Now that this issue has finally been drawn to a close I feel that it is appropriate to speak of it. I have mentioned previously that I was not having a good time with the re-mortgage process with my mortgage lender, but I didn’t want to harp on about it too much, now I feel more comfortable with telling the story. It began in March when I contacted the lender to apply to change my mortgage, as the one I currently had was due to end on the 2nd May 2006. The product I had was a 2 year discounted mortgage and if I did not buy into another product the payments would increase to that relevant to the base rate and the 1.69% increase is quite significant. So I rang the ‘hotline’ and went through the process of application on the phone with the advisor. It seemed pretty simple as these things go, she asked me questions and I answered them. Shortly after wards I received the paper work in the post to read and sign, which I duly complied, then popped it back into the post for processing. About a week later I got a call from a colleague of the advisor saying that they had not received any authenticated ID for myself and could I please send this on. I went off to a local branch and had the necessary paperwork stamped, at the time I had not got the address to send these details on to so I asked the branch assistant if she could get this for me, after a phone call the mortgage centre she supplied me with the address, so on I went to post my ID. Then, another week or two later I again received a call from the advisor asking for the ID, which led me to telling her this is already done. We discussed this and I realised that it had been sent to the wrong place (on the advice of the branch!) and the advisor said she would try to sort it out by calling the processing centre. Unfortunately she called me back with the response that the processing centre would not tell her anything and that I would have to call them to verify if they had my documents, I was fine with this until when I tried to do so they would not help me either, which at the time made me mad as hell. I am the kind of person who tried to look for ways around things, so I went straight to another branch and went through the whole thing again this time posting them Special Delivery to the advisor, therefore ensuring she would get them the following day. Doing so allowed the application to proceed to the processing centre (the people who wouldn’t help me previously). The advisor asked me if I wanted to put in a complaint, but I said no, as I felt it would not make a difference.
A week or so later I got a mortgage offer through and when I read through it I could see that a minor mistake had been made where they had charged the product application fee twice! Of course, I called them and explained, and the person I spoke to assured me that she would send out another offer. Another week later I had not received it so again I called, this time an annoying ‘foreigner’ got snappy with me and told me it was in process and she could do nothing more than mark it as urgent. I waited and waited and received nothing. By this time I had been contacted by the solicitors handling the legality of the re-mortgage, now just to make one thing perfectly clear, this was an internal re-mortgage, I had been a customer of this lender for almost ten years and was simply continuing with another of their products, which meant they would use their in-house solicitor. The solicitor had requested a redemption statement so they that could tie up paying off the old mortgage and setting up the new one. But, the redemption statement was showing some ‘Early Redemption Penalties’. This shouldn’t have been the case as I explained earlier the 2 year penalty period I was subject to was ending on May 2nd therefore the completion should take place at this date. Having had this conversation with them they requested a redemption certificate as of May 2nd. Time again run on and I had not heard anything so I called them only to be told they had not yet received it, they were obviously in no hurry to do anything about it so I called the redemption team to be told we didn’t bother sending this because we thought the request was a duplication mistake so ignored it.
We are now up to 3 errors in the process and I have had to put a lot of time and effort into many telephone calls to push it forward myself as they seemed unable to speak to each other. I ordered the redemption certificate myself to go to the solicitor and hoped that would be enough. Apparently not! To take things further I decided to put a formal complaint into the redemption team for their lack of diligence. I was told that I would be called back within 48 hours to resolve the issue.
The next statement the solicitors received also had the ERP charges amounting to a couple of thousand pounds. Again I had to call the mortgage team and find our what was going on, I was told that the charges would show until June 2nd but they couldn’t explain why? Now, I am not one to roll over and just accept what I am being told if it doesn’t make any sense, so I persisted with finding out how I could have penalty charges when I had fulfilled the term of the mortgage product I had previously purchased. I spoke to another member of the staff and struck lucky, a young lad I spoke to agreed this seemed queer and said he would look into it, first time he called me back he only repeated what the previous had said, but I was not having any of it so I insisted he looked further into it, I also asked him why I had not been called back within the 48 hours (according to their policy) regarding my complaint, he apologised that this had been my experience and would follow up on that to.
The second time he called me back he had some good* news, kind of good news any way, he had found that the ERP had been applied to my mortgage redemption merely because an error had occurred in the processing of the 2 year discounted product in 2004. It had become clear that some fool had not passed their 2 X table in school! They had processed the end date as 2008. Now let me see, 2004 plus 2 is …… oh Yeh 2006. Well, at least we now knew something useful. This new information meant that the redemption team where now able to send an accurate redemption certificate to the solicitor for completion. Somehow it felt completely wrong to me that this had only been sorted out by my efforts and not theirs.
