Alliance & Leicester mortgages - Feb payment problem

Twopints

If your Alliance & Leicester mortgage was due on 29th Feb (as mine was) it was probably not collected. Apparently their computer doesn't like leap years - they have said that the payments "should" be taken today (Monday 3rd March)

MarkyMarkD

The payments won't be taken today, because they haven't been taken already and DDs are collected overnight.

There seems to be some sort of big problem affecting these payment requests.

Obviously if you are affected by this problem, you need to keep the money in your current account and not go out and spend it! It will be collected eventually.

UK007BullDog

Hey MMD is that your cutie pie on the avatar? Sweet little thing she is.

MarkyMarkD

Thanks UK007. Yes it's my tiny daughter on holiday recently.

Regarding the original problem, I should emphasise that because these are DD payments we are talking about, A&L has already credited our mortgage accounts as if the payment went through successfully.

That's because of the way DD works - companies submit a DD "tape" to their bank, credit the customers' accounts, and THEN wait to hear back as to whether the DD has been rejected or not. If an individual DD is rejected, the amount is recalled from the recipient's bank account (A&L's in this case) and they'd then mark your mortgage as being in arrears.

Whilst the situation is a mess, it won't affect anyone's arrears position and in fact, we will be gaining interest in our current accounts on amounts which should have left there for A&L's bank account.

MarkyMarkD

Update: Monday midnight. It doesn't look like the payments are going to be collected tomorrow, either, as I can usually see my DDs at this stage of the day.

MarkyMarkD

Updated again: Tuesday morning. According to my current account, the funds are going to be taken tomorrow (Wednesday 5 March).

MMD

MarkyMarkD

Updated for the final time, Wednesday morning: The funds have been taken from my current account today as predicted. Problem over!