in marp - bank ignoring arrangement

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corkgirl1

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Hi again all,

I haven't been on in a while but got some help last year, so back again.

Brief background:
Entered MARP in August 2011, have complied with all arrangements, unlike the bank who are incredibly slow to respond to anything (see previous threads).
Agreed a 12 month interest only from Feb 2012 to Jan 2013 and then, as this took 3 months to arrange and ruined Christmas (second year running) I wrote asking them to extend it by 4 months, which they agreed to in writing.
Then received a letter out of the blue containing a new SFS for completion, rang them and was told to ignore it.
Then received a letter offering interest plus about 100 capital for 16 months, rang and was told it was an error and was corrected back to interest only.
July 1 they took DD of interest plus about 50 capital (allowing for TRS), rang and got "no idea how that happened, will sort it out for you". Wrote to them, no response to date.
August 1 they took the July amount again, rang and was told it was now sorted.
Today they took full repayment amount.

I cannot ring them as I am so fuming I will end up screaming at them.

What I am planning to do is to cancel the direct debit and then write to them and tell them that I will pay interest only as agreed and that I want compensation for their messing. I fear at this stage that they are trying to push me into doing this so they can then claim I haven't cooperated and throw me out of MARP.

Any reason I shouldn't do this?

Mortgage bank is Ulster if it matters. Also, our financial situation looks likely to improve dramatically over the next few months.
 
corkgirl1 said:
I cannot ring them as I am so fuming I will end up screaming at them.


Any reason I shouldn't do this?

Mortgage bank is Ulster if it matters. Also, our financial situation looks likely to improve dramatically over the next few months.
Click to expand...

Don't scream at them, they couldn't care less. Yes Ulster bank along with the rest are utterly incompetent. I think cancelling the DD is a good idea. Can you set up a standing order for the correct amount, so that you don't mess up.

Great that things are looking up for you.
 
Would agree with Bronte cancel the DD write and tell them this. Either set up a S/O or send them a chq each month for the agreed ammount. Ulster are useless to deal with took me 4 months to sort out a CC issue.
 
corkgirl1 said:
I fear at this stage that they are trying to push me into doing this so they can then claim I haven't cooperated and throw me out of MARP.
Click to expand...
Does your agreement specify the payment mechanism? If it doesn't and you keep them fully informed then I can't see how they can validly claim you haven't co-operated as long as you maintain the terms you are obliged to keep to.
 
When I was unsure of what would be there for the mortgage at the end of the month
I had a bill payment option on the online facility.
I paid what I had into the mortgage account
 
Thanks so much all of you for your help and support.

I have now spoken to my local branch manager, who doesn't deal with arrears or anything but he seems to be their only competent person. He got onto the arrears support unit and escalated to a higher level and said they couldn't see what had gone wrong but would investigate and get back to me.

I'll give them a few days to hear from them, then later in the month (around the 18th) I'll ring up and ask what is scheduled to be DD'd on October 1 and if I don't like the answer I'll cancel the DD and pay manually.

Ever grateful we never reduced the limit on our tiger-sized overdraft facility - try to avoid using it but at least we won't starve :)

Thanks again, I'll post back when I get answers.
 
Cork girl, how have you managed to hold onto an overdraft facilitiy whilst being in MARP? I thought they would have wanted to lock that down ASAP?? Also good luck.
 
Don't know Cantalia, they never asked what the facility was, just the balance, it didn't really occur to me until you just asked. Certainly they never said we should cancel the overdraft.

It has saved our skins on more than one occasion, especially with the mortgage bank being so utterly useless at responding to us and then sticking to agreements when eventually reached.

Obviously it's with a different bank.
 
corkgirl1 said:
I'll give them a few days to hear from them, then later in the month (around the 18th) I'll ring up and ask what is scheduled to be DD'd on October 1 and if I don't like the answer I'll cancel the DD and pay manually.
Click to expand...

If I were you, I'd cancel now, and pay manually in any case. I just wouldn't trust them to get it right, regardless of what they tell you.

It's an interesting general point: there's plenty in the Central Bank's guidelines for MARP about non co-operating mortgage holders and what happens to them, but nothing about non co-operating banks. Based on my own and others experience, this is a significant flaw.
 
Hi ang1170,

Thanks for your post.

September's payment already went out of my account yesterday, they won't take any more until 1 October so I have plenty of time to cancel the DD between now and then.

Anyone know who I should complain to if they mess me about again? Is is the FSO or is there someone else? I believe the FSO takes months/years and I'm not sure it's the right place for ongoing incompetence/messing as opposed to eg misselling of products or denying people trackers, etc?
 
corkgirl1 said:
Anyone know who I should complain to if they mess me about again? Is is the FSO or is there someone else? I believe the FSO takes months/years and I'm not sure it's the right place for ongoing incompetence/messing as opposed to eg misselling of products or denying people trackers, etc?
Click to expand...

