Help needed!! **NO EVICTION**

[acerbic]

Familiar story on the way.

 

I’m seeking advice on a mortgage company, I’m asking on behalf of a friend who no longer has internet, (due to this company). They got a mortgage with these clowns in 2006, and ever since, have been robbing Peter to pay Paul. They have been getting deeper into debt, just trying to service their mortgage. Arrears all started when a payment was missed by 3 days, (I’ve seen the statement). Now, they have arrears of 20K.

Having said that, they have paid their mortgage on time for the last year, only to see the arrears keep rising.

Looking at the arrears,

£2500 arrears management fees

£3000 additional interest, (on arrears)

£3000 in legal fees

They were even charged £1000 for insurance on their account.

Anyway, in total the fees were around £12K. This actually means that they are 8K in arrears, BUT, to my knowledge this is the first time that they have seen their account fees, so they believed that were paying correctly.

They currently have a suspended possession order on their property. When they last went to court, the Judge told them to go away and make a case against these charges, and that he would see them again in four months, (so all okay for now).

They now know what their charges are, so...........

Could they argue that the possession order should be cancelled if they can pay the arrears but not the charges. It’s because of the charges that they’re in the mess they’re in. They also were asking me about the compensation side of things, (distress, costs,etc), but I’ve etold them “one step at a time”

I suppose the goal here is to get the possession order cancelled and that they continue to pay their mortgage on time as they are doing. I really just need them to get the best advice.

Edited January 7, 2011 by acerbic
names used

[Ell-enn]

True arrears are missed contractual monthly payments, not charges! Who is the mortgage company ?

[TUTTSI]

Yes a very familiar story tbvh.

 

We are two months away from paying back our all of our arrears - thank goodness and also have a suspended posession order and hopefully this will disapear once all the arrears have been paid.

 

Our plan is to start on reclaiming the charges/fees back once we are not in a vunable position.

 

We will start by sending a letter before action requesting the return of all charges and once they respond and tell us NO, we will send this to the FOS to sort out as aparently they do have succeses with reclaiming these excessive fees.

 

We also have a second mortgage with Melbourne and we have had some success with this they reduced the charges substantially - maybe not as much as we wanted but this has reduced our overall account with them.

 

If you know what all your charges are put them on a spreadsheet and send them a letter before action + interest give them 14 days to respond and tell them also in this letter that you are considering putting in a complaint to the FOS. You have to have a final letter from them before giving this to the FOS. I do not recomend the court route unless it becomes a set off situation.

 

I wish you all the best and let me know what happens.

Tuttsi

 

 

 

 

 

Familiar story on the way.

 

I’m seeking advice on a mortgage company, I’m asking on behalf of a friend who no longer has internet, (due to this company). They got a mortgage with these clowns in 2006, and ever since, have been robbing Peter to pay Paul. They have been getting deeper into debt, just trying to service their mortgage. Arrears all started when a payment was missed by 3 days, (I’ve seen the statement). Now, they have arrears of 20K.

Having said that, they have paid their mortgage on time for the last year, only to see the arrears keep rising.

Looking at the arrears,

£2500 arrears management fees

£3000 additional interest, (on arrears)

£3000 in legal fees

They were even charged £1000 for insurance on their account.

Anyway, in total the fees were around £12K. This actually means that they are 8K in arrears, BUT, to my knowledge this is the first time that they have seen their account fees, so they believed that were paying correctly.

They currently have a suspended possession order on their property. When they last went to court, the Judge told them to go away and make a case against these charges, and that he would see them again in four months, (so all okay for now).

They now know what their charges are, so...........

Could they argue that the possession order should be cancelled if they can pay the arrears but not the charges. It’s because of the charges that they’re in the mess they’re in. They also were asking me about the compensation side of things, (distress, costs,etc), but I’ve etold them “one step at a time”

I suppose the goal here is to get the possession order cancelled and that they continue to pay their mortgage on time as they are doing. I really just need them to get the best advice.

[acerbic]

Hi Tuttsi, thanks for looking, can you tell me what you mean by a set off situation? I don't know what this is.

