My Mortgage Fees Were Refunded!!!!!!!!

[dashngail]

Hi everyone, new to this site and forum and already amazed at some of the stuff that the financial institutions are pulling. Incredible that it is possible to reclaim redemption penalties. We were forced to remortgage after 18 months when the interest rate increased (raised mortgage by over £200 p/m) and our son also had to remortgage his house early to remove his ex-girlfriend from his mortgage, so this is clearly of interest to us.

 

Could I ask a question? We were in a little financial difficulty last year, illness related, and the building society charged us things like late payment charges, arrears fees, etc, even though the DWP were paying the mortgage and we were keeping them informed, they still sent us letters almost on a weekly basis and charged us £35 each time. Are these liable to be reclaimed?

 

Darren & Gail

[dashngail]

Here's a copy of the letter I have prepared to claim mortgage redemtion fees

Be very grateful if someone could comment on whether it's OK to send.

I'm not very confident in sending without someone having a look at it first

Thanks

Dashngail

 

 

Mortgages PLC

 

Request for repayment of redemption charge

 

Dear Sir/Madam,

 

ACCOUNT NUMBER:

 

My request

I am writing to ask you to refund to me the redemption charge levied against us. I now understand that the, are unlawful at Common Law, Statute and recent Consumer regulations.

 

Your responsibilities

I would draw your attention to the terms of the contract which you agreed to at the time that I opened my account. It is an implied term of that contract that you would conduct yourselves lawfully and in a manner which complies with UK law. I am frankly shocked that you have operated and charged us in this way as I had always reposed confidence in your integrity and expertise as my fiduciary.

What I require

I calculate that you have charged £3,481.54 in redemption penalties this is the amount I am claiming in refund

My targets to resolve this matter

I hope that you will enter into a sincere dialogue with me about this matter and I am writing this letter to you on the assumption that you will prefer to do this than merely respond with standard letters and leaflets.

 

I will give you 14 days to reply to me accepting unconditionally my request in principle and letting me know a date by which I will receive payment.

 

If you do not respond or you do not respond positively within this time period, I shall send you a letter before action giving you a further 14 days in which to reflect. I believe that these targets are more than sufficient for a large company such as yours with dedicated staff and departments.

 

After that there will be no further communication from me and I shall issue a claim at the expiry of the second deadline.

 

Yours faithfully,

 

 

 

[dashngail]

I have just written a letter to my current mortgage provider.

During this past year we have hit major fianancial problems due to health, back on track now though thank goodness.

 

I have checked out annual statement between Aug 05 and March 06 we have charges for £257, (plus £105 since the statement arrived) on the statement they are listed as arears fees.

 

During that time the DSS were paying part of the mortgage and we were attempting to pay the rest. We were in regular contact with Birmingham Midshires, yet what seemed to happen after every month was they sent out a letter telling us we were in arrears at a cost of £35.

 

We have been back to work and paying the full mortgage plus £30 every month since April to reduce the arrears. We still have an arrears of a few hundred pound left which we have discussed with BM yet still every month we get a letter.

 

We are a little nervous about claiming due to that fact that we still have the arrears, we have read that banks can attempt to close accounts when someone claims, is this the case with mortgages.

 

After I just wrote the above I feel a stupid asking, but if someone could just reassure us the nothing can be done with regard to our mortgage

 

Thanks

dashngail

[dashngail]

Hi

We sent our second letter to Mortgages PLC, today we have received a response, we are really confused at what our next step should be.

 

They have sent a letter stating that we agreed that the beginning of the mortgage to pay a 6% redemption charge if it was settled before 2 years.

The last paragraph states this is not their final response yet they are not offering anything.

 

Our dilemma now is the 14 days are up at the end of next week should we just go ahead and issue summons for small claims or do we reply to this letter challenging the disproportionate ammount charged. Or can we even issue the small claim when they are offering to talk more even though they are not offering a way forward. It seems to us that they are using delay tactics.

