New fee - can you help ?

Urban_Tangleweed

Hi,

Over the last year or so, I've been making payments off my mortgage whenever I can in order to pay it off as early as possible. I calculate this will take me about five years.

This has been going fine until the last one. This time, the letter I received confirming the payment also stated they had applied a £10 administration charge. On further investigation, this new charge was introduced in April, and would now apply every time I sent a capital repayment.

I'm not happy about this, and have written explaining so, but, if they stand their ground, is there actually anything I can do ? Maybe the Financial Ombudsman could help ?

Any advice greatfully accepted !

homer_j_3

This is a tough one. I am guessing that with the charge being £10 then it could be argued that it is a reasonable cost to process and administer the work.

I believe that the lender can add charges if they want to do so and I think the FOS would only be really bothered if they were to increase it like they did the MEAF charges where the increase in cost rose massively over a few years.

My suggestion would be that you may look at finding a nice other place for your over payments where it will work harder for you or as hard as it does on the mortgage. You can then either reduce the number of payments down to none or maybe once a year etc.