I don't know the answer to that, but one piece of advice I would offer is that you make a record of all interactions with them, and get as much in writing from them as possible (if they don't oblige on this, just mail them a copy of your own summary of any phone calls). This will make any future action that much easier for you, as well as showing up their own incompetence (I can guarantee they won't have the ability to produce a similar comprehensive record) to any 3rd party it ends up with.
 
Hi corkgirl1,
Great news that things are looking better for you, pity about the way UB are treating you. Believe it or not you need to actually complain to UB themselves, setting out all the problems you've had over the last while. They need to fully investigate, ultimately issue you a final response letter and if you're not happy with that, then and only then can you complain to the FSO. Now that the FSO has increased powers to name and shame, the banks are under increased pressure to deal with complaints properly and to stop them from being referred to the FSO in the first place. Do complain, the system needs customers to complain to, hopefully, iron out the bad eggs and stop other customers going through what you have gone through. Good luck with it!
 
Update - we got yet another letter offering us another different payment on Friday - what's really bothering us now is that the 3 letters have wildly differing normal monthly payment amounts on them - May is 1170, June is 980 and Sept is 1390!

I reckon on a mortgage of c. 250,000 at ECB + .85% with about 25 years to run the 980 is closest to accurate.

Obviously staying on interest only is going to increase the eventual repayments but there are nearly 25 years left on term so I don't see how a year extra on IO would increase payments by 50% for the remaining 24 years?

I think at this stage they have completely lost the plot and I have sent them a letter basically telling them that I have cancelled the DD and will pay IO until they sort themselves out. I also pointed out that they are in breach of the DD IPSO terms by not informing us in advance of how much they would be taking and demanding "substantial compensation" as well as a reduction in tracker margin for the remainder of the term for all the hassle.

I may have included a line or two about how they are incompetent to hold a banking license and are all completely useless :)

@Rudolph, the FSO are too slow to be any use when UB are draining my current account at this rate - if I don't get satisfaction however I will be on to them.

Does anyone know whether I can cause them trouble with IPSO or Central Bank or anyone for their messing around with DDs?
 
Hi cork girl,
I note from your post above that UB debited your bank a/c for the full interest and capital repayment. Are you in an agreement with the bank at the moment? Have you submitted a recent Sfs to the bank or Did you sign any recent documents relating to an extension of your interest only?
I think that you will need to ensure that you are in an arrangement to ensure your a/c does not fall into arrears.
 
Corkgirl I could have nearly wrote your post it sounds so similar to my situation with UB, they're a disaster to deal with!

I also had issues regarding dds which always occurred when a new arrangement had been put in place. They would continue to debit the full mortgage payment on the 1st month of the arrangement causing total havoc for us as our own bank, AIB; would pay it despite the funds not being there.

After a lot of back & forth (which got us nowhere) we cancelled the dd & now pay the mortgage manually. We kept them informed as you are & they were fine with it as long as the end result is the mortgage gets paid every month there's nothing for them to complain about.
 
Thanks so much for your post Mokolodi, maybe it's not personal!

Yesterday we got a letter accusing us of not having made any payment at all this month - some unfortunate got an earful from me for that one. The actual problem, as I pointed out to the call-centre person yesterday, is that they ensure that a customer cannot talk to anyone who can actually do anything to your account - you can only talk to someone who will send an email to them.

Having spoken to AIB this morning I am at least assured that the DD is cancelled and I will pay manually from now on.

Still fighting though!
 
We get letters I'd say every 2/3 months stating we're in arrears as we haven't made aa payment in x amount of time (complete rubbish of course!) & are in danger of legal proceedings commencing for repossession. When we contact them about it we're told "ignore them"

Of course getting this response from some faceless person in a call centre just wasn't in good enough so we went to our local branch manager who contacted someone senior in head office... & guess what, same response, standard letter just ignore!!!
 
I can understand your frustration, but would repeat the advice to keep a record of all interactions, including notes of phone calls (date, time, summary). These could well prove very useful to you in the future (if for example they did start legal procedings).
 
Thanks Ang, I do have full record of all calls, letter to & from, etc. I never make a call without a pen in my hand :) You should see the size of the file! Also every call is "but I spoke to name last week and he told me xyz," and each letter is "I spoke to name in your call-centre and was informed xyz."

I reckon it's quite clear to them that I'm keeping really good records of all interactions - have to really since their records are clearly inadequate!
 
Another update - finally got a call back from someone a little higher up.

Basically what seems to have happened is that at some stage they took our tracker and didn't even send a change of rate letter.

Fuming doesn't begin to describe.... the person I spoke to tried to suggest that the tracker was only for an introductory period or something (I know this is common in UK but I never heard of it here). Fortunately we have all the paperwork and were able to convince him that the tracker was for the lifetime of the mortgage.

Also got a letter today from a complaints handler and sent him off a sarcastic response.

I've spent the entire summer dealing with this ***** and I am sooooo sick of them :-(

They better give me serious compensation - not another stupid hamper like the one they sent in May for their last screw-up.
 
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