AIB Has anyone with a borderline case complained about being excluded from the 300 Cohort?

Brendan Burgess

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I have moved these posts out of the general 300 Cohort thread to focus on people who broke out of a fixed rate in January 2009 and have not been included in the Cohort.

Note: The original cut-off date was 5 January but this was later extended to the 12 January.

User AIBRedress has updated us today.

I just got off the phone, this is what has been explained to me:



Borderline cases
A couple of things on this. Firstly we’ve gone with the 12 Jan as a cut off point to give some extra room and take into consideration the Christmas period.

In terms of your query:

Breaking from fixed rate cases are in the group and if a breakage fee is due and the breakage is paid on or before the 12 Jan it’s in the group (even if the break was actioned after the 12th).

Some cases did not require a breakage fee and as long as requests were received up to and including the 12 Jan they are included in the group.

There are also a small number of borderline cases we included where we felt there was a delay on our side that brought them past the 12th.



Frequently Asked Questions

The Central Bank insisted that had AIB complied with the terms of their contract, they would have increased the tracker rate instead of withdrawing it in October 2008. However, based on the experience of previous changes to tracker rates, it would have taken AIB 12 weeks to implement that change.

So the Central Bank insisted that AIB give all those customers the tracker rate which would have existed during that 12 week period
 
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Hi Brendan and tnegun,
this is very interesting. We took out a Mortgage of fixed for three years with clause 3.2 in August 2008.on 08/01/09, we wrote to AIB looking for our options to break out of the fixed rate. AIB did not reply until we contacted them again in March 2009 Where they supplied a huge breakage fee and only option of SVR.
i am going back to the ombudsman here
 
What issue do you have?

on 08/01/09, we wrote to AIB looking for our options to break out of the fixed rate.

I think that the cut off date was 5th January.

But even if it wasn't. You wrote to them. If they had replied promptly, you would still have been outside the time.

By all means go to the Ombudsman, but from what you say, you haven't much of a case.

Brendan
 
Hi Brendan and tnegun,
this is very interesting. We took out a Mortgage of fixed for three years with clause 3.2 in August 2008.on 08/01/09, we wrote to AIB looking for our options to break out of the fixed rate. AIB did not reply until we contacted them again in March 2009 Where they supplied a huge breakage fee and only option of SVR.
i am going back to the ombudsman here

I think this is an interesting development. We also requested breaking out of our fixed rate during this time period. Surely if the Central Bank are saying that trackers should have been available to our cohort during this period then we have a cast iron case to say we would have switched to a tracker when it became the cheaper option?

A quick check there and the ECB rate had dropped to 2.5% by Dec 2008. Even if you didn't ask to break out of the fixed rate could someone not argue now that if trackers were available at ECB +1.5% during that 12 week period they would obviously have switched from a fixed rate of 5.45% or whatever to a tracker rate of 4% (which was by this time clearly heading even lower given the recession).

Edit: Maybe I'm not taking into consideration the break out cost which the bank could argue would have been prohibitive to breaking.
 
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If you requested a break out quote during this period over the phone or by email, then you have a case to argue.

Claude "wrote" to AIB after the deadline. So I see no case.

Brendan
 
If you requested a break out quote during this period over the phone or by email, then you have a case to argue.

Claude "wrote" to AIB after the deadline. So I see no case.

Brendan

Yeah fair enough. We requested a quote during the period. AIB's reply came a couple of days after the period. I guess we'll add it to our case currently with the FSPO and see what happens.
 
Hi Brendan

what do you think of my situation attached

They say they told me by phone in December 2008 that I could break out for free but one month later it was 7000 euro

how can it be free one month and 7k the month after

also in December I just had a message to call AIB but there was no mention of being able to break out for free - obviously if I knew this was an option then I would have called them immediately .
 
I got a letter on 8th January 2009 telling me the 7k breakage costs but there was no mention of what new rate option I could move to so I presume I’m out of luck here as the conversation was about breakage costs and not whether I could move to an svr or tracker
 
I got a letter on 8th January 2009 telling me the 7k breakage costs

But you didn't break out!

So I don't think you have any case.

A lot of people paid the breakage fee and broke out. Now they are getting the cheap tracker and appropriate compensation.

Again, it's not what I think that matters. It's what the Ombudsman thinks.

He might hold that they should have told you that you were entitled to a cheap tracker.

Brendan
 
A completely separate issue and has nothing to do with this thread.

Fair enough but if I had gotten a letter after requesting breakout costs in December detailing the possibility of moving to a tracker rate then I would have taken it obviously

they say they left a voicemail saying there were no breakage costs but this is not true . I don’t think they are even permitted to provide info like this on a voicemail
 
But you didn't break out!

So I don't think you have any case.

A lot of people paid the breakage fee and broke out. Now they are getting the cheap tracker and appropriate compensation.

