What exactly does not add up? first the bank approves in principle for a tracker mortgage whether to entice the customer or because of no issue with trackers in June. Then in July the bank tells the broker that they only offer an SVR. The broker tells the tracker was no longer available to me, the product was gone. Then he calls the bank to amend the application and the bank gives him the svr loan offer. Or he first amends the application for an SVR, gets the loan offer, then calls me to tell the tracker was not available. I do not know what was first. The broker who dealt with banks on a daily basis could not possible think that the trackers were not available in July. As Todo illustrated, BOI still had trackers in July and August. The BOI's own compliance department replied to me that the tracker was available to me and that they have no record i ever asked for it. When I showed the only record I had, then they replied, oh well, you are right, the broker amended it then.
A benign interpretation is that the broker simply passed along the lender's words that tracker was not available, without telling me that the lender was "bargaining", aka lying, and that trackers were in fact available. A less benign interpretation is that the broker acted on lender's instructions to amend the application.
Your interpretation, Sarenco, if I understood your point, is that I somehow instructed the broker to choose an SVR that was if I can recall now, 0.2 higher than boi's tracker rate then, which was 1.25 over 4.25 ecb at the time I think. Or that the broker thought it was a better deal. But even if the rate was the same, or marginally lower like you said, which it was not, should not the broker have provided the rate sheet with all the options instead of omitting the trackers as unavailable? Also, the fixed rates were higher than an SVR then, why did not the broker omit fixed dates like he did the tracker rate?
Please recall what people did in 2008. In the context of 2008, people did not choose svr over trackers, they chose fixed rates over trackers because the rate was going up. The bad bet was choosing fixed over tracker, not svr over tracker. Even someone financially clueless as I was would not choose a more expensive svr over a tracker rate if it was available. You also said "why didn't raise a query at that point?" - I did raise it with the broker - he told me called the bank and they confirmed it was not available. The time line is like this:
Input 1. --> Customer looks for tracker.
Input 2. --> Lender approves for a tracker, the broker says it is the best deal, a customer stays with the broker
Input 3. --> Broker informs the customer the tracker was no longer available
Input 34. --> Customer asks the broker to contact the bank and ask why, the broker confirms it is not available
Output ---> Customer signs on an SVR because the customer believes he has no other options.