Thread: HELP ! Unfair charges from Woolwich ***REPAID***

HELP - I need some aid in drafting a complaint letter.

In 2008 I had got into problems with paying my mortgage. I was paying something monthly but never the full amount. By December 08 I was in a really bad situation and received threatening letters from Woolwich and was really panicing .

Fortunately my luck turned - within a couple weeks
Opportunities arose that would enable me to not only pay the full amount monthly, but also to repay the arrears within the first few months of 2009.
From mid Jan 09 I rang Woolwich regularly and made large debit card payments over the phone. Each time I kept them informed as to when the next chunk of money would be coming in.
The men on the phone told me I was the only one that had such arrears that was sorting the situation so quickly and efficiently.
However, the problem was that - because the interest rate had reduced -Woolwich considered me to be more months in arrears that I was when I first went in to arrears. This meant that, say I had been 3 months in arrears @5%, with the interest rates reducing to 1%, Woolwich considered me to be more than 6m in arrears
That said, I remained positive and by the end of April I could see that I would have cleared my arrears by mid May. I rang Woolwich, made a payment and again told them this situation.

However, a few days later I received 2 letters.
One from Woolwich saying my account had been passed to solicitors to commence repossession and they were charging me £100;
the other from the solicitors.
The letters were dated 1 day before my last conversation with Woolwich.
I was furious.
I wrote to Woolwich immediately, advising that Woolwich could see all the payments I had made in 4 months, that I had advised on each call that the arrears would be cleared by Mid May, and that when I had rung the day after this letter was allegedly written, the person on the phone made no mention of it.

By mid May I had cleared the arrears. And kept up payments since.

From June onwards, each month I rang to make the mortgage payment, I advised that I was still waiting to have a reply to my letter. Each time the man said he would ensure that happened - it never did.
But also - each time the man said that there was an extra charge on my account (the £100 solicitors letter charge which I had refused to pay) and that because it had not been paid, Woolwich was adding a £40 charge each month it was not paid.
Each month, I demanded a reply to my letter and it never came.

Finally in Dec 09, because of info gleaned from this site, I told the Woolwich that I thought they had to reply within 10 days to a letter - so why had it already taken more than 6 months ?
I then got a letter from the man I had originally written to.

His letter told me that the £100 charge was legitimate and it was to stand and that because it had not been paid I now had 7 months of £40 charges - £380 - and this would continue to increase by £40 until it was paid.....

So how do I argue this ?

Obviously if he had replied within 10 days all these months of £40 charges would not have been incurred.
Given that I had regularly informed them of the plan to clear the arrears, and was obviously clearing them, they should never have sent it to their solicitors.
I am incensed and wish to write a strong letter demanding all charges are withdrawn.
Can someone point me in the right direction - PLEASE.

Thanks Slick132,

Here we go:

"I am writing in response to your letter, dated xx/09, the contents of which I have noted.

I wrote to you on xx/05/09 with my complaints. It took 6 months for you to reply to me, despite monthly requests to the Woolwich colleagues who processed my mortgage payments. I understand the guideline for a written response to a complaint is 14 days.

Whilst you claim that the £100 solicitor’s referral charge is fully justified, I maintain that it is not justified. I also stress that none of the excess charges - incurred subsequently by your failure to reply to my letter within a respectable time frame - are justified either.

The statement that you provided with your letter fails to show a true and positive representation of the payments made to both clear my arrears and keep up with the mortgage payments.
The statement provided conveniently starts start April 09. This fails to show that I paid £xx000's in a 3-month period - between xx/12/08 and xx/03/09. These lump sum payments quite clearly showed that there was no need for legal intervention in my account.
Your letter also fails to take into account the regular conversations that I had with your Woolwich colleagues where I fully advised them of an imminent rental income due by mid May which would clear any arrears in full. I understand that I could send in a SAR, if needed, which would show all such conversations.
The reality is that between xx/03/09 and xx/05/09 – a 7 week period only - I made payments totalling almost £xx,000. The Woolwich was fully aware that I would clear the arrears by May 09, from rental income, and that there was absolutely no need for solicitors intervention or any associated charges.

I reiterate that The Woolwich should refund all charges and costs attributed to my account unnecessarily since April 2009.

Yours,

How does that sound?
Anything else (legal jargon/customer care duty etc) that I should add ?
With lots of thanks in advance....

Thank you.

I will copy and paste, tweek and refer back later.
Speak soon....

Yippee, yippee, yippee

Just got a letter from Woolwich. Very apologetic. And refunding all excess charges for the last year.

So thank you very much Slick for your advice / help with this issue.