Fos worked for me

[BSJBuckler]

FOS Ombudsman upheld a very tricky complaint against Manchester Building Society, resulting in a liability of £37,000 being discharged and compensation of £1,000 being awarded. The adjudicator had turned it down, but the Ombudsman disagreed with that decision. It did take 12 months and 200 pages of evidence though!!

 

My mum acted as guarantor for my son's first mortgage. Some years later it was changed from repayment to interest only (therefore bearing different risks and a different financial product) then later again to a buy to let mortgage. at no time was my mum advised by the Building Society of the change of product and risk, nor given the opportunity to object to the changes. When the house was repossessed (the full payment for the three months arrears having been returned!!! by the BS as my son was querying the arrears charges)

 

It was deemed unreasonable of the BS to send a letter threatening then to repossess my mum's house unless she paid £37,000 immediately. This was the first time in a year of difficulties with the account that they had contacted her. It was adjudged that, since they knew she was his grandmother, they should have made sure that she not only took legal advice before agreeing to be a guarantor (which she did), but that the solicitor was given sufficient information about my grandson's credit status to be able to give informed advice(which he was not).

 

Well worth the effort - but the extended worry did make my 77yr old mum very unwell.

[Klandestine]

Thank you for posting and I'm glad the issue is finally resolved!

 

Some posters on CAG often discredit the FOS without acknowledging that the number of people we see on here with complaints rejected are not representative of the wider population - because people specifically come here looking for advice on their situation, so of course there are going to be more threads about complaints rejected than threads about complaints upheld.

 

The FOS actually upholds more complaints in favour of the consumer than the firms anyway - and this figure is even better when you disregard the number of unsubstantiated "just-chance-it" complaints encouraged and bought about by claims management companies