Ulster First Active - Ulster Bank have told me I should have been offered a tracker

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exasperated

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just received a strange call from ulster bank who have taken over 1st active. the guy that spoke to me said that when my fixed rate ran out 2 years ago if memory serves correctly that i was never offered a tracker rate.

he said that i can now choose to go on this tracker rate and that i would be due a refund.

this all sounds a bit too good to be true and i am of course waiting until i get everything in writing but has anybody else had this experience? if so they obviously arent offering this to me out of the goodness of their hearts so what exactly is going on?
 
Hi Brendan,

As it turns out it was true but as usual there was a catch my mortgage is in two parts so i was only offered the tracker on the smaller part of the mortgage and i did get a refund.

I havent had a chance to check out what the story was with the larger part but will do so as soon as time permits.
 
Like Exasperated we were also with FA and went on to a tracker rate (+1.15%) after we came off our fixed rate; however, I have examined our loan agreement and can find no mention of why this is. In fact, it says we will revert to a variable rate and lists the then variable rate. But, every time the ECB raises we get a letter saying we are going up the amount the ECB raised - clearly some sort of a tracker.

I have looked at Brendan's key post and didn't see anything there that seemed to relate to us.

I am concerned about two things:
  1. That we would be liable for arrears were this a 'mistake' - Exasperated, did you get any explanation as to why your were due a tracker rate?
  2. We are currently in financial difficulty (my wife is off work due to illness) and I wanted to arrange a mortgage holiday but didn't want them to look too closely at our account

Any advice from anyone would be appreciated.
Thanks
 
I wonder is it possible that since these mortgages transferred from first active, ulster are not in receipt of details and so have moved people to trackers rather than wait for a large number of complaints?
 
briste,
i would say that if the error was due to the bank error they would likely take the hit themselves and not chase you for the shortfall.

and millieforbes
ulster bank and first active have been together for 6 years,
they do have all documents, relating to mortgages offsite in a secure location held by one of those document handling companies, i also believe that they have every single relevant document relating to loan offer and applications and rate letters scanned up onto hard drives.

id say they are just trawling through all the loans they have due to the regulator clamping down on every small little thing, especially rates on loans.
 
Yeah - I asked UB for a copy of all the documentation they had and they sent it on to me. It included all the FA material.

I found a few others on another forum who are getting this and don't know why.

Can't post the URL as I don't have the requisite amount of posts yet!

Thanks for responses.
 
Ulster Bank staff told us too...and now claims that we must be fooling ourselves.

Delighted to see this issue being discussed!
Our mortgage (and a top-up loan) transferred from First Active to Ulster Bank, and when our top-up fixed rate expired, it went to a tracker rate. We received the usual document, that said sign this for another fixed rate or just do nothing to have the tracker rate start. We were told that this was an offer from Ulster Bank, only available to First Active mortgage holders etc. Delighted we were! With 12 months for our mortgage to come off the fixed, we rang and confirmed with Ulster Bank staff, a few times, that this one would also revert to a tracker (since it was a first active loan), with personal comments from them like 'you are very lucky, protect this incentive, etc' and also had them calculate what our mortgage would be coming down to once the tracker kicked in. Well, it is now 12 months later and everyone at Ulster Bank seems to have amnesia about the whole tracker rate incentive.

With 400,000 First Active customers transferred over, and I can see in this post that someone had one loan go to tracker and the other did not (much like our current situation), wondering if anyone has followed this up and gotten any success?
The current email response to us from Ulster Bank was 'telephony made a mistake' AND 'if you can find paperwork then we will believe you'. For us, we sat down with three different staff, and all this was confirmed to us- over a year ago- and every time we queried it, the tracker rate was confirmed to be the outcome. Considering for our top-up loan tracker rate, there was no signing of anything, it just happened (we were told again, this was only available to First Active customers).
For ourselves, we will continue to query the issue, but if there is someone out there who has gone through this and prevailed? For a bank to magically claim that is has no idea what we are talking about- when we have a top-up loan that did just that, that over 12 months the story was tracker, tracker, tracker- lucky you! when we sat down with staff, even writing down the calculations for us etc. Odd, it is all very odd!

Any ideas, thoughts, previous experience with this issue would be grately appreciated. We are hopeful it will be put right!
 
