Help to Buy not answering phone

777236

We're in the same boat. Sent the application form and admin fee mid May for August completion. Been paying the £1 admin fee every month without fail and now they think we're in arrears! Then, last week, they asked us to complete the initial form again. How not to do a transition.

Several attempts each day to get through to them all unsuccessful. E-mail contact sporadically, but they don't answer the question and when I ask again it gets ignored. Letter going in the post today with evidence of these contacts.

No other way to describe this transition than an utter shambles which is causing undue stress and wasting a lot of everybody's (including Lenvi) time.

BeiPainkiller

adam00241 said:

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!

Hi, I'm afraid the problem we have is there's no way to expedite things with this people... What I would recommend you to do is:
- Go to gov.uk website and check you've taken all the steps so they won't be missing anything and ask you for more info
- Pay the fee
- Email them: the telephone is always collapsed and is usually a fruitless (and very time consuming) way of contact. They are not excellent with emails but at least they reply kind of regularly. 
- If I was you, I would start conversations with the rest of the chain and explain the situation as it is likely this will hold all of you down. You are going to need at least 15 days between they send your redemption letter and completion, and I strongly recommend you allow more time than that. Do not exchange contracts before having authority to complete.
- Once you have authority to complete, be very clear to your solicitor that the completion date doesn't allow any flexibility so you all need to comply. 
 I'm sorry I cannot be of more help here, unfortunately we are all stuck with this. I can count my lucky stars because I started all the process the moment I had accepted the offer on my house and only got it sorted a couple of days ago.

Marmitetrading

Does anyone know if you need to ATP to exchange? My solicitor has sent the letter of undertaking and we have the redemption statement. 

hannah11111

Marmitetrading said:

Does anyone know if you need to ATP to exchange? My solicitor has sent the letter of undertaking and we have the redemption statement. 

We’re exchanging without this as it’s authority to complete rather than exchange. 

AliciaGilch

Marmitetrading said:

Does anyone know if you need to ATP to exchange? My solicitor has sent the letter of undertaking and we have the redemption statement. 

You will need the ATC to exchange or remortgage, you can’t legally do anything until you have it because of the charge that is on the house 

JackWilliam1234

Hello,

I was able to get my ATC pushed through quite quickly in the end and we completed on our sale yesterday. These are some of the things that I did.

Call at 07:59:XX every morning. Work out how long your phone usually takes to connect and call the number this many seconds before 08:00 - it makes a difference. Call on multiple phones for the best chance of timing this right. I realised that whichever phone connected first would be answered significantly earlier, and timing this too late would result in no answer at all.

Once you're in the phone, press "1" over and over to make sure you're as fast as possible after it starts accepting inputs. 

I went from wasting 20+ hours on hold to getting through within 20 mins consistently, but only in the morning.

I also contacted the CEO of Lenvi on LinkedIn, contacted my local MP, contacted Lenvi on Twitter (among other effots) but I don't think any of these had much effect to be honest. 

When you get through, make sure to ask them to call you back if the call drops and ask them to process paperwork/send emails WHILE YOU'RE ON THE PHONE. Some people reported emails going missing. Also, it helps to be extra friendly as it's not the call centre workers' fault.

And make sure you've done everything that you need to do before starting the process (pay the fee, fill out the forms, have a survey etc.). I had my ATC within two days after learning how to get through. 

Good luck!

Also, they mentioned that they were hiring more staff to deal with the backlog. Whether that's true or not, I hope things speed up for everyone!

BeiPainkiller

JackWilliam1234 said:

Hello,

I was able to get my ATC pushed through quite quickly in the end and we completed on our sale yesterday. These are some of the things that I did.

Call at 07:59:XX every morning. Work out how long your phone usually takes to connect and call the number this many seconds before 08:00 - it makes a difference. Call on multiple phones for the best chance of timing this right. I realised that whichever phone connected first would be answered significantly earlier, and timing this too late would result in no answer at all.

Once you're in the phone, press "1" over and over to make sure you're as fast as possible after it starts accepting inputs. 

I went from wasting 20+ hours on hold to getting through within 20 mins consistently, but only in the morning.

I also contacted the CEO of Lenvi on LinkedIn, contacted my local MP, contacted Lenvi on Twitter (among other effots) but I don't think any of these had much effect to be honest. 

When you get through, make sure to ask them to call you back if the call drops and ask them to process paperwork/send emails WHILE YOU'RE ON THE PHONE. Some people reported emails going missing. Also, it helps to be extra friendly as it's not the call centre workers' fault.

And make sure you've done everything that you need to do before starting the process (pay the fee, fill out the forms, have a survey etc.). I had my ATC within two days after learning how to get through. 

Good luck!

Also, they mentioned that they were hiring more staff to deal with the backlog. Whether that's true or not, I hope things speed up for everyone!

That’s actually good piece of advice, thanks! By the way I’ve read a couple of reviews in Truspilot stating Help to Buy do not acknowledge they have already repaid. I am under the impression (because this comes in smaller printing) that maybe their solicitors didn’t send to Lenvi the Completion statement. I would suggest we all be very adamant to our solicitors about doing this right and have a copy of the bank transfer just in case! 

R200

This is a terrible situation 

how many people with HTB will be coming to the end of the 5 years over the next few years

Casablancas88

We got our redemption statement through from them last Friday but our solicitor is saying she still needs a legal/sales pack from them in order to produce the Letter of Authority? We spent 16 hours on hold and sent tons of emails last week just to get the redemption statement.

Does anybody have a copy of the legal pack from them as I'm assuming they have a generic one and it isn't bespoke to each house sale?

Sophie_508

Casablancas88 said:

We got our redemption statement through from them last Friday but our solicitor is saying she still needs a legal/sales pack from them in order to produce the Letter of Authority? We spent 16 hours on hold and sent tons of emails last week just to get the redemption statement.

Does anybody have a copy of the legal pack from them as I'm assuming they have a generic one and it isn't bespoke to each house sale?

We do but we got our redemption letter from target on 7th June. I think it's still fine to use buy you have to email it to the new email address rather than the one in the pack. The email they sent me was password protected but I can try and send it to you if I csn extract it ?