Many thanks

[TUTTSI]

What I meant was if this matter was to go back to court either under the suspended possession order or any other reason, you should be able to demonstrate that there is a dispute with the charges and that a complaint has been lodged with the FOS.

 

I also understand from Rooftop Mortgages that the charges do not attract interest.

 

Hi Tuttsi, thanks for looking, can you tell me what you mean by a set off situation? I don't know what this is.

Many thanks

Edited January 8, 2011 by TUTTSI

[acerbic]

A Subject Access is about to be sent, although I'm not sure it'll do any good. I mean, the statement of charges is the most important bit. I wonder if anything else will turn up, (I'd certainly like to see this insurance policy).

I have to agree with Tuttsi about not rocking the boat as mentioned in some of her previous threads, but surely a subject access wouldn't do any harm, or would it?

I don't things could get much worse, as they've already tried to repossess once.

[Ell-enn]

Send the £10 fee for the SAR by postal order - write on the back of it "fee for Subject Access Request Only" also write your name and address and mortgage account number. Take a photocopy of the front and back of the PO and keep that with a copy of the letter for your records. Check on the royalmail website a few days after posting to print off the signature receipt - keep that safe with the copy letter.

[acerbic]

Thanks for that, it'll be off first thing monday.

[TUTTSI]

This is the SAR we sent, it did not upset anything more than what was upset by being in arrears. We actually found if we kept in touch and paid what we could on dates which we promised they were really ok with this although they tended to move the goal posts. Please feel free to change anything in this letter to make it what you want from it. Good Luck and let us know - they have 40+2 days to respond.

 

name

addr1

addr2

addr3

addr4

postcode

TEL

Mortgage Company Name

The Data controller

Addr1

Addr2

Postcode Date

RECORDED DELIVERY

IMPORTANT – PLEASE READ CAREFULLY

 

Dear Sirs

 

Subject Access Request (Data Protection Act 1998)

Mortgage Account No : xxxxxxxxxxxx –

Address and post code

 

 

We note from an initial review of the account that you have applied unlawful penalty charges and as such we are placing the account formally in dispute.

 

We would ask that you supply us with FULL disclosure of ALL information for this account. We would remind you that the County Court judges are threatening to imprison any Data Controller who does not comply with these requests.

 

The information requested, whilst not exhaustive is as follows:

 

• Full copies of all contracts which you believe exist between ourselves and your

organisation, including copies of any documents you hold in support of same.

• Full statements of all accounts from commencement of the accounts. This is to include all information held especially the summary of case notes and Mortgage Statements

• True signed and executed copies of all agreements in compliance with the Consumer

Credit Act 1974.

• Details of the identity of any individuals or organisations who have provided you with our personal information together with copies of any letters of instruction provided by them, or any contracts entered into between yourselves and the third party, and the relevant dates to which those contracts related.

• Copies of all documents which include any of our personal information including copies of any contracts or invoices, emails or computer records containing our personal information, or any records which pertain to this information.

• Full details and copies of any documents upon which you relied when you have provided my personal or financial information to any individual, organisation or third party.

• Full copies or transcripts of any computer logs or database records kept in relation to ourselves or in relation to our financial or personal information.

• Full copies of any correspondence in postal, email or any other format which you have entered into with any individual, organisation or third party which contains our personal or financial information, or which pertains to us.

• Details of all systems you currently have in place to ensure our personal or financial information is kept securely, including details of those officers who currently have control of same, and at the time it was held or provided to a third party.

• Where any previous information or records held have been deleted or disposed of, the methods used to do so, including dates, certificates or references confirming details of destruction. Where you are unable to provide such certificates, please provide a declaration, signed by an authorised officer of your company, confirming the dates and methods of destruction of this data.

• Full hard copy print outs of any of our personal or financial information held in a digital, magnetic or any other format which is held in any archives, backups or other storage devices / locations.

• Your registration number with the Information Commissioners Office.

• Your Consumer Credit License number and expiry date.

