Predatory Natwest customer services

[Predator Victim]

Recently, I became unemployed and fell into mortgage arrears with Natwest. I made a few

arrangements with them to pay off the arrears. The arrangements are renewed every six months. I phone them occasionally to inform them that one of my payments will be late.

 

However, there are two predators working in the mortgage credit management department (named A and B) who insist on wasting my phone credit to look deep into my mortgage history and to threaten me that I am breaking the agreement because I should be making payments at a specific time each month without any grace for being late.

 

After asking questions about who lives in the property, they advise me that they can help me to sell it if I want (meaning they would like to buy it off me). It is obvious to me that these two individuals are more interested in getting the property for themselves (I have more than two-thirds equity) then they were in dealing with the reason for my phone call. I only phoned up to ask them to put the information in my notes that my payment would be late.

 

Are there no laws against such things?

 

Another problem I have with them is that they insist I cannot make arrangements to pay off the mortgage arrears without making a second arrangement to pay off the arrears on my current account at the same time, knowing that saving my home is more important and it is difficult trying to pay the two.

 

How can I defend myself? What are my rights?

Edited June 26, 2012 by ims21
Names edited in case they are real

[ims21]

Maybe a formal complaint to the bank asking for an explanation.

 

It is the danger of using the phone though....you have no paper trail.

[ims21]

Two threads merged and tidied.

 

Please keep to this one thread for this issue

[citizenB]

You should stay off the phone as advised. You need to keep a paper trail.

You might want to take note of the following

1. We understand that the FSA now demands that all of your calls in relation to any “Mortgage” arrears must be recorded, so we would like to request a recording as well as a transcript of all recent calls that have been made to any of our numbers, even if these only discuss the “security checks”.

2. Please place on record that it has been our family policy for some time now to only communicate in writing when dealing with our financial affairs from our home, as it is our right to do so under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

IMHO, you should write to the Bank's Head Office under the heading of an Official Complaint - set out all the problems you have been having, confirm as above that you will only be communicating in writing in future.

Your mortgage and any arrears are a priority debt - the arrears on any ovedraft is not. Are they making any attempt to use monies put into the account for payment of the mortgage, against the arrears on the overdraft ?

 

 

[tosh1]

subbing