Urgent help needed please

Mia_Haselgrove

Hi all,
Basically in septermber 2003 i was advised by the alliance and leicester, that because i was on a endownement mortgage which wouldnt meet the final balance i would be better switching to a re-payment mortgage over a longer term, this advice i took and so the mortgage should have been switched to re-payment in 2003, however i later discovered (january 2005 after numerous visits to local branches and letters to head office) this had not been done and was assured that we had not lost out financially, and the customer relations manager offered me 250 pounds fee money that we had paid, he said that he would personally transfer the mortgage to re-payment(31st march 2005) and sent me details of what payments would have to be met,(i was now a happy bunny) WRONG!!!!! the product on my mortgage has come to an end so i rang the alliance and leicester just to see what new products were avalible, everything was fine until the advisor found that the customer relations manager had not infact transfered the mortgage to re-payment as assured he would, i immediately contacted customer relations manager and asked what was going on, i have now found out that because the mortgage was not transfered as agreed i am now financially a 100 pounds worse off per month due to his mistake, i have had a letter of apology and admittance that the mistake was indeed his fault and that through him not actioning this agreement i am indeed going to have to pay the extra 100 pounds a month, he has offered me 300 pounds to get me used to paying the extra monthly amount, can anyone please tell me, if this is acceptable, as i am now facing financial difficulties because of this, (i have since tried to contact the customer relations manager who dealt with this but he is now not answering my calls or replying to my letters) What can i do next??????
thankyou in advance
mia

ctabuk

You should write immediately marking your letter 'Official Complaint' - If you do not receive a reply within a week go to enquiries@fsa.gov.uk and e mail them with your details. A&L should have a Complaints Officer who should then expect the FSA to make contact. This should work.

Mia_Haselgrove

thankyou so much for your advice, you are very kind
mia

dunstonh

The FSA will ignore the complaint if you send it to them. Or rather, they will forward it to FP to forward to the advising company.

The FSA are the regulator, they do not handle complaints.

NinaM

I have an interest only mortgage with A&L and I called them to find out if I could make over payments. They agreed and changed my mortgage to a part-and-part which did not incur any fees. As I was still in a redemption penalty period, I could only overpay by up to £500 per month and the overpayments were only taken off the loan amount at the end of the year. However, it may be worth asking to do this for a while and then switch when you find a better product. A&L are very bad at dealing with complaints.

skintchick

NO! It's NOT acceptable. They have screwed up. They need to sort it out and put you into the financial position NOW that you would have been had they not made the mistake.

Get some financial advice then go for it. £300 is an insult!

YOu could always try Jessica Gorst-Williams who writes for Saturday Telegraph's Money section - she just won an award for sorting out readers' problems like this.

crazyhazy

surely you noticed that you were not paying the increased payments which you would have been if you had changed to repayment? If the payments were not going to increase by changing to repayment because you were changing the term, then they should put you in the position you would have been in if they hadn't screwed up.

Mia_Haselgrove

Thankyou to everyone for your replies,because i agreed to the mortgage being carried on to longer term the payments altered by a matter of pence, i had the payments forwarded to me in writing, by the customer relations manager,so that i was clear as to what i had to pay, i also had it in writing that he had actioned the mortgage to re- payment, had i not rang the building society myself , i would still not have known he had still not actioned it, in the last letter the customer relations manager wrote to me saying that my new payments will be a 100 higher than expected, due to him not switching my account to repayment in the first place, would contacting the ombudsman help? or is there somewhere else that can help me????
any help will be much appreciated, as my letters and calls to the A&L are being ignored!!
thanks mia

Ian_W

Hi Mia,
As ctabuk says you should write to A&L with an "official complaint" - head office is best. Keep it short but mention the various stages, dates, names etc and seek a reply within 14 days. You can't usually complain to outsiders until you've exhausted the lenders internal complaints procedure or they unduly delay but mention you will go to the ombudsman if they don't put things right.

If you're not satified with A&L's response/offer to the complaint, read THIS it gives more details about the ombudsman & complaints.

BoL.

ctabuk

With all due respect to dunstonh the FSA are ultimately responsible for all compliance issues and that includes complaints.
http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pubs/cp/cp05_04_newsletter.pdf

Well put IanW great post.

As I am FSA regulated would you like me to forward this thread to someone senior at A&L? Regards David

dunstonh

With all due respect to ctabuk, The FSA set the rules but they do not deal with complaints. They pass the complaints handling onto the company involved. If the company involved do not present a satisfactory response then it goes to the FOS. The statutory remits of the FSA and the FOS [means] the FSA cannot involve itself in individual complaints to the FOS.

The FSA will review the complaints of a company as part of an audit, to look for trends etc, but they will not deal with an individual complaint from a consumer.

Regulation is not the same as complaint handling. The following link shows the correct process for complaints http://www.fsa.gov.uk/consumer/02_HOW/Complain/mn_Ihaveacomp.html