Carrington Carr Miss-sold Mortgage

Be wary, there are some currrent scams being done by claims companies encouraging fake complaints into mortgages as a form of advance fee fraud. i.e. they tell you that you were missold (despite not knowing about what mortgage advice you were given or what forms were completed or issued to you), suggest you will get some big pay out and then hit you with an up front fee. most complaints end up being rejected but the person has lost that up front fee they paid.

the mortgage wasnt suitable based on our circumstances - we were on a tracker repayment mortgage and were advised to change to a fixed rate, interest only mortagage - looking back i realise this was ridiculous, but at the time the advisor did the hard sell on us, and was insistent that as a re-election was due, interest rates would rocket and this was the option to go with!!)

That is not ridiculous and a complaint on that basis would fail. Going from a variable rate to a fixed rate is not a valid reason for complaint. It is ridiculous to even suggest it. You go with fixed rate to give you certainty of payment. Not to be cheapest. Sometimes it may be cheapest, sometimes it will turn out not to be. However, that is irrelevant. It is the security of knowing your mortgage will not go up if the rates rise.

you were advised to debt consolidate - yes we were told we should add £7.5k of loan/credit card charges to the mortgage

Nothing wrong with that. millions of people do that. Always have, always will. Mortgage interest rates are lower than short term personal loans and credit cards. Debt consolidation onto lower interest rate debt can save you money in the short term and allow you to get back on your feet or to pay that chunk off quicker or free up funds each month because you are spreading it longer. Nothing wrong there.

fees paid to broker were added to the mortgage -

This is the one that suggests you are not being scammed more than any other. There is and never has been any problem with adding fees to the mortgage.

Carrington Carr were not well liked and did many things wrong over the years (such as single premium MPPI). However the things you mention are you not mis-sales. They are normal every day things that happen and would be expected to happen.

THe solicitors letter says i can complain myself to L&G as they were responsible for the advise, or use an independent claims management company they have identified called Mac-Fin consulting.

They have to tell you that you can complain yourself but what they are hoping is that you use the claims company and they get a back hander.

Do you think i should just write a letter to L&G in the first instance, outlining the above and see what they come back with?

You can write to L&G and tell them that. It should be very easy for L&G to reject all those points with a half decent client file. You may get lucky if the file is poor quality. However, most of your complaint reasons are not even valid. A couple of areas would just need a few risk warnings on the documentation (which will almost certainly be there for a 2009 case - maybe not an earlier year but I would think they would be there by 2009 even in the worst of companies).

Forget the letter for the moment. That is just an attempt to make money out of you. Do you think you were mis-sold? Did you not get what you wanted? What evidence have you got to support your views? Until you got this letter, did you think you were mis-sold?

I didnt mean the fixed rate was ridiculous -i agree that the certaintly of payment is a plus point -however, advising us to go on an interest only mortgage when previously we were on a repayment mortgage does.

Going interest only from a repayment basis is certainly an area of concern unless your finances at the time showed you had short term issues of affordability and that this was just a short term measure.

I have however always begrudged the fact that we were never informed of the broker fees, the first time i saw these was when everything was in place and it was just a case of us signing the final documents - at this point i felt there was no other option than to just sign. In the mortgage suitablity report there is no mention of the £2.3k fee, only the £995 fee.

Whilst I don't doubt you (as CC were known to do things like this) the problem is that the documentation wont support your case. The fees would be in the mortgage key features illustration which is issued prior to signing the offer letter. Usually days or weeks before. if they were not in there, then you have a strong case. However, if they are then it just looks like you didnt read what you were issued. Documentation is so often King in these things. Check your documentation to see what it says.

I am new to this, I was hoping someone may be able to help me, we re mortgaged using Carrington Carr in 2002 and again in 2004.
We have not had any letters from solicitors about making a claim.

Mortgages did not become regulated until October 2004. So, anything earlier than that is pre-regulation.