only thing delaying an offer and we've been waiting almost 2 weeks since the survey came back! The pace is so slow - our buyer managed to apply and get a mortgage in that same 2 week period...