 

Where reference to emails is given above, these emails should be taken from your email servers or backups / archives held in a magnetic or digital format. These emails may not be present on a user’s local system, and may require the assistance of your IT department / IT providers, who you should contact immediately for their provision.

 

Please confirm whether you hold a physical file with details of our personal and / or financial information. If so, please provide details and dates of any instance when this file has left your control, to whom it has been communicated, the method of transportation / communication e.g. Royal Mail, courier, by hand, electronically. Please provide a full copy of this file where our physical file has left your offices, please provide details of any precautions taken to ensure that our information has not been lost, misplaced or made available to anybody who does not have authorised access, including those who would use our information for the purposes of identity theft, or registered with any credit agencies. Please also confirm whether any of the documents held within the physical file are computer generated.

 

Under S.40 of The Administration of Justice Act 1970, if you believe you have provided our information to any organisation, agent, or individual who could, or may have used it for unlawful purposes, you should contact us immediately, and provide full details of their identification and address, together with full details of any instructions you have provided to them. If you have forwarded or communicated our personal or financial information to any person, company, or organisation, please provide a copy of the authority, signed and dated by ourselves upon which you have relied prior to doing so. As requested above, you should provide copies on any such communications.

 

Under the Data Protection Act 1984 / 1998, as a Data Controller, you are responsible for the complete retraction of all information provided to any third party, should we request you to do so, and have a duty to us to ensure that any personal or financial information we have provided to you is kept securely, and is only communicated to those to whom we have given my express permission / authority.

 

If you are unable or do not intend supplying us with any information we require you to advise us at your earliest convenience in order that we might give consideration to our responses.

 

In complying with both the Data Protection Act you are permitted to charge a maximum fee of £10 and that payment is enclosed by cheque no ……………..

 

Finally you are reminded that the Subject Access Request must be provided within 40 days of the date this recorded letter was sent.

 

You are also reminded that the ICO state that whilst the maximum limit for compliance is 40 days Data Controllers should not use this as a guide for compliance and should whenever possible provide the information as soon as possible. If you do await the 40 day limit it may be found that you have not complied in supplying the information we require. In which case there would be insufficient time left for you to comply causing you to be guilty of an offence

 

Non-compliance with our request is a criminal offence under the above Acts and will result in a report being submitted to the relevant statutory authorities.

 

As you are aware, a credit agreement that is not properly documented and signed by the customer is totally unenforceable under the CCA and therefore is a complete defence to any court claim that is issued.

Finally, please understand that this alleged debt is now in dispute and all communication must be in writing. Since we have made formal requests under this legislation you are obliged to provide us with that information and your employees should not pursue the alleged debt. we would remind you of the law related to harassment and the OFT guidelines.

Section 40 of the Administration of Justice Act:

(1) A person commits an offence if, with the object of coercing another person to pay money claimed from the other as a debt due under a contract he-

(a) harasses the other with demands for payment which, in respect of their frequency, or the manner or occasion of making any such demand,

(2) A person may be guilty of an offence by virtue of sub-section (1) (a) above if he concerts with others in the taking of such actions as is described in that paragraph, notwithstanding that his own course of conduct does not by itself amount to harassment.”

Furthermore your attention is drawn to:

Both the Office of Fair Trading and trade associations (run by the credit industry) have produced guidance on what activities may be considered harassment and should therefore be avoided by creditors. The following list is taken from the new Debt Collection Guidance for holders of consumer credit licences.

Creditors are warned by the Office of Fair Trading under the Debt Collection Guidance that the following practices are "considered unfair":

“PUTTING PRESSURE ON DEBTORS OR THIRD PARTIES IS CONSIDERED TO BE OPPRESSIVE.”

This includes:

• Contacting you too frequently

You are instructed with immediate effect to destroy all records of any phone numbers you may have where I can be contacted and to instruct all employees to not attempt to telephone me whilst this alleged debt is in dispute. Failure to comply will result in formal complaints to OFT, FOS and ICO requesting removal of your license to conduct any Consumer Credit trade and a complaint to the police seeking prosecution for harassment.