 

Within in the letter it is mentioned that in January 05 our mortgage was in arrears ( for about 4 weeks no more) and that when this happens manual work has to be done. This to us is nonsense in regard to the redemption charges we are talking about.

 

 

Any help offered would be most gratefully accepted.

 

Thanks

Dashngail

[dashngail]

Hi

Sorry didn't make ourselves clear in previous post

We sent to preliminary letter giving 14 days to respond. There reply to this was to send us a copy of our orginal contract pointing out that we had agreed to the 6% redemtion charge.

 

We then sent the second letter giving them a further 14 days consideration before action.

 

In there reply that draw our attention to the Special Mortgage Condition 147 Redemption Charges.

"the borrower (you) may repay the secured ammounts in whole or part on any business day, provided that in each case where such payment occur on or prior to the third anniverary of completion the borrowere shall pay to the company an administration fee equal to 6% of the capital balance amount being repaid.

Where such repayments occur after the 3rd anniversary after completion the borrowere shall pay to the company an administration equal to ones months interest on the amount repaid at the rate of interest applicable to the mortgage on the mortgage on that date of such repayment. This administration fee shall not apply where one calender month written notice is given"

 

It then goes on to say we should have brought this matter up at the time, then onto mortgage arrears (which we havn't mentioned in any correspondence)

They also ask why we didn't bring it up when we completed the mortgage.

 

Another point in the letter states they presume we completed this mortgage to get a lower rate with another company therefore they don't beleive we have been financially dissadvantaged by redeem our mortgage, in actual fact the mortgage we now have costs more, but we had to redeem for other reasons.

 

They have also sent us another breakdown of the completion statement, which clearly says

Early Repayment Charge £3,490.13

Redemption Admin Charge £ 134.

 

Even though they have sent this epic without making any offer of refund, the next to last paragraph says they hope it will not become neccessary to commence proceedings. The last paragraph is the one which says please note this is not my final response and gives us until Sept 7th to respond.

 

Are they buying time or does anyone think we should go ahead with our claim in small claims, or should we reply asking them to send us a breakdown of manual costs relating to the early repayment charge

 

We can scan the letter on privately if anyone thinks they need to read more

 

Sorry this message is a bit like war and peace, but we don't want the final 14 days to elapse and us not be ready for war.

 

Thanks

Dashngail

[dashngail]

Hi. thanks for the reply.

Here's something we've worked up to send, opinions anyone!

 

 

Thank you for your letter dated 14th July 2006, we have read its contents thoroughly.

We have only recently been made aware of the legal precedent and recommendations to financial institutions by the Office of Fair Trading, which were detailed in our previous letters. This information, relates specifically to unfairly disproportionate charges and fees levied by banks and financial institutions in relation to its customers. Furthermore these recommendations allow for retroactive claims for charges made within the last six years. Had we been aware of this at the time the mortgage was redeemed, then they would have been contested.

In this particular instance we feel the redemption charge levied against our account for the completion of the mortgage, does not accurately reflect the actual cost of work involved to redeem this contract, nor, as you letter implies, the administration of the account. You will note from the completion statement with which you have kindly furnished us, that an amount of £134.00 was also levied on our account for ‘Redemption Administration Charge’, you will kindly note that we not attempting to contest this charge and feel this is fair and justified.

We would like to correct your assumption that this mortgage was redeemed in order that we could benefit from a more favourable rate of interest with another lender, in actual fact this was done for entirely different reasons and we are in fact paying more per month to our current lender. Although this has little or no bearing on the matter under discussion, we feel it is important to make this correction.

We accept your statement regarding the arrears which occurred on the account in January 2005, and that some direct manual intervention was required at that point, and as a result were charged £413.00 in administration charges, as detailed in the redemption statement you have kindly sent us.

We are not disputing in any way that the mortgage account was redeemed at the time your letter states, nor are we disputing any of the dates, term lengths or interest percentage rates stated, these are clearly stated in your documentation. However we are somewhat confused by the statement implied in your letter that your charges “compensate us for the cost of administering your mortgage account effectively”, surely once a mortgage account passes its initial period, a redemption charges is no longer applicable, what vehicle exists to compensate you at this point?

