AIB Step by step guide to making an appeal on the AIB €1615 tracker

This guide is for customers of AIB who received a redress letter from AIB with a cheque for €1,615 attached. If you have some other tracker issue with AIB or another bank, this thread is not for you.

You fixed your mortgage rate at the start and were entitled to be offered a tracker at the then prevailing rate when the fixed rate period ended.

AIB did not offer you a tracker rate and AIB now claims that you did not lose out “because if they had offered you a tracker at the then prevailing rate it would have been higher than the Standard Variable Rate.”

They paid you €1,615 in compensation for their “service failure”.

The High Court case

A small committee has been formed and we have taken legal advice on this issue and we will be taking a High Court action to determine it for once and for all.

We will begin fund raising for the High Court action in the coming weeks.

If we win in the High Court, we would expect AIB to do the decent thing and give full redress to all 6,000 people affected by this. If they don’t do it automatically and voluntarily, then we would expect the Central Bank to tell them to give full redress. If the Central Bank refuses, we would expect the controlling shareholder, the Minister for Finance, to put pressure on AIB to do the right thing.

If all that fails, if you have made an appeal, whether it is successful or not, you will still have options to make a complaint to the Ombudsman. If you do not make an appeal now, you might not benefit from a successful High Court case.

So make an appeal now and don’t worry about whether or not you are successful.



You have one year from the date of the redress letter to appeal this and you should do so immediately.

Most redress letters were sent on 16th March 2018 and so you should make your appeal now.

Why you should appeal this

By appealing, you are keeping your options open.

If enough people make an appeal, AIB and the Central Bank might take this issue seriously. As it stands, AIB has only a handful of appeals, so they expect this to blow over and AIB and the Central Bank will claim that the tracker scandal is over.

You have nothing to lose by appealing. Even if the Appeals Panel rejects your appeal, it will cost you nothing.

You have a lot to gain if this case succeeds

Every case is different, but if you had a €300,000 mortgage and your fixed rate ended on 1 January 2010, you have probably paid about €40,000 in interest more than you would have paid if you had a tracker. You will get this back and a further €6,000 in compensation.

And best of all, from now until the end of your mortgage, you will pay a mortgage rate of ECB + 1.25% instead of the 3.15% Standard Variable Rate which AIB is charging at present. If you have a remaining balance of €200,000 you will save around €4,000 a year.

You do not need to spend much time on your appeal and you don’t need to pay for professional advice.

You do not expect your appeal to be successful. So far, The Appeals Panel has dismissed all appeals with the same standard cut and paste reply irrespective of the arguments made. It appears that they are not even reading the actual documentation submitted by the borrowers.

What will happen after I send in my appeal?

AIB will make a formal response and you will have the opportunity to respond to their response.

We will advise further at that stage.

Summary of our argument

AIB argues that it no longer had a prevailing rate as it had withdrawn tracker mortgages in October 2008.

We argue that they did have a prevailing tracker rate - it was the last rate they used when they did honour the terms and conditions and offered people tracker rates when their fixed rate period ended.

That rate prevailed until they changed it.

You may have other arguments you wish to make

There are many other arguments but we feel that this is the simplest and the strongest.

If we can convince a High Court judge of our argument, then the principle would apply to all borrowers.

It is up to you, but we don't recommend that you make other general arguments. AIB will try to muddy the waters and distract the focus of the Appeals Panel from the key argument that AIB did have a tracker rate.

You may have circumstances particular to you which add to your case

For example, if you asked someone in the branch what would happen when your fixed rate ended and they told you that you would be offered a tracker. That would strengthen your case further and you should make this point.

Step by step guide to making an Appeal to the AIB Customers Appeals Panel


1) The deadline for submitting an appeal is one year from getting the letter with the €1615. Most people got their letter on 16 March 2018.

2) You must submit the appeal on a standard appeals form.

3) Ring AIB on 1800 235460 or 01 7715888. and ask for an appeal pack. Make sure to have your mortgage account number handy and ideally the letter which accompanied the cheque.
** It can take 7-10 working days to receive your pack. We have been advised if getting close to submission deadline and pack has not arrived to contact BDO (Tracker Panel Independent Secretariat) and advise them. They should afford some flexibility on submission date if flagged to them in advance

BDO on 1800 800 110

4) Fill in the form

Section 1 Customer details – put in both of you if it’s a joint mortgage.

Section 2 Reasons for appeal

1) Claim for Additional Losses – these claims are rarely successful, so most people will put down “none” in this box .
If you were in deep arrears or financial distress, you can put in a figure here, but don’t let the difficulty of computing this stop you from making an appeal.

2) Non-financial losses – likewise these claims are rarely successful, so put down “none” in this box.

3) Write in Not Applicable

4) Write in Not Applicable

5) Write in Not Applicable

6) This is the key Section. Write in here:

In (fill in date) , we took out a fixed rate mortgage which entitled us to a tracker rate at the then prevailing tracker rate at the end of the fixed rate period


In (fill in date), this fixed rate period expired and we were not offered the prevailing rate


AIB is claiming that the prevailing rate would have been around 7.9%


We argue that AIB did have a prevailing tracker rate and it was ECB +1.25%


We want the tracker rate of ECB +1.25% from the date our fixed rate ended.

We want a refund of the overpayments made since then.


We want compensation of 15% of the overcharge.


We want a return to the tracker rate from now until the end of the mortgage.


Other than the 15%, we are not seeking any further compensation or professional fees.


The full argument is set out in the attached.



Section 3 Additional Supporting Documents


Write in “none”

Section 4 Signature, Confirmation and Declaration.

Sign and date

Section 5 Signature, confirmation and Declaration of other co-borrowers




Download the attached template Summary Case and Argument
Tailor it to your particular circumstances.
And include it with the form.

If you want someone else to represent you...
You will need to fill in a separate form "Third Party Letter of Authority"

Brendan

BDO and AIB take about a week to send out a blank form.

They have not made it available to download.

But user trackscandal has scanned it and it is now attached to this post.

The address to send the completed form is

Tracker Panel Independent Secretariat
C/O BDO
Beaux Lane House
Mercer Steeet Lower
Dublin 2

Thanks alot for that Brendan , that's a great help to all of us preparing an appeal

Thanks a mil for that Brendan. Will request an appeal pack and sent it in.

Thanks for this Brendan, makes the whole