I await hearing from you.

Yours faithfully

Name(s)

[acerbic]

Thanks for that, great letter!

I've given them a much simpler SAR letter, but now that I see what you've sent, I can't help wondering if they should be sending a letter like the one above.. Can I ask what kind of response you got from them. Did they send 'everything', or were there bits missing?

Could they put the account in dispute as you've done, even though there is a possession order for the house now? I'd love it if they could.

 

My take on the situation was this.....they would never have got a possession order, suspended or otherwise, if the arrears, (started off at three days), and unlawful charges weren't on the account in the first place!

I thought along the lines of,

 

get the charges and arrears sorted/disputed/lifted/deleted

then put in a N244 asking for the possession order to be cancelled as had the real figure been known, the possession would never have been granted.

 

Do that stack up, or am I just dreaming??

[TUTTSI]

It is not a quick fix by any means, if you get as far as the FOS they take forever, but it keeps the account in dispute and this will stop hopefully any further action.

 

My letter is very comprehensive and in particular you can add about the Insurance as well.

 

As I said you can add or delete on that letter anything that is relevant to your friend.

 

 

All the best

Tuttsi

[acerbic]

Thanks Tuttsi,

 

I'vejust seen the general form of judgement or order, ordering that they keep up with their payments, plus £100 on top to go towards the arrears.

The judge also wants my friends to bring to court with them;

1)detail updated I/E with docs to support the figures

2)detail proposals for a revised offer to clear the outstanding arrears within a reasonable amount of time

 

and.....this is the bit I don't understand

3)details any advice given in relation to the level of charges made to the account by the mortgage company

 

I assume that part 2 could be covered by the Norgan V Cheltenham case

part 1 is self explanatory

does anyone have any ideas on what the judge wants to see in relation to point three?

 

Many thanks

[acerbic]

Quick update, SAR sent received by them and signed for, so clock ticking.

 

Their arrears are roughly £8,000, however, the court documents state an arrears of over £20K. This arrears figure is clearly false. Do we bring that to the Judge's attention by way of a statement to the court when it comes up for review?

I think the mortgage was mis-sold too, but I think that needs further investigation. No investment vehicle, no consideration to payment increase after the initial period to name two potential areas of worry.

[TUTTSI]

Thanks Tuttsi,

 

I'vejust seen the general form of judgement or order, ordering that they keep up with their payments, plus £100 on top to go towards the arrears.

The judge also wants my friends to bring to court with them;

1)detail updated I/E with docs to support the figures

2)detail proposals for a revised offer to clear the outstanding arrears within a reasonable amount of time

 

and.....this is the bit I don't understand

3)details any advice given in relation to the level of charges made to the account by the mortgage company

 

I assume that part 2 could be covered by the Norgan V Cheltenham case Correct

part 1 is self explanatory

does anyone have any ideas on what the judge wants to see in relation to point three? Can you list the charges once they have the statements showing all the charges.

When exactly is the court hearing as they will need to inform the judge that they are awaiting the SAR showing all the documentation showing all the charges etc?

 

 

Many thanks

 

The I&E should be easy to put together as well as any documentation that supports their hardship and what caused the mortgage arrears.

 

Can your friend now afford the £100 on top of the regular payments?

 

They will probably grant a suspended possession order which means that if your friend falls behind again they will repossess.

[acerbic]

Hi TUTTSI, is ther any way I could get this thread moved to the repossessions forum? The thread is about a repo that has been suspended rather than about a mortgage co.

[Ell-enn]

Thread moved

[acerbic]

Thanks Tuttsi and Ell-enn for the thread move.

I think I've worked out part three of the order from the judge, I think the judge wants to see the answers that the mortgage co give in the SAR in relation to the charges. Do we have to send a separate letter specific to the charges on the account? We'll only get a statement from the SAR, we didn't ask any specific questions on it. n

If we wrote to them, how long would they have to respond to our questions re charges? Is 14 days enough?

[TUTTSI]

You should have detailed in your SAR a list of everything that is required, hence my letter which I gave you detailed everything.

