Two years ago I foolishly listened to my financial adviser and applied for a mortgage through Abbey National to purchase my current property.
At the time the deals on offer were widespread and there was so much choice on the market.
I opted for a discounted Capital & Repayment mortgage which means that my mortgage is discounted against the Bank of England base rate for interest.
Having had a bad experience with Endowmentmortgages I wanted a simple straightforward Capital and Repayment which means that the money I pay each month is made up of the interest on the borrowings plus something towards the actual loan thus decreasing the balance each year.
Well, I received my first mortgage offer towards a property that I was going to purchase and this was fine and everything
seemed to be in order. The offer was made on the condition that it was completed on or before a certain date.
I had problems with the Vendor of the property that I was going to purchase and pulled out of the sale, this meant that I had to go through the whole process again.
Having found my present property that was unoccupied and the housing market being so volatile, I wanted to move quickly on this one.
I had to apply for the mortgage again so that it could incorporate the new property, plus I was borrowing slightly more as well.
I received an amended mortgage offer approximately two weeks before completion of the sale. Bearing in mind that a copy of this had been forwarded to my financial adviser and Abbey National are so called experts I thought all was fine!
By chance I decided to read through the mortgage offer back to front to ensure that I knew what I was letting myself in for. Good job I did.
I noticed that the repayment figures quoted in the offer were a less than my previous mortgage. Now taking into consideration that I had borrowed a lot more money and the interest rate was not that different I could not work out why it had decreased by so much.
I contacted my financial adviser and advised of my concerns, he looked at the figures and advised me that they had processed the mortgage offer based on a Interest Only mortgage. This meant that had I not spotted the error, I could have been paying my monthly payment for twenty five years and not actually paid anything towards the borrowings.
After twenty five years Abbey National would have asked me for nearly £55K. I was astonished that both Abbey National and my financial Adviser had not picked up on this error. Naturally they said they would rush through another offer.
I received another mortgage offer and again I scanned through the Terms & Conditions thoroughly and woe and behold another fatal error!!!
The offer was based on my original application details and was advising me that I must complete on or before a date that had already past. I telephoned my financial adviser again and he advised that Abbey National had redone the mortgage offer based on a "Product" that no longer exists.
If I had not have spotted this I would have exchanged contracts with the Venor and Abbey National would have not released the funds as no such product exists anymore. Any one that knows anything about the Legal side of buying a house would know that you can be sued if you complete a sale and cannot fulfill it.
Saying I was livid is an understatement.
I eventually received a correct mortgage offer and completed my sale without any further hitches until around August last year.
Abbey National accidently processed Direct Debit payments for around 10000 customers twice. This meant that some people had made two payments onto their account.
Luckily I did not have enough funds to pay my mortgage twice, as I am sure many people haven't, and the second transaction was returned by my bank. Abbey National however had realised their mistake and refunded every account with the second payment. As mine had been returned they actually refunded my initial payment and therefore I had not actually made a payment in August.
I telephoned Abbey National to find out what was going on and queued for absolutely ages until I finally spoke to someone who advised that they would debit my account again.
I feel on the whole that Abbey National Mortgage Finance are incompetant and do not know what they are doing. If was not for the fact that I have a tie period on my mortgage, I would have gone elsewhere ages ago. As it stands I have to wait until 2005 to transfer to someone else to avoid heavy penalties.
The moral of my story is to shop around and read your Terms & conditions thoroughly as you cannot rely on the so called experts to do their jobs correctly.
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I've also had a problem with abbey too, we are getting out asap because they messed us about. My credit rating is also out of the window because they messed us around. 1 month the mortgage bounced because we swapped from paying from my account to my husbands and they messed up big time but I've suffered from it cause I new that I wouldn't have enough to pay from my account so it charged my account with another bank (TSB) and I got charged even more because alot of other things bounced whilst they took the money from my account and I had other bills coming out before they gave back my money from the mortgage.
We also wanted the yearly statement but didn't see it until April (should arrive January) and we needed it for a remortgage.
drewboy 11.05.2004 19:09
I can understand your feeling towards Abbey for the situation but to be fair to them (as a mortage advisor) the problems with your offer was most likey to have been with the financial advisor. The problems that happen when you take your mortgage through a broker can be horrible as once they have your business, they really dont care much. best thing for anyone to do is to deal with the companies direct form start to finish.
Tanisha 09.05.2004 16:43
V. Helpful op. I am researching mortgage companies at the moment and have read alot of good stuff about the Abbey, but your op is making me think twice about them. It just goes to show, that it's best not to put your finances into so called professional hands!!
IF ANYONE READS THIS AND HAS ANY ADVICE ABOUT SELF CERT MORTGAGES, please leave me a message. Cheers Tanisha:)
Sep 9th, 2002
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