As we have stated above, our dispute in this matter is directly related to the actual cost involved in redeeming the mortgage account, and how this actual cost relates to the amount charged.

Therefore we would be pleased to receive from yourselves a breakdown, in form of a receipt, detailing the minutiae of the £3490.13 charge and how that charge has been reached, including cost of man hours, office supplies, telephone calls, etc. We would also be pleased if you would process and send us this information before the 24th July 2006, as this is the deadline we have set within our previous letters, and at which time we shall commence with County Court proceeding against you.

Alternatively, we would be pleased to receive reimbursement of the redemption charges in the form of a cheque or an undertaking from yourselves that payment will be forthcoming. Please note that any payment in the form of a cheque should be made solely in the name of ‘xxxxxxx' as no joint bank account exists.

Furthermore, we are willing to enter in further meaningful dialogue with yourselves in an effort to settle this matter amicably, any such expression should, again, be made by letter before 24th July 2006.

Please note we are resolute in our stance, and would advise that this matter not be treated lightly.

Thanks

Dashngail

[dashngail]

Hi Misslilly

 

We sent our preliminary letter off a couple of weeks ago. We had the orginal mortgage offer which has all the interest rates included. ( you wont need the orginal offer to send the first letters, but you will need these if you have to go to small claims). When sending the first couple of letters when claiming redemtion you should only need to quote the amount you have been charged.

 

If you have a look through this thread there are a couple (including ours) templates you could use.

 

As I said the template for the letter we have sent are on this thread but if you can't find them just e-mail us privately asking for copies.

 

Let me know how things go!

Dashngail

[dashngail]

Misslilly

Yes you can request the info from your mortgage company under the Data Protection Act (letter in in the library section). It will probably cost you £10 and you have to give them 40 day to do it though. It might be quicker all round if you could get the full figures from your solicitors.

Good luck with your search

Dashngail

[dashngail]

Help and advise needed before Tuesday if possible.

We at the point where we need to prepare our moneyclaim for mortgage redemption.

We have read the wording for claiming bank charges through court, but need to know what wording we need to change if anything for claiming redemption charges.

This is quite urgent as our previous mortgage provider has only until the 26th to make an offer, so we would like to prepare our summons so that we are ready to go at the exact time we have given them.

Help please someon

Thanks

Dashngail

[dashngail]

Here's a copy of what we have put together from the templates. It is what we think we should put on our moneyclaim form for redemption charges

Comments anyone

Thanks

Dashngail

 

We had a contract with the defendant mortgage provider July 04 and which was conducted on their standard terms and conditions. We are claiming the return of money taken by the defendant in the way of redemption penalty charges in Oct 05. The defendants charges are a disproportionate penalty and therefore unenforceable as they are contrary to common law. Further, as a disproportionate penalty they are invalid under the Unfair (Contracts) Terms Act 1977 s.4 and under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999. Para.8 and sch.2(1)(e). In the event that the charges are not a penalty then they are unreasonable within the meaning of the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 s.15.

We have repeatedly asked the defendent to justify their charges but they have declined to do so.

[dashngail]

Today we received a reply to our last letter to Mortgages PLC (our letter was posted on this thread on the 20th July) we asked for a breakdown of what the redemption figure was made up off.

Here's the reply we got this morning.

 

Firstly, I would confirm the OFT's statement 18 May 06 specifically related to bank credit default fees, not early repayment charges on mortgages. The two fees are fundamentally different, and relate to two different products. The early redemption charges applicable to our mortgages are not default charges and as such the OFT ruling does not apply.

All lenders opperate a variety of approaches in determing how to price products and our early repayment charge is an intergal part of the overhaul pricing of our products. Your product offered you a 2% discount off our standard variable rate for 18 months in order to be able to offer this discount and enable us to fully recoupe it was necessary to implement a 3 year early repayment charge period. Our previous letter clearly states our the early repayment charge that applied to your mortgage. You accepted the terms of this mortgage and your loan completed on this basis

I am sorry that I have been unable to resolve your compliant to your satisfaction.

