Hi,
I was wondering if someone could advise me as to whether I have a case here:
A year and a half ago I took out a mortgage on my current property with Bank of Scotland. At the time I tied myself into a 5 year fixed term which left me liable to an early repayment fee should I leave the mortgage within the first 5 years.
At the start of this year I saw a flat I was interested in buying and walked into my local Bank of Scotland branch. At that time I was informed that if I decided to take out my new mortgage with them then there would be no early repayment fee. They thereafter provided me with a personalised illustration, however they used the Halifax mortgage company for this. I was informed by the mortgage advisor within the branch that this would not affect my early repayment fee.
I thereafter proceeded to put an offer in on the flat which was accepted, I also managed to quickly sell my own flat. This was at the start of Feb. My move in and salke dates were both mid April. On 12th Feb I again went into the Bank of Scotland and officially applied for my new mortgage with them. Again it was all done via the Halifax and again I was promised that I would not have to pay the early repayment fee with the Bank of Scotland.
On 12th March I received a letter from the Bank of Scotland laying out the repayment terms for my current mortgage and lo and behold they wanted £3,039.20 early repayment fee.
I decided to email the mortgage advisor from the Bank of Scotland who was arranging my current mortgage and ask her re this, I receieved this reply from he on March 13th
"Dealing with this at present, there seems to be a bit of confusion within the systems as your mortgage presently is on the halifax system although your present rate isn't coming up. This is being sorted and I hope to get back to you tomorrow.
Sorry for the delay, I will get this sorted tomorrow hopefully and get back to you asap.
Speak to you soon"
After hearing nothing from her over the next week I again decided to email to enquire about the delay. On March 21st I received this
"Tried calling you at home - thought it better to e-mail you rather than leave a long-winded message.
I have been frantically going back and forth to every dept almost to get to the bottom of this. As I said the confusion comes as your mortgage is keyed on the Halifax system but is actually a Bank of Scotland mortgage and wouldn't allow me access to anything surrounding your present fixed rate product. Finally got the answer two minutes ago :-
Unfortunately your mortgage has to be rekeyed on to the Bank of Scotland system and this can only be done by that dept. To save you paying the £3k penalty they will have to port your existing fixed rate over for the £75980 with the rest going on to another fixed rate (best available). I personally want to keep your inconvenience down to an absolute minimum and have asked them if I could give them most of your info to be keyed on prior to speaking to you. They can then phone you to complete the rest of the application - as you know to comply with the FSA they have to cover certain things.
Can you please give me a best time for them to call you and I will e-mail them with the details. My apologies for this inconvenience to you both and will do my very best to have as much as possible in place prior to their call. "
I then waited another 3 days before a member of Bank of Scotland telephoned to arrange my mortgage through them. At that time I was informed that the application would take between 4 and 6 weeks to complete. Bearing in mind that my purchase and sale date was three weeks away at this time I was getting frantic. They promised me that they would prrocess it ASAP. I thereafter provided them with my details to proceed with the mortgage, however I was then informed that they could not provide me with a mortgage based on my current financial position .
Due to the time restrictions on me I have been left with no option other than to go back to the mortgage advisor and ask her to proceed with my original application which leaves me facing a £3k bill.
Sorry for the long winded story. I was just wondering if anyone could advise me as to whether I have a case to fight here?
Thanks,
Stephen
