My husband and I have banked with Lloyds TSB for many years and for the last 10 years, we have endured mistake after mistake. However, the last mistake they've made has left us in a right mess and I'm desperate for advice.
Six years ago, along with many others, we received notification that our endowment policy was not going to reach its target. We decided at this point to switch to a straight repayment, cash the policies in and used them to extend our property. It was a worrying experience at the time and certainly put us off having an endowment mortgage ever again. However, you can imagine our surprise when we received a letter 2 weeks ago, asking what provisions we had in place to ensure our 'Interest' only mortgage would be paid at the end of it's term. My husband phoned them immediately, confident the letter had been generated by mistake and to our horror, discovered that it wasn't. The woman on the phone told us our mortgage had been interest only for 5 years and advised us to make an appointment to see a mortgage adviser at our local branch. We managed to get one that day and after much investigation, he discovered that it had been switched to 'interest only' 3 years ago.
Thankfully, my hubby and I are fanatical about keeping records and we have been able to track down ever letter, mortgage statement, etc. during the period in question and there has been nothing to alert us to the fact this had happened. There's actually a lot more to this, like the fact we have actually had 3 meetings in the last 3 years to discuss new fixed rate terms and at no point was it mentioned. They are even continuing to make mistakes following he complaint, as we received another letter this morning to say our 'new' mortgage agreement was in place and yet again... it's "Interest only". This was following our appointment to sort the mess out.
Can anyone advise us on what we should be seeking from the bank? We will be happy for them to put us back where we should have been had their mistake not been made, but I fear this might be unlikely. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
No, we definitely hadn't agreed to any different terms and the mortgage adviser we spoke to, couldn't even find any correspondence that would indicate why the mortgage was switched at all. No signed agreements, or requests from us are on their system. He advised us to complain and it took us 4 days to pull together a letter, as we had so much 'evidence' to link to each paragraph. My hubby is used to creating prosecution files (he was in the police for 16 years and is now a counter fraud specialist)... but we do feel incredibly out of depth with this and vulnerable. We did think about a solicitor, but then we're also mindful of incurring added costs. I think if we don't get anywhere with the bank, we will have to consult legal advice before continuing to the ombudsman. I can't tell you how scared we are, as we stand to lose an awful lot and our mortgage is in a right mess.
Orignal From: Complaint re: Bank error?
Post a Comment