Virgin mortgage nightmare

ClareP5

So, we were existing borrowers to virgin but wanted to remortgage to buy out the help to buy or HTB on our property plus pay off a loan and a credit card at the same time. 3, two hour telephone conversations later our application was completed. On the 5th May we received our full offer letter detailing the total mortgage amount but split into two parts, part 1 existing mortgage balance part 2 additional borrowing.  Long story short it completed on 13th June and the solicitor transferred the remaining funds to us the next day. The figure we have received is £2700 short of what we were expecting so I called virgin today to have this explained. They say it’s the early repayment charge on the existing mortgage which we understand is a thing on an early remortgage which this is but we were told no early repayment charge would be applied as the mortgage wad split into two parts as explained earlier, part 1 and part 2. The offer letter from them also says nothing about an early repayment charge so there is nothing in writing about this being applied? Furthermore having confirmed with HTB, my solicitor and virgin this would complete on 13th June virgin sent me a text (!) requesting this months mortgage payment or it wouldn’t go ahead!! We pay our mortgage on 30th of the month and so until payday we just don’t have the funds to make an early payment! It only went ahead after I said that this also wasn’t in the mortgage letter as a condition of completion so they had to cave and let it go ahead as planned. So my question is legally where do we stand? I’m waiting for a call back from the complaints team who just happen not to be open on a Saturday morning. Any advice on how I fight this would be gratefully received. Thank you 

simon_or

This sounds like you started with an existing Virgin HTB mortgage of (say) 100k, 50k HTB equity loan and 10k unsecured debt.

You should have ended up with the 100k mortgage part unchanged (same rate, monthly payment and fix end date as before) and 60k in a new mortgage part.

What looks to have happened is that you have two parts, 100k (new rate and new fix end date) and a 60k new mortgage part and ended up with ERC paid on the first mortgage part.

Didn't the mortgage offer specify that Part 1 was on a new rate?

Perhaps they couldn't continue Part 1 on the original HTB product once the equity loan was paid off?

Sounds like an unholy mess and I hope you're able to untangle it. This is why I absolutely hate doing any of this direct, all the long interviews, form filling and errors.

On the plus side, as it involved debt consolidation, I'm pretty sure you went through an advised process, so you have recourse if Virgin failed to advise you properly.