Again, it's not what I think that matters. It's what the Ombudsman thinks.

He might hold that they should have told you that you were entitled to a cheap tracker.

Brendan
Didn’t breakout cos of the cost , I would have broken out in December if I knew there was no breakage costs as they say they told me but never put it on paper
 
I asked AIB about borderline cases, and got this reply

A couple of things on this. Firstly we’ve gone with the 12 Jan as a cut off point to give some extra room and take into consideration the Christmas period.

In terms of your query:

Breaking from fixed rate cases are in the group and if a breakage fee is due and the breakage is paid on or before the 12 Jan it’s in the group (even if the break was actioned after the 12th).

Some cases did not require a breakage fee and as long as requests were received up to and including the 12 Jan they are included in the group.

There are also a small number of borderline cases we included where we felt there was a delay on our side that brought them past the 12th.
 
I checked my dates in my docs and 8800 paid Jan 15th. Rang a lovely girl.on the helpline today, and logged a request to review as she said I wasn't part of the 300. Above post gives me gitters....
 
So the new date is 12th Jan. We broke out just 9 days later.. :( absolutely gutted.

In the period since then we were forced to go interest only due to recession paycuts and while I battled cancer. Because of this we are a fair bit behind where we would have liked to be in terms of mortgage balance.

Do you think they may review our case given the closeness to the cutoff? Do they actually look at it case by case on a human level?

We already received the capital reduction but being put on a tracker would truly change our lives
 
I would imagine that a cut-off date is just that. They have already extended it. It's unlikely that they will do so again.

The calculations for this 300 cohort are complex, so they have not given the capital reduction yet.

If you have a capital reduction, you are not in this cohort.

Brendan
 
"BTW As far as I remember, there was no breakage fee for breaking out of the Fixed Rate at this point. " - This is the part that i find distinctly unfair. As i say in my above posts if i had received proper communication from AIB that there was no breakage cost to get out of fixed then i would have done that and been in the 300 cohort but all im getting from AIB is "we left you a voicemail saying there was no breakage costs"
I have a letter 6th Jan stating clear breakage fees. Broke out Jan
If that question is for me then the answer is I knew all this information before I contacted them but they repeated back to me all the details un prompted.

I gave my account number and the guy rattled off the details
 
I think AIB have left themselves wide open now for the rest of the cohort to appeal. The cut off date is tantamount to discrimination it's not written anywhere and was defined after the fact. Either there was or wasn't tracker rate available after October 10th 2008 this just enhances our case for one.

I completely agree. By January 2009 the economy had hit the wall and the ECB rate was falling like a stone. If the CBI is officially saying a competitive tracker rate should have been available to this cohort until 12.01.09 then any of the 5900 can argue that they would have broken out of their fixed rate to the cheaper tracker rate because the economic situation had so dramatically changed from the time they fixed.

So the new date is 12th Jan. We broke out just 9 days later.. :( absolutely gutted.

In the period since then we were forced to go interest only due to recession paycuts and while I battled cancer. Because of this we are a fair bit behind where we would have liked to be in terms of mortgage balance.

Do you think they may review our case given the closeness to the cutoff? Do they actually look at it case by case on a human level?

We already received the capital reduction but being put on a tracker would truly change our lives

This is heartbreaking and very unfair. The 12 week period seems pretty arbitrary and if I was you I would certainly persue your case further. Having a cut off point was always going to lead to people with the same clause being treated differently because of a matter of days.
 
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How did they even come up with the date of 12th Jan? I rang today and the girl said "well we have to draw a line in the sand somewhere".

When I asked her how was the line calculated she couldn't respond with anything other than "look you can complain if you want".

For me this is a complete farce.

I asked her to open a formal complaint for me. If we had have been offered a tracker at that stage or knew we were entitled to one we would have 100% paid a breakout to get it.
 
Guys there is nothing irrational about it.

I explained it in the second post but will explain it here again:

Why are these guys getting trackers?

The Central Bank insisted that had AIB complied with the terms of their contract, they would have increased the tracker rate instead of withdrawing it in October 2008. However, based on the experience of previous changes to tracker rates, it would have taken AIB 12 weeks to implement that change.

So the Central Bank insisted that AIB give all those customers the tracker rate which would have existed during that 12 week period


In my view this is nonsense and most of this cohort is very lucky.

In the ordinary course of events, it's possible that it took AIB 3 months to roll out a decision. But incompetent as they are, I find the 3 months excessive.

Had AIB wanted to impose a very high margin instead of abolishing it, they would have implemented it within a month or so.

As I always recommend, don't waste your time and energy on something you can't win.

Wait until you get the letter and decide then what you want to do.

Brendan
 
Have any of you complained to AIB about being excluded from the 300 Cohort?

How did you get on?

How did AIB explain the exclusion and are you going to the Ombudsman with it?

Brendan
 
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