Brendan Burgess
Founder
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The MFA I saw said something along the lines of " you will move to the variable rate. Other than this, the terms of the original loan offer remain unchanged" which is very different.
Brendan
Brendan
Hi Sarenco
Let's take the ptsb issue.
The Central Bank is all over them. If a contract says something clearly, then ptsb will not be able to just change it as the report suggested. Borrowers can appeal to the internal Customer Appeals Panel, the Ombudsman and the High Court. So rest assured that where a contract is clear, ptsb is honouring it.
The argument is what does a contract mean when it says "You will be put onto the prevailing tracker rate when the fixed period expires". The Ombudsman has ruled on this. This was not a margin guarantee. The High Court has ruled that the ESIS has no legal standing. If a contract naturally expired in June 2010, the borrower was put on a tracker of 3.3%.
In my view the best chance for Thomas and others is that they should get the prevailing rate when they terminated the fixed rate early as that rate was much lower than when the contract was due to expire.
As I had planned to say on the programme, and I hope I said it, if it is found that ptsb engaged in underhand behaviour, e.g. if they encouraged people to fix or to break a fixed rate to get them off their trackers, then those customers should be given a tracker of no more than 1% margin.
...Unfortunately, I had to spend most of my limited time correcting the report. I am very happy to criticise the lenders but I am only going to do it based on facts. Not on error. It was a difficult position to be in.