Help to Buy not answering phone

LittleJA04

I finally got through on Friday evening, however the small victory of actually getting through was short lived.

Apparently, they could not find any form I sent for my redemption quote, and now as the survey is 3 months old, they has requested a desktop survey. 

As I have to pay £60 for this, they advised all I can do it make a complaint for compensation.

I am back to the start and will have to go through the pain of waiting to talk to them to get this redemption quote. 

I sent the form and survey with enough time the first time!

When I did get through on Friday, it was after 59 minutes of being on hold, so do hold out for the cut off at about 6pm. 

danconniss

LittleJA04 said:

I finally got through on Friday evening, however the small victory of actually getting through was short lived.

Apparently, they could not find any form I sent for my redemption quote, and now as the survey is 3 months old, they has requested a desktop survey. 

As I have to pay £60 for this, they advised all I can do it make a complaint for compensation.

I am back to the start and will have to go through the pain of waiting to talk to them to get this redemption quote. 

I sent the form and survey with enough time the first time!

When I did get through on Friday, it was after 59 minutes of being on hold, so do hold out for the cut off at about 6pm. 

It's truly shocking, I am sorry to hear that you have had to start all over again. I have today resent everything along with a desktop survey.

I'm now on call 11 within a two week period, the call always drops out after 1 hour and 1 minute. Lenvi do not have their act together, utterly appalling. I hope that they will be investigated after this as it appears to be a common thing affecting a lot of people.

danconniss

Marmitetrading said:

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. 

That's really good to hear. It appears that everyone needs to put Lenvi under huge pressure to get this sorted, a huge shame as I have better things to be doing with my day.

I saw on Facebook today that an MP from the North mentioned this in parliament, great news as it will put Lenvi under the spotlight. I think Lenvi bitten off more than they could chew, I hope a thorough investigation against Lenvi happens and there are consequences for them.

sunny_money

danconniss said:

Marmitetrading said:

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. 

That's really good to hear. It appears that everyone needs to put Lenvi under huge pressure to get this sorted, a huge shame as I have better things to be doing with my day.

I saw on Facebook today that an MP from the North mentioned this in parliament, great news as it will put Lenvi under the spotlight. I think Lenvi bitten off more than they could chew, I hope a thorough investigation against Lenvi happens and there are consequences for them.

Thanks @danconniss for mentioning this, I've found the detail on it:

Business of the House - Hansard - UK Parliament

Richard Fuller 

(North East Bedfordshire) (Con)

Sharethis specific contribution

The recent transfer of the administration of Help to Buy equity loans from Target to Lenvi has been handled extremely poorly. Market participants and holders of loans were not advised of the change, and constituents who have loans advise me that they have made numerous calls and sent emails to Lenvi with no response. 

Remortgaging can be a time-sensitive matter. Can the Leader of the House advise me what steps I can take to raise the importance of this matter with the relevant Department?

Penny Mordaunt 

Sharethis specific contribution

I thank my hon. Friend for looking at this important issue. We have helped 837,000 people on to the property ladder through those schemes, and we do not want to see the further people whom we wish to assist discouraged from coming forward, or the people already on the scheme unable to make the financial decisions they wish to because of poor service by a provider. The next Levelling Up questions are on Monday, but, given the seriousness and the timeliness of this matter, I will make sure the Secretary of State has heard his comments in advance.

I have also found this: Written questions and answers - Written questions, answers and statements - UK Parliament

Question

Ruth Cadbury

Labour

Brentford and Isleworth

 Commons

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps his Department has taken to manage the transfer of the service provision for the Help to Buy: Equity Loan Scheme from Target to Lenvi.

Due for answer in 3 days (by 13 July 2023)

Marmitetrading

Has anyone had any success getting through on the phones?

Is anyone able to advise if they have received a legal pack from Lenvi?

BeiPainkiller

Hi! Been following this thread for some time but didn’t participate. Does anyone know by any chance if you can complete on a sale before the agreed completion date? I know you cannot later than agreed, but in my ATC says it is valid if repayment is done on or before the completion date; however, it also states if completion date changes we must contact them; which of course is not very helpful. 

Thanks for your input!

L00pyLou

FYI for anyone that does manage to pay back their equity loan keep an eye on your direct debits I cancelled the one for the £1 monthly fee after I paid off the loan on 5th July and HTB have tried to set it up again yesterday 🤦🏻‍♀️ so I’ve cancelled that too. My bank says to let them know you’ve cancelled the request but I’m just not ready for that on hold music again (maybe never) 

topbluenose89

L00pyLou said:

FYI for anyone that does manage to pay back their equity loan keep an eye on your direct debits I cancelled the one for the £1 monthly fee after I paid off the loan on 5th July and HTB have tried to set it up again yesterday 🤦🏻‍♀️ so I’ve cancelled that too. My bank says to let them know you’ve cancelled the request but I’m just not ready for that on hold music again (maybe never) 

Had the exact same issue. Just shows how inept they are

adam00241

Hi all, I've been following this thread closely as I just submitted my docs to them via email to get my redemption letter yesterday. Unfortuantely my solicitor was useless and didn't tell me I needed to submit this, and we are almost ready to exchange and complete. Very nervous this could hold things up, as we are already the slowing everything down for our chain.

Does anyone have any advice how to get this expedited with them? I have sent them a DM on twitter as a few have mentioned, and called but no luck so far. Any ideas would be much appreciated!

Sophie_508

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

Let's hope they get the above implemented ASAP in this case. I'm due to get my ATC soon and I'm not looking forward to it.