GE Money Mortgage - claims company say it was mis-sold

[onlyontuesdays]

Dear friends,

 

not been around for a while - but i need your advice!

 

I took out a GE Money mortgage back in 2001 - was previously with Lloyds but they would not give me a re-mortgage because i was self employed at the time - my wife however was full PAYE.

 

2 years ago we got a call from a claims company saying that the 'agent' who arranged our mortgage had gone bust

and that we could claim back our PPI we paid on the mortgage - we duly did this and got approx 5K back - alls well so far!

 

However..

.it did not take long after starting the mortgage for us to fall into arrears (about 3 years) due to a combination of a car crash and lack of work.

 

to cut a long story short we received a letter of eviction back in February this year as we owed 22k in arrears

- there was also another 9K in charges.

 

My wifes father passed away last year and as a result she inherited a sum of money from the sale of his property

- we had to use this to pay off these arrears otherwise my wife and our 2 young children would be out on the streets

- i suppose we were lucky that we had this money

- but it has left a very bitter taste we had to do this.

 

Today i received a letter from the same company that dealt with our PPI claim

saying that having reviewed our previous case it is now VERY likely we were missold our mortgage

- and we could claim back in the region of 10K - their fee for doing this is 35%!

 

I need to know the following:

1) can I claim back excessive arrears charges

2) how do i go about proving the mortgage was missold

3) if i do either of the above - how does that leave me with GE?

 

I hurts me so much that my wife had to give her Fathers legacy to these people - i want to get as much back for her as i can.

 

thank you for taking the time to read this

 

OOT

[jaxads]

Hi - I take it the charges are the £40 per month administration charges - for which us (unfortunate) GE customers get charged £40 per month - when all we get for that £40 per month is a letter telling us we have been charged £40 per monthI've just sent off my first letter requesting the charges (and interest on those charges) back.Good luck.

Good luck with getting some charges back but I've heard GE will try every trick in the book to avoid paying them back - GRRRRRR

Edited May 17, 2013 by jaxads

[onlyontuesdays]

Hi Jaxads

 

I have spent the last couple of days filing through reams of statements and have got to around 4K of admin charges!!!! - there is about another £600 of solicitor interim legal fees and just short of £500 of debt counselling fees.....do you know if these are claimable as well or is it just their admin fees, also what is the interest rate to add to these fees?

 

Sorry to be asking so many questions but i am a bit out of my depth here!

 

I suspect i will be hit with the usual belligerent attitude from GE when i request the charges back, but to be honest they have made me jump through hoops for the past 3 years and really have done nothing to help me sort my situation out - they blankly refused to accept any payment proposals - so i will keep on top of them with this request...

 

 

good luck with getting YOUR money back - keep us informed!

 

OOT

[onlyontuesdays]

Hi Surrey_36

 

Im in the same situation as your with these people - i managed to stave off repossession by paying off arrears - got very little help/understanding from them....

 

i requested an All Charges Statement from them - this duly arrived yesterday and it lists every single charge they have made on my account - it lists direct debit recall charges, Admin fee, default notice charge, solicitor interim legal fees, debt counselling fees....

 

i have around 4K of admin fees, £800 Solicitors fees and £300 of counselling fees -

 

I am definitely going to request the admin fees, but could i go for any of the others?

 

Good luck with your request - let us know!

 

 

OOT

[jaxads]

Hi - as I understand it, you can claim back arrears charges (the £40 ones, plus interest they have charged you on that). I've been advised to claim the interest rate back at the average rate throughout the term of the mortgage. There are some great spreadsheets around for calculating the interest. Remember, they started charging interest on those charges after 28 days.

 

I've also requested a refund of the Debt Counsellor's visits, which I never had. Again, after 28 days they started charging interest.

 

The solicitors costs are different, as they have had to pay for them. Not sure on the interest on the charges, but I've stated that if I find the solicitors charges to have been over-inflated that I'll be claiming those back too.

 

Good luck. I'll keep updating my post and keep checking yours to see how you are doing too.

 

The sooner I can get GE Money out of my life the better!!!!! And that will be quicker if I can get these charges reclaimed!!!!

