misinformation and false hope given a week before we are due to be evicted

[Emmr75]

Please could someone offer advice as we are on the brink of becoming homeless.

 

We have an eviction date which is this Friday, 20th April. The courts gave an outright possession order in August last year and I have tried on many occasions to try and come to a solution to avoid our home being repossessed. Both Barclays and their solicitor have ignored many of my request for information and now to add insult to injury we have been given information which offered us a glimmer of hope but have been told that the information was in fact wrong and we should disregard it.

 

Our main problem is we are stuck in a fixed rate mortgage of 5.24% and since August I have tried to find a solution which would allow us to exit the fixed rate as it doesn't come to an end until 2017.

I was told in August the penalty to exit the fixed rate would be £8000, then I was told that the information I had been given was incorrect and in fact the penalty charge would be £16,000. I tried to negotiate ways in which we may be able to exit the fixed rate but all request fell on deaf ears and there seemed no way out. However, last Thursday at 5.45 I received an email from Barclays solicitor saying if we wished to exit our fixed rate mortgage the penalty for doing so would be around £8000. I immediately emailed their solicitor to ask them to confirm the exact figure needed but did not receive a reply. A family member came to our aid and offered to lend us the £8000 needed to exit the fixed rate as it would mean, or as I was lead to believe it would mean, that our mortgage payment per month would be reduced by nearly £1000. We would be in a far better position to address our arrears and we would not be living with the looming threat of being made homeless. Both myself and an agent from Shelter emailed Barclays solicitor to get confirmation for the amount needed to exit the fixed rate fee and to confirm what the new payment would be but did not receive a reply.

 

Barclays wrote to me in September to say that when our fixed rate term comes to an end our mortgage interest rate would change to their standard variable rate which is 0.95% above base rate. I assumed that the rate I was given in Sept would be the rate that we would be placed on if we paid the penalty to exit the fixed rate term early.

 

However, today after I had to chase the bank for an answer we were told by Barclays that the solicitor had given us the wrong information and the amount to exit our fixed rate term was £16,000 and that even if we did the new rate they would be looking to place us on is 4.99%. Our whole world has now come crashing down. I have spoken to three different Barclays employers today and I've been left feeling utterly devastated. This is our lives they are playing with and they don't seem to give a dam about their customers. The last conversation kept circling round why would I think that the penalty would be £8000 when I had already been informed it was £16,000. To which I replied that the information was given to me by their solicitor so therefore I would expect it to be correct and I had been asking for confirmation but as yet I had received none; and why would I think that the new rate of interest would be at their SVR. If I paid the penalty charge I would be forcing the end of the term and would have to get a new mortgage, which would be difficult because we are unable to pay the mortgage ourselves and we are relying on the DWP to pay the mortgage for us. As well I was told that they wouldn't except payment to exit the fixed rate instead I would have to use it to pay towards my arrears. I have a N244 form ready to take to the court tomorrow but I'm not confident with that working as I have no faith in the courts at all.

I just can't believe that Barclays are aloud to treat us in this way. We are classed as a vulnerable family as my son is autistic and my daughter is registered as a young carer. We don't want to loose our home but the bank are unwilling to negotiate any way out of our problems but continue to feed us wrong information, even at this late stage giving us a false sense of hope only to dash it away ageing and question why we would think the information given to us was correct, like we're stupid or something.

I'm starting to have panic attacks which are effecting me physically due to the stress the bank are putting us through.

Please if there is any one out there that could offer us advice I would really appreciate it as time is something we don't have.

 

Thanks in advance

[dave121]

I am no expert but i would get the N244 FORM in as soon as the court opens tomoz, how come you have waited while the eviction date? sorry cannot be of further help as i would not wish to give you wrong advise...

Dave

[Emmr75]

Thanks for the reply.

 

Barclays called me yesterday as a way of damage limitation for them to try once again convince me that it was somehow my fault for thinking that what I was being told by their solicitor was actually correct? Throughout the conversation all I kept hearing from Barclays was "I don't understand why you would think that the figure would be £8000 when we told you back in Sept that the penalty charge for early exit would be £16,000?" However, when I said that I had sent several emails asking for confirmation that £8000 was the correct figure, no one had got back to me. To which I was told the bank has a policy where they aim to reply to enquiries within 5 working days and I wasn't their only customer!

 

As well, our advisor from Shelter had emailed them last Friday to also get confirmation as to the correct figure needed to allow us to exit our fixed rate but no one had replied to her email either. Barclays were more concerned in justifying why they had not been able to reply. Their excuse was that my husband's signature on the authorisation form did not match the one the solicitor had, but unfortunately that was a pretty lame excuse because we had already addressed that problem on Monday. My husband had called their solicitor and we resent another form with other identification to their office. It was a little bit after I told Barclays this that they then turned round and said because we had been given the wrong information the eviction would be cancelled for 14 days, however, more senior members of the bank had looked at our account and decided that the eviction should still go ahead on Friday, but the woman on the phone said she had stuck her neck on the line and would over ride that decision and cancel the eviction for 14 days to allow us to put a proposal together.

 

We have received an email form them to say that eviction has been cancelled, however, they will be re applying for another eviction date in 14 days time, and that a senior member of the bank has already sanctioned enforcement action, any revised proposals will need to be reviewed by them.

 

To me that sounds like a threat! Either play ball or else!! It's a shame that this senior member does not have the decency to contact me directly and tell me themselves.

 

In a phone call on Tuesday I told the bank I would be contacting the FSA, my MP, and the national press and tell them what we have been through and how we have been lied to, how requests for information have been ignored and complaints have not been addressed. To me there seems to be a clear indication that both the bank and there legal advisors show sheer lack of competence, which is quite a scary thought seeing as they hold so much power over so many lives.

 

When we received the eviction notice I called Shelter but unfortunately we had to wait a little bit for our advisor to contact us because she wasn't very well and then there was Easter. We had everything prepared last week, but then I got the email from the Bank's solicitor which got our hopes up last Thursday 12th April at 17.45. We hoped that if the information in the email was correct then the we had already arranged for a loan from my mum and we would have paid the exit fee and arranged the arrears payment and the bank would then stop the eviction. It was only because I made repeated phone calls on Tuesday that we found out that we had been given incorrect information.

 

We are livid with the Bank and the way we have been treated. I would really love to know if there is any legal route I can go down to question their conduct as we have been through hell this week, one minute we were on top of the world thinking that we may have the ability to actually save our home and then any hopes were just ripped out from underneath us.

 

Sorry for the garbled post, finding it very hard to keep my thoughts together.

 

Emmr75