 

Your statements however, should show what charges they are adding and the costs of each.

 

For instance our mortgage company were charging something between £75-£125 to write a letter. Our SAR showed up exactly what they were adding to our account and why we owed them many thousands more than we should have done.

 

Tuttsi

 

ps I did make some remarks in my earlier post - in this colour withing your quotes as I am not sure that you noticed them?

[acerbic]

Thanks for that, I did see the notes in purple. I have seen a copy of the statement. It was given to my friends by the Judge when they told her that they'd never seen one! How bad is that for the company. That's when the Judge said that she wanted point 3 answered when they return to court. The court hearing hasn't been set yet, but it will be sometime in late March/early April. I think she wants my friends to ask direct questions about the size of the charges so she can make some kind of ruling as to the fairness of them??? No sure if that's correct, but that was my take on it when I read the order form. BTW I did copy the form almost word for word in post #12, I thought someone may have had a similar order from a Judge.

 

From the statement it is clear that the charges are roughly £12K whilst the true arrears is about £8K, that brings back to my other question of whether one could challenge the whole validity of the repo order based on the fact that the figures were never correct. OR would a judge grant a repo order if there were arrears of any amount? I don't know.

 

thanks

[acerbic]

Can anyone tell me what 'Lenders Interest Only Buildings Insurance' is please. Is it just Buildings Insurance with a fancy name?

And if so, is £1300 is a bit steep for a 4 bed house?

 

Many Thanks

[Ell-enn]

Bloomin right it's steep! it's extortionate !! I only pay £330 a year for buildings and contents - if you're being charged that amount you need to arrange your own insurance and send them a copy - they have to cancel their insurance and stop charging you if yo have your own insurance.

[Blossomandebony]

Hi, Acerbic,

 

I have been successful in getting charges refunded on both my mortgage, (county court claim) and second mortgage (FOS ) so your friend does have good grounds on which to defend any possession order.

 

When I claimed through the courts, the mortgage company initially defended the action, then paid up. With the FOS it took longer but in the end they did agree with my reasoning that the charges had been excessive because I was making a good attempt to clear the arrears, shown by numerous statements. I can look up the exact wording of the Fos judgment if you like. Anyway, the mortgage company paid up straight away and my arrears were cleared.

 

BAE

[acerbic]

I've been looking through the statement from start to finish.....twice in four years they were told by the mortgage co that they were up to date, (no arrears). Only to find that when they've made their lum sum payment they are still £2K in 'arrears' due to charges, BUT they were told twice that all was clear.

 

I wonder if there is any money that can be reclaimed on the insurance, they never asked for it. It was put on the arrears account and added to the arrears when they 'didn't receive the documentation they requested'.

I have been successful in getting charges refunded on both my mortgage, (county court claim) and second mortgage (fos ) so your friend does have good grounds on which to defend any possession order.

 

When I claimed through the courts, the mortgage company initially defended the action, then paid up. With the fos it took longer but in the end they did agree with my reasoning that the charges had been excessive because I was making a good attempt to clear the arrears, shown by numerous statements. I can look up the exact wording of the fos judgment if you like. Anyway, the mortgage company paid up straight away and my arrears were cleared.

 

I'd love to get some compensation for all this, I wonder how much four years worth of stress, worry, further indebtedness to service the arrears etc etc is nowadays.

 

They have cancelled the insurance, they have provided their own. I just wish they'd never got it in the first place.

[acerbic]

Update, received an incomplete SAR back from them, so I'll be getting them to send the letter asking for the rest of it. I also would love to see the underwriting sheet, I'm sure it's got some details in it. Forgot to ask for that in the original SAR. Blossomandebony, thanks for your offer on the FOS details, could I pester you for the link please, they are going to need that soon. Can you point me in the right direction for a letter to challenge their exorbitant charges, they've not got too long now before they're back in court. They just need to show the Judge that they're dealing with the charges. Many thanks

[Ell-enn]

Hi, mortgage charges letter affixed

Mortgages Charges letter.doc