Meanwhile the solicitors had mailed with a completion date for my mortgage. Now I was beginning to panic, as I knew they did not have the final redemption figure yet. They were prepared to go ahead and let me suffer the penalties. You probably guessed that I had to get on the phone again and insist that my instructions where followed by not completing the mortgage until the correct redemption statement had been received, I also insisted that my case manager call me to discuss the issue. I have lived my life on the premise that if something could go wrong then it probably will. I was living this out right now. I never did receive a call from the solicitor so I called them again and asked that the case manager ring me. Which they didn’t!
I realised that a formal complaint wasn’t enough, as the lender had not called me to talk. I felt I had no option but to make a ‘formal’ formal complaint and pressed on with my phone calls until I had reached a department that was prepared to take a full notary of the issues to date. I was assured that this would be passed on and followed up. Now getting back to the mortgage process, by this time I was calling the mortgage centre and the solicitors every single day, and several times at that. We had now reached May 16th 2006 well over due on the completion of the mortgage from May 2nd.
A few days later I got a letter from the complaints department letting me know that it was now being investigated and I would here back within, go on guess… 4 weeks! They feel that it is acceptable to take up to a month to resolve a complaint, you may disagree but I feel this is too long.
After a 3rd attempt with the solicitor I finally spoke to my case manager and we discussed the completion, by this time they had now received a redemption statement that they could use. I was still flabbergasted further when I asked for the final figures they would work with to be told that I could only get this from the lender, as it was an internal transaction so only they would know the questions on how much. None of this made sense because all along we had been waiting for paperwork with the correct figures on otherwise the transaction could not be completed, and here they were now telling me they didn’t know them? A demonstration of complete incompetence, surely? Are you still with me?
I had to let it go or it was going to kill me. Finally after just a short while longer the re-mortgage completed and I felt I could rest. Thursday of this week I got a call from the complaints department to attempt to resolve my issues, sadly it got off to on the wrong foot when the member of staff opened the conversation with “well I kind of have a vague idea of what the problem is, something about being charged twice for the product and getting the wrong redemption statement” I started to feel my internal bomb start ticking again! Yet again I had not been heard. The complaint had not been taken down in full and processed effectively. Their customer service skills seemed to be zero. The member of staff never attempted to empathise or accept responsibility for the companies’ actions, had she done this, it would have been enough for me; I would have considered the matter closed. Instead it felt like a complaint factory line, she proceeded to say very insincerely, “we value our customers and therefore would like to offer you £75 in compensation for your troubles”. At this point the money did not matter and ounce to me, I hadn’t complained to get some money, I had simply wanted the detail of my problems and issues to be heard and hoped that they would accept responsibility for the problems then apologise. I saw ‘red’ as we say. I said that her comments to me had been unacceptable and asked how I could escalate my complaint, she was happy to tell me but made one last attempt and explained that she was happy to hear any suggestion I had for how we could amicably resolve my complaint. This is where it finally gets fun. I had nothing to lose at this point. My mortgage was complete. I hadn’t wanted anything in compensation from them at any point, but something inside me wanted to be as unreasonable back to them as they had been to me.
I calmly explained to the member of staff if they really valued me as a long standing customer they must pay me £495 for my troubles, as this was the fee for setting up the re-mortgage initially, it was the amount they had added twice in the original offer and not sorted out (by the way, I never did get the second offer from them!) I privately knew that I was asking way too much and just felt like I was pushing my luck, and enjoyed doing it. This was way beyond her level of authority, she told me, and she would have to take it to her superiors for review, “that’s fine” I said. We finished the call here with her telling me I would receive a letter in the next couple of days with the outcome.
Interestingly, the next day (yesterday) she called me back. When she had taken this to her superiors they had responded by saying my request was excessive. However, after reviewing my case changed their view and admitted that they could have done much more to sort out the issues along the way, and therefore agreed to pay me £495. What a shock!
I feel great that I have been given that amount of money, who wouldn’t, cos we most certainly need it, but money was never the end goal. I felt that they really had failed me in the service they should have provided me and that of course I would pay for. I also felt that they really didn’t care too much. My final comments are just around how poor service levels have gotten in the UK. As companies have grown and merged and grown further they have most definitely lost the personal touch to servicing the customers that enable them to get to the size they do. Just take for example; I would have to go through to 5 levels of the automated telephone system every time I called them. “if you are the customer, press 1, if you would like to talk about your mortgage, press 3” and so on. How far will this go do you think? Will we ever return to days when you could talk to someone at the end of the phone on pick up, or actually speak to someone who cared about talking to you? Who can predict? To give an analogy of how this experience made me feel, it was a little like standing at the side of a huge rotating wheel of business, whilst it was spinning at high speed, trying to see an opportunity to jump on a be a part of the action, and yet not being able to because they would not allow it. So they pressed on regardless, and I was powerless to change its course.
Well. Let me just say this, I feel like I have won a small victory for the little guy, “I wonder how much they would have paid?”
