Help to Buy not answering phone

GregBee

An update from someone who has been trying to get through for the past week, tonight I managed to actually speak to someone at 19:51. They've assured me that the documents I require will be sent in the morning (I can only hope that happens) but at least it was somewhat of a relief to speak to someone. 

This was after continuous 1 hour holds from 8am this morning, maybe trying on an evening is the strategy? 

sunny_money

*IMPORTANT UPDATE*

Response to my complaint to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities:

Thank you for your email dated 5 July 2023, regarding your difficulties to contacting the new Mortgage Administrator for Help to Buy.

Mortgage Administration for Help to Buy loans has been provided by Target for the past seven years. Following a competitive tender exercise to procure a new administrator Lenvi was appointed and took over on 19 June. Lenvi are international specialists in payments and technology-led services and their customers include three of the UK’s largest high street banks.

Since the service switched over on 19th June, the Help to Buy team has been receiving a very high volume of calls and emails from customers who want to make changes to their accounts. This is over 4 times their usual call volumes. As a result, some customers have been unable to get through to the service or have experienced delays in the turnaround of time sensitive queries.

All enquiries are being dealt with as quickly as possible, and all requests are going through a triage process to ensure that customers whose property completion date or mortgage offer expiry date is imminent are dealt with first. Please be assured that your details have been passed onto the Help to Buy team who will be in touch so there is no need for further calls or emails.

We are clear that resolving this is a priority and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is working closely with Homes England and Lenvi to tackle this issue.

To do this we are:
• Extending call centre opening time to 9pm daily and over the weekend and increasing staff levels by 50% over the next week as more staff are being trained up to ensure cases can be progressed quickly
• Introducing new technological fixes to allow staff to more quickly find customer files.
• Exploring options to open an additional call centre to further increase capacity.
• Reviewing our telephony system to explore options to remove the automatic one hour cut off which we know is frustrating for customers 
• Customers who have urgent requests such as those with a completion date within 7 days, who want to make a payment, or are a vulnerable customer are being prioritised.

Once again, we apologise for the current service levels you are experiencing as we are working with Lenvi and Homes England to get them back on track as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely, Allan Stephen

Sbrads

Has anyone recently received their redemption statement after submitting an EWS1 form? if so how old was the form? 

Casablancas88

Still no luck on phones but got an email reply this morning. Apparently no evidence of documents being sent on our account, even though they were sent a few weeks ago. So they asked to reply to the email with the docs attached. I did so to be told they'll be reviewed and I'll hear back within 4 weeks. 

I responded that this isn't good enough as they were sent weeks ago and the whole chain is waiting on us. Solicitor is refusing to set a completion date until she has heard from HtB, and HtB are prioritising cases that have a completion date...

Back to the phones it seems then.

topbluenose89

sunny_money said:

*IMPORTANT UPDATE*

Response to my complaint to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities:

Thank you for your email dated 5 July 2023, regarding your difficulties to contacting the new Mortgage Administrator for Help to Buy.

Mortgage Administration for Help to Buy loans has been provided by Target for the past seven years. Following a competitive tender exercise to procure a new administrator Lenvi was appointed and took over on 19 June. Lenvi are international specialists in payments and technology-led services and their customers include three of the UK’s largest high street banks.

Since the service switched over on 19th June, the Help to Buy team has been receiving a very high volume of calls and emails from customers who want to make changes to their accounts. This is over 4 times their usual call volumes. As a result, some customers have been unable to get through to the service or have experienced delays in the turnaround of time sensitive queries.

All enquiries are being dealt with as quickly as possible, and all requests are going through a triage process to ensure that customers whose property completion date or mortgage offer expiry date is imminent are dealt with first. Please be assured that your details have been passed onto the Help to Buy team who will be in touch so there is no need for further calls or emails.

We are clear that resolving this is a priority and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is working closely with Homes England and Lenvi to tackle this issue.

To do this we are:
• Extending call centre opening time to 9pm daily and over the weekend and increasing staff levels by 50% over the next week as more staff are being trained up to ensure cases can be progressed quickly
• Introducing new technological fixes to allow staff to more quickly find customer files.
• Exploring options to open an additional call centre to further increase capacity.
• Reviewing our telephony system to explore options to remove the automatic one hour cut off which we know is frustrating for customers 
• Customers who have urgent requests such as those with a completion date within 7 days, who want to make a payment, or are a vulnerable customer are being prioritised.

Once again, we apologise for the current service levels you are experiencing as we are working with Lenvi and Homes England to get them back on track as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely, Allan Stephen

In fairness. If those actions are implemented, it should result in a significant improvement. It just depends how long it takes to actually do it.

Arks_mo

Update! 

Finally managed to get through to someone after the most painstaking week Ive ever experienced and recieved our Redemption and ATC! I really thought I'd get nowhere but finally someone replied to our email which was sent 8 days ago. I didn't get through via the phone lines at all which was an absolute waste of 24 + hrs of my life. Literally.

I really hope everyone gets through in good time! Stay persistent and also try get through on socials as much as you can! 

danconniss

Has anyone heard of an update from Lenvi who are dealing with all Help To Buy enquiries? 

I am having the worst experience with selling my house due to the developer and their solicitor making an almighty mistake, finally after nearly 18 months we are getting somewhere, however, as we are closing in on completing on the sale we have now stumbled across the not so glorious company Lenvi. What an absolute shambles they are, but also the government too or whoever awarded the 5 year contract to Lenvi as they clearly didn't check to see if Lenvi had the capacity to take such services on.

There really needs to be severe consequences for companies like Lenvi.

After sending emails and waiting the appropriate timescales as instructed plus many hours on hold I am no better off than I was at the start of the sale. Why an earth they don't answer their phones is beyond a joke.

I have no idea what to do next apart from watch my sale fall to bits.

Marmitetrading

I am relentlessly trying to get hold of Help to Buy to prevent my sale falling through. I have been on calls 8am-8pm every day for a week with no success.

Has anyone received the new legal pack from Lenvi or details of the letter of undertaking? My solicitor won’t proceed without this and we are due to complete on 14 July. 

danconniss

Marmitetrading said:

I am relentlessly trying to get hold of Help to Buy to prevent my sale falling through. I have been on calls 8am-8pm every day for a week with no success.

Has anyone received the new legal pack from Lenvi or details of the letter of undertaking? My solicitor won’t proceed without this and we are due to complete on 14 July. 

I really hope you get this sorted, it's purely tragic what Lenvi are putting people through.

I just spoke with my solicitor and they haven't mentioned a letter of undertaking or legal pack.. But saying that my solicitor had no idea that Help To Buy had been taken over.

Marmitetrading

danconniss said:

Marmitetrading said:

I am relentlessly trying to get hold of Help to Buy to prevent my sale falling through. I have been on calls 8am-8pm every day for a week with no success.

Has anyone received the new legal pack from Lenvi or details of the letter of undertaking? My solicitor won’t proceed without this and we are due to complete on 14 July. 

I really hope you get this sorted, it's purely tragic what Lenvi are putting people through.

I just spoke with my solicitor and they haven't mentioned a letter of undertaking or legal pack.. But saying that my solicitor had no idea that Help To Buy had been taken over.

Thank you so much. It really is awful that so many of us are experiencing this. My MP has today written to the CEO of Homes England directly explaining the situation. I hope it helps in some way.