Santander 'Flexible/offset' mortgage - removed key 'show me' feature that made it useful !!

kevshed

Hi folks,  wondering if anyone else affected by this, or just me.  Its infuriating. 

I have a flexible, offset mortgage with Santander , have held on to it through 2 houses, and its been a great, flexible product... i love (d) it !!   Until today.. 

For those not familiar - these products allow you to treat your mortgage account, as almost a flexible savings account.  You can easily amend your payment amount, withdraw cash from your savings or mortgage limit, and generally use it as a rolling credit facility, with the repayment flexibility totally in your hands, any savings on hand effectively reducing your interest payments...   as someone who gets lump sum bonuses etc, this has been awesome,  really allowing me to use it as life has dictated. 

Key thing for this to work - is a function on the account page called 'show me',  where you could see the impact of any proposed changes to the account before committing aka..  add x to savings, saves x years,  withdrawing x changes your payment to y etc . 

This was absolutely key, to working out how to best use the product, without making mistakes, or having unwanted surprises. 

However - today, i log on - as i wanted to model how to best use my bonus - and they have totally removed this feature ...  when I complained, i was just sent to a mortgaging calculator? 

So whilst you can make the payment changes, you have no idea of the impact of them until its too late... 

Anyone else still on these products and as frustrated as me?  My sense is they really don't want people actively using them as they are tracker products, so right now, they are making a ton on interest 5.25% ...    I feel this is really shocking behaviour, and really makes the usefulness of the product low by comparison.    Arguably, its a product change without notification !?? 

Thoughts anyone?   I've lodged a complaint, but suspect it will go nowhere,  if anyone has tips on how to make these guys listen i'd appreciate it. 

TheSpectator

How on earth ia it a 'product change without notification'? The original terms are still avaulable to you no? Removing an apps functionality whilst retaining all the product features is not a product change.

aussie_in_wales

I don't have a flexible mortgage with Santander however I have a mortgage with them which I am having no end of issues with.

Recently came off my 5 year fix. Have a relatively small amount left to pay and before deciding the best way forward made a overpayment which is when it all went wrong.

Mortgage was in two parts due to porting. I wanted to pay off the smaller part. Their banking app was not working so called up to do this clearly stating the overpayment was to be allocated to the smaller part of the mortgage to pay that off.

This was not done (payment made 13th December). When my monthly payment was due in January they incorrectly assigned some of the overpayment to the monthly payment then even more fun and games ensued. 

I called to see what had happened and they said pay some more to replace the money they had wrongly assigned to the monthly payment. Did that then got a letter saying this extra money was an overpayment and would be assigned to reduce monthly payments which was not what I requested.

I am currently amusing my colleagues with a daily check on my mortgage balance which changes at least daily by around £1000-£2500 and as yet has not shown me what I actually owe.

I've called 8 times since this happened and they still can't get it right and apparently their complaints process can take 56 days so they are still within that time scale.

I hope you get your issue sorted out but it seems they are in a mess at them moment.

Typhoon2000

Todays news suggest Santander want to quit the UK market and sell their books,

kevshed

TheSpectator said:

How on earth ia it a 'product change without notification'? The original terms are still avaulable to you no? Removing an apps functionality whilst retaining all the product features is not a product change.

Yes , to your point the financial terms is the product haven’t changed - but removing the key management feature that enables easy and effective use of it , to me constitutes change .

for example - I want to make a repayment to capital … previously I could use the feature to fine tune my decision , see the impact on interest , duration and repayment before pulling the trigger. 

Now I have to manually calculate , which is error prone , or spend time talking to chat bots who may eventually pass me to someone , that then says I need to work it out myself ! Useless 

kevshed

Just to close this post , I made a few complaints , and fair play to Santander they totally heard me and have reinstated the feature.  Much to my surprise.  Good job Santander.