Hello Everyone, This is a piece of advise for my mother who is currently going through lots of old paperwork. Back in 1990, she and my grandfather bought a house between them, both named on the mortgage with the Nationwide. Both her income and his pensions (he was 70 at the time) were used to get the mortgage. Both had to have Decreasing Term Mortgage insurance linked to the property in the event of either of them dying as it would clear the mortgage. In 1992 my grandfather died and whilst dealing with his affairs, my mother (and I as a teenager) visited our local NW branch where we were told that the mortgage would be cleared in full due to his death. The amount at the time was circa £20000. This was a Friday afternoon and I clearly remember how relieved my mother was as this was a huge pressure lifted off her mind. Our home was secure. We had been asked to return on the Monday morning following which we did. On arrival my mother was taken aside and apologised to by a senior member of staff. There had been a mistake. Due to my Grandfathers age (72) the insurance would not pay out as he was not covered. The premiums were up to date and like I said the policy was sold less than 2 years previously. Apparently he should never have been sold the insurance policy due to his age at the time of taking out the mortgage. My mother was very upset and the member of staff apologised again stating that due to the mistake, the NW would refund the policy payments made. It was a few hundred pounds and no where near the £20000 she was expecting to be getting paid out that day. And that was that. Back then with no internet and my mum was a lay person, she took what the NW said at face value. She was a long standing customer 15+ years at the time and trusted the staff to know what they were saying - even though they had messed things up big style when selling the policy alongside the mortgage less than two years previous. Ive tried looking online but to little avail as this seems quite a rare instance nowadays. Can anyone advise as to the best way to try and gain some redress with this issue please? I think it was handled appallingly and NW should have swallowed the mistake back then. Thanks.

Hello everyone. My husband and I have applied for a loan to add on to our crrent mortgage with our current lender. We are renovating and lots has gone wrong and been ncovered so we need the money to get it finished. We googled property prices and found or home appeared to have 85% LTV in it for the amount we require. The mortgage adviser was great...we told her we werent convinced our home was worth more than the googling showed but we were approved and she said a surveyor would call and arrange to come round and value the house. That was saturday....i called today and she said that she wo0uld find out what had happened. She then called me back and said they had made a decision....and had valued our home at only £1000 more than we paid for it. We have already compelted asome renovations so surely this cannot be right? And how can they value a house without even looking at it?? We wanted to borrow £20k, but she said they can only loan us £7k now which wont be nearly enough. She said we can appeal and pay £65 for a surveyor to come out but i dont want to lose £65 if we are kidding ourselves. Any advice?