Woolwich mortgage charges . WON

HP Mum · January 24, 2010

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 :sad: .

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 :sad:

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.

HP Mum · January 25, 2010

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 :Cry: .

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 :Cry: