Overall I have been generally satisfied with my Abbey Nat mortgage. That is, nothing has happened that would make me want to give them a really negative review. Then again, they're not so great that I could give them an overly positive one either.
I took out an Abbey National mortgage by necessity really - at the time (autumn 2000) I was in the process of applying for permanent residency in the UK (I am Canadian, my spouse is British), but because I didn't have it yet NO other lenders would even accept my applications. So I was very grateful when they not only accepted my application but offered us a mortgage! It helped immensely that we went through a Royal Sun Alliance mortgage broker, who made all the enquiries and applications for us, saving us a few million hours of time (also fee-free - the lender pays the commission, not us).
We wanted a flexible mortgage, which would allow us to make overpayments to pay off our mortgage early (we were being optimistic okay!), and also allows you payment holidays and underpayments if you need them for short times of financial 'trouble'. For such a mortgage we had to pay a fee of around £340, but we didn't really have a choice. They also needed the usual financial information, character references, questionnaire to our bosses etc. (They did have a dizzying array of different types of mortgage, which confused the socks off me - it's a good idea to get them all explained to you by a financial advisor.)
Abbey did a survey of the property we wanted to buy, and after a few weeks we got our mortgage offer; everything seemed to go very smoothly (although of course this was just our experience, maybe it doesn't happen for everyone). We had a nice 6-month period of a discounted interest rate, so our payments were a bit lower than normal, which was a great help since we needed to buy furniture, fix the place up etc.
They have a customer service phone-line, which you can spend 20+ minutes on waiting to speak to someone. But all the staff I spoke to were friendly and helpful. When we wanted to increase or decrease our monthly payments (overpayments etc) we just had to send a fax to them with our instructions and signatures.
The only glitches that have happened were: Once Abbey deducted twice the amount of our monthly mortgage payment - this happened to thousands of customers, and they apologised and paid us all back within a couple of days and said they would refund any overdraft etc fees that their mistake may have caused. Also we didn't get a mortgage statement (outlining our payments etc) for ages, and when after 9 months we requested one they said we should have received one long ago. Also I am dismayed that they don't have an online facility where we could access and track our mortgage account. (They do have a very good mortgage calculator on their mortgages website though.) I was also annoyed that we didn't get a discount on our contents insurance which we took out from Abbey, but even so it was still the best deal around.
In the end, though, we realised that we were really paying too much with Abbey. I enquired at Nationwide Building Society, and it appears that we can save over £800 a year by switching to them. That's £800 of pure interest just going straight into the pocket's of Abbey Nat's shareholders. So we're in the process of re-mortgaging with Nationwide (now that I have my residency papers!).
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
very helpful by (81%):
helpful by (19%):