You may treaat this as a final response letter in order to persue the matter with the financial ombusman.

 

Comments on the above please, we think we should now go ahead with issuing court papers since there letter doesn't answer anything that we asked.

Are we correct in assuming that the statement from the OFT is not correct.

Help please

Thanks

Dashngail

[dashngail]

Thanks for your VERY quick response.

Here we go then, will sort the court papers tomorrow.

We're just a little confused at one point in your reply, where you say "irrecoverable", do you mean from their point of view.

 

Yes all very well and good, but it does not tell you how the charge was calculated. In the absence of this information, you can only assume that does not accurately reflect the actual costs and losses caused to them by you terminating your contract early, so by the absence of that it is a penalty - and therefore irrecoverable, etc etc.

 

Thanks

Dashngail

 

 

 

[dashngail]

Hi

The best advise anyone can give you is to first read, read and read again everything on the site, and be prepared to see this through to the end.

 

Then get all your paperwork together and send off your first letter.

 

We are at the stage of issuing a small claim, our paperwork has gone off today. We have followed the steps for bank charges with a few nips and tucks.

 

There is always plenty of help and support on this site every step of the way.

 

Unfortunately claiming back redemption fees is in a very early stage, but people are getting them money refunded.

 

Go get them!

 

Best of luck

 

Dashngail

[dashngail]

Hi All

 

We filed our court claim and as of 25/08/06 Mortgages PLC havn't sent in a defence. So we have checked on the money claim site and have been directed to

 

Do you wish to enter Judgment by Default or by Admission? Please select one of the options below:

The defendant has not filed an admission or defence to my claim

(Judgment by Default)

You will need to decide, how and when you want the defendant to pay. You can ask for the Judgment to be paid by instalment or in one payment.

The defendant admits that all the money is owed

(Judgment by Admission)

If the defendant has given a new address on the form of admission to which correspondence should be sent, update the defendant's details within the following Judgment request.

We appear to have got judgement by default.

 

Has this happened to anyone else, it can't have been as easy as this.

 

Thanks

Dashngail

[dashngail]

Hi Chrismc

 

We havn't had an acknowledgment or defence, if fact we havn't had any response at all from them or the court, so as I understand we can claim judgement after 14 days.

 

As for the script we didn't realise this was standard.

Going to ring the court in the morning.

Cheers

dashngail

[dashngail]

Hi

 

Went to moneyclaim site this am, selected option judgement by default and it allowed us to continue,

 

So it seems we have a judgement by default.

We await the judgement from the court, can anyone tell us what we have to do once we receive them

 

Cheers, from 2 very happy people, this claim was on behalf of our son

dashngail

[dashngail]

Hi

Yes everything has been in our sons name. We told him about claiming and he asked if we would do it for him.

 

Cheers

Dashngail

[dashngail]

Hi all

I as said in last post we have judgement against Mortgage PLC by default.

Now on to the next step, when we filed the judgement it asked how we wanted payment, we selected immediately (of course).

 

We understand that the court will send us the details of the judgement, but we're unsure what our next step will be to enforce the judgement, does anyone have the answer to this one.

 

Can't explain how delighted we are to have got this judgement for our son, although we are not finished there we have just sent second letter to redeem our £6000 + penalty charge from Platform Holdings and to Lloyds TSB for bank charges.

 

A HUGE THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS HELPED GET US TO THIS POINT.

Cheers

Dashngail

 

dashngail

[dashngail]

Hi gizmo111

Just had a look a Nightstar saga, will keep our eye on that one.

Cheers

Dashngail

[dashngail]

Not sure what's blown us away most this week the judgement or finding out that people have been watching and waiting to see what happened in our claim.

 

The daft thing is we thought we would be the first to not get anything back from any of the bodies we are claiming from.

 

Thank you very much for your very kind and encouraging words.