We have a mortgage (and top-up) from First Active, that transferred over and we were told by Ulster bank that the transfer from the expiry of the First Active fixed rate would revert to an Ulster Bank tracker as an incentive ONLY available to previous First Active customers. I am trying to find our letter, from our top-up, that confirms the transfer to tracker (which occurred twelve months ago), I think the letter may state something about this. We contacted our local UB branch, where three employees, over the course of a year, explained to us that our FA mortgages would revert to UB trackers automatically, for this same reason- a special offer only available to the FA mortgages that transferred to UB in Feb 2009.
 
exasperated,

We were told this is an incentive only for those First Active customers who transferred to UB in Feb 2009. This is certainly no mistake, our top-up loan went to a tracker (13 months ago) and we confirmed several times (over the phone, in person etc) with our local UB staff that our main mortgage would also revert to a tracker too. Surprise! it didn't, we are following up on this and find it disheartening that a bank can give a tracker (automatically) and its staff confirm to us for a year that this would happen to our main mortgage and then *poof! the bank declares the tracker magically isn't coming for the main mortgage.
 
Your mortgage will revert to tracker if that is what it says in your loan offer, there was no special deal for FA mortgages transferring over to UB. There would be nothing uncommon in having a mortgage and a top up on different deals, one could be reverting to tracker, one not, it would all depend when they were taken out, trackers were not always there. Look for your original loan offer and see what it says.
 
Briste,

Yes- we have the tracker on the top-up loan (since June 2010) and now, we are working on why the same didn't come for the main morgtage we have. (2.4% is the rate on the top-up)

Wbbs- thanks for the suggestions- we are requesting our original paperwork and all documents/correspondence etc regarding same. It seems so odd to us, since staff were informing us the reasons why and how and when about FA mortgages to UB trackers and for ALL of them to be wrong, for over a year? Also, there was an investigation at UB- concluded we need paperwork stating the tracker thing, and although they reference our top-up- they make no reference to it showing a different guideline when moving from fixed to a variable/tracker etc. (our mortgage is from 2005, top-up 2006 and I don't think trackers existed then) Glad to see that other people out there are also requesting paperwork, and yet, they don't see the tracker option either...seems to support what staff had told us all along, that this was an option offered to FA people.

Appreciative of this forum, and to know that there are others working on the same issue, many thanks again for the suggestions!
 
Do you have your own copy of your original loan offer document, this would show what rate you were to revert to after the fixed expired. If tracker it would state ECB + whatever margin rate it would be. These options are programmed in when the loan is set up, the merger with UB had nothing to do with it nor was there any change to what these loans would revert back to. FA & UB were operating off the same mortgage system for several years before merger as RBS owned both. I really don't know why UB staff would tell you it was some special deal but to be honest the merger was so messy in the initial stages that maybe they were just misinformed. It is a fairly simple thing for UB to look at the mortgage system and see what rate your account will switch to, there should be no ambiguity. It would be different if you had originally had a tracker, switched to fixed and then did not switch back to tracker but if I understand right your mortgage was taken out day 1 as a fixed, presume 5 yr fixed. If this is correct then your loan offer should state the position clearly.
 
Wbbs,
Originals are not to hand at the moment, and now I know the wording to look for when I do have the mortgage docs in front of me. Thanks again!
 
kimberly said:
Ulster Bank staff told us too...and now claims that we must be fooling ourselves.

Delighted to see this issue being discussed!
Our mortgage (and a top-up loan) transferred from First Active to Ulster Bank, and when our top-up fixed rate expired, it went to a tracker rate. We received the usual document, that said sign this for another fixed rate or just do nothing to have the tracker rate start. We were told that this was an offer from Ulster Bank, only available to First Active mortgage holders etc. Delighted we were! With 12 months for our mortgage to come off the fixed, we rang and confirmed with Ulster Bank staff, a few times, that this one would also revert to a tracker (since it was a first active loan), with personal comments from them like 'you are very lucky, protect this incentive, etc' and also had them calculate what our mortgage would be coming down to once the tracker kicked in. Well, it is now 12 months later and everyone at Ulster Bank seems to have amnesia about the whole tracker rate incentive.

With 400,000 First Active customers transferred over, and I can see in this post that someone had one loan go to tracker and the other did not (much like our current situation), wondering if anyone has followed this up and gotten any success?
The current email response to us from Ulster Bank was 'telephony made a mistake' AND 'if you can find paperwork then we will believe you'. For us, we sat down with three different staff, and all this was confirmed to us- over a year ago- and every time we queried it, the tracker rate was confirmed to be the outcome. Considering for our top-up loan tracker rate, there was no signing of anything, it just happened (we were told again, this was only available to First Active customers).
For ourselves, we will continue to query the issue, but if there is someone out there who has gone through this and prevailed? For a bank to magically claim that is has no idea what we are talking about- when we have a top-up loan that did just that, that over 12 months the story was tracker, tracker, tracker- lucky you! when we sat down with staff, even writing down the calculations for us etc. Odd, it is all very odd!

Any ideas, thoughts, previous experience with this issue would be grately appreciated. We are hopeful it will be put right!

Hi I'm in the same situation have you received any letter from UB yet following the CB investigation?
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