[surrey_36]

Hi OOT, would be intesrested to know how you get on!

 

Are you going to go for the solicitor fees etc?

[onlyontuesdays]

Hi Surrey_36

 

After doing a bit of digging around i am definately going for the admin charges + interest - i don't see how they could dispute this as they are solely responsible for the fees. -

 

The solicitors fees are a different issue - i would need to prove that the solicitors did not charge GE this much, which to be honest is probably impossible to do.

 

The debt counselling fees i am going to claim back - The second visit was a different person to the first and when i told him what had been talked about in the first visit he said that i had been given wrong information!- when i had the third visit, it was the same guy as the second time and he contradicted everything that he had told me on the previous visit!!!!!

 

There are also some other fees for representing cheques etc - again i will claim these as i am sure that GE will not have been charged by their bank for this - i got charged by mine though!!!!

 

 

Letter will be going off shortly!!

 

regards

 

OOT

[surrey_36]

Hi OOT, how did you get on with the letter, did you use a letter from the template library on here?

[onlyontuesdays]

Hi Surrey_36

 

Yes, the letter is written, used a template from here - was about to go and post it ( recorded) then something quite incredible happened!!!!

 

Here is a bit of an infill to my story so you can see whats happened.

 

Got seriously into arrears with my mortgage over several years - GE got a repossession order in January.

We managed to get money together to clear the arrears but there were also 9K worth of charges - which proved too much for us to get - when i told GE this they said it was absolutly vital i paid 9K otherwise the eviction order would go through - i told them they had had all our money and i just could not afford this - eventually they said that they would accept 3K and the rest would go onto the term of the mortgage.

 

Done deal.

 

......or so i thought.

 

As i was going out to post my 'claim back charges' letter - postman delivered a letter from GE.

 

This letter basically said that after reviewing my account my monthly paymant was going up to take into account 9K worth of charges which were going to be added onto the term of my mortgage.

 

..but hang on... surely this was 6K as i had just been 'forced' to pay 3K in January.

 

I got on the phone to GE straight away - unfortunately i got the office dunderhead ( office is probably full of them!) - This stupid girl could not understand what i was trying to tell her - she kept saying that it was charges and interest since January - it was only when she just happened to say - ' but it doesnt matter because your account is 3K in CREDIT!

 

I got her to explain that again - yup sure enough - my account was 3K in credit.

 

i asked to to explain why it was like this - she just could not answer me - she did'nt have a clue!

 

I asked to be put onto her manager - eventually this very abrupt woman came to the phone and to say she was rude was an understatement!!!!

 

When i related the story of why i had to pay 3K she just replied that she couldn't understand why i was so bothered - it wasn't as if it was costing me anything because my account was now 3K in credit.

 

I stopped her there and then an informed her that i wished to make a complaint and could she get her complaints department to ring me asap.

 

strangely enough - i received a call within the hour - Told the lady that i wanted to complain about being forced to pay 3K as it was the only way to stop eviction ( on top of the 20K arrears i had just paid) which would go towards the charges and interest - only to then find that it had been credited to my account - which was already upto date and not allocated to paying the charges.

 

Luckily i had a list of phonecalls, times, dates, individuals who i had agreed all this with. She said she would listen to these recorded calls and get back to me.

 

duly enough she rang me back the following day and said - ' i am really sorry we made a big mistake - the 3K you paid was not allocated correctly by the collections team and as a result i am willing to pay this money back to you - with interest.'

 

RESULT!!!!!!

 

she also said that she had listened to the last couple of days phone calls i had had with them - and that she wasgoing to recommend that certain members of the team had further training!

 

 

so the end result is that i am waiting for the 3K to hit my bank account before i send the letter claiming back unreasonable charges.

 

will keep you informed

 

OOT

[surrey_36]

Hi onlyontuesdays

- how did you get on with the reclaiming?

 

I wrote to GE about 6 weeks ago and asked for a statement of charges but had no reply apart from text messages saying they need to talk me and to contact them urgently,

 

I don't want to talk to anyone on the phone but not sure what to do next