 

Our advise for you now is

 

GO AND GET YOUR MONEY RETURNED, JUST DO WHAT IS TAKES

 

Will be following your journey with interest.

Cheers

Dashngail

[dashngail]

Thanks for your message, we now waiting for payment. We were a little concerned that they might try to stop the judgement but they havn't made any comment at all. We have written a letter informing Platform that we will be issuing a warrent if we havn't received the refund by Thursday, so hopefully our son's bank balance will rise pretty soon.

 

We are due to issue two court claims this week, one for Lloyds (bank charges)and the other Platform Holding (our mortgage redemtion penalties £6000)

 

When you said you need more experience, I think that you can only get this by doing what needs doing as each case is so different plus each bank seems to operate in different way.

 

I'm going to put your post on our reminder list as you are a week in front of us with Lloyds.

 

Keep going, you get what is YOURS

 

Cheers

dashngail

[dashngail]

Sorry I thought I had read on your signature that you had already issued the money claim against Lloyds. Must have been someones elses signature.

 

Cheers

dashngail

[dashngail]

Ah...........................HELP HELP

 

We got our judgement on the 1st Sept. heard nothing since today we were getting ready to instruct the balliffs.

 

Daz thought he would ring them one last time, he was told that they had ignored our second letter instructing them because after they had answered our first letter they had closed the file.

 

They are also saying they didn't get the court summons and only got the judgement yesterday. We got our judgement letter last week.

 

We have now been informed that they are going to ask for the judgement to be set aside, the court have advised that it is pointless instructing the balliffs if they are going to take this action.

 

Mortgages PLC havn't responded in anyway to either us or the court from us sending our second letter.

 

Does anyone know if we can contact the court informing them how mortgages PLC have ignored everything, in the hope the court refuses to set the judgement aside.

 

The last conversation was a 4.50 pm today with mortgages plc, but we,ve just listened to our answer phone and found a message for a firm of solicitors acting on behalf of mortgages plc, is this usual practise for the defendents solicitors to speak to us.

 

This has through us a little, so any words of wisdom would be a great help

 

Cheers

Dashngail

[dashngail]

Hi

Already spoke to the court, they say that the summons are just posted in the regular post, so no evidence that it's been delivered.

 

As I mentioned we had a message from mortgages plc's solicitor, but it was too late to get back to them today, so first thing in the morning we'll have to see what they have to say. All very disheartening.

 

Cheers

Dashngail

[dashngail]

Hi All

Another instalment from Mortgages PLC after ringing them on Thursday and informing that we would instruct balliffs on Friday we received a very arrogant letter from their solicitor on Friday morning.

 

Here's the contents

We understand that the proceeding have been served although we make no admissions in relation to the validity or otherwise of the same and also understand that a judgement in default has been obtained.

We confirm that we are now shortly to make an application to have the judgement set aside and will serve the application upon you in the very near future

Given the above your threat to attend our clients premises tomorrow with balliffs is entirely inappropriate (all Daz said to Mortgages PLC was that we were going to instruct balliffs, nothing about them attending on Friday or that we intended to be there) and as such we confirm that in so far as you will not now agree to desist from the same we will seek an immediate injunction against you to restrain you from taking such steps.

We look forward to receiing confiration that your threat of enforcement is now withdrawn pending the outcome of our application to set aside.

 

After getting this awful letter we responded via e-mail stating that we objected to the tone of the letter etc, and that we were acting within our rights due to the fact that we do at this point have a judgement.

Today (saturday) we have received an e-mail from the solicitor saying he takes our comments but would we please confirm that we will not be instructing balliffs.

So that is twice he's asked us not to send in the balliffs, we have no intention of repling to this second e-mail at this point. We need more guidence first.

 

We are at this time putting together a letter to send to the court on Monday, with it we shall include all our previous letters, the proof of posting and also a copy of both the solicitors letter and e-mail. We feel that this solicitor is using bullying tactics when in fact it's Mortgages PLC that have failed to respond to the court, which we hope that the court will look at in our favour.

 

Any comments would be gratefully accepted.

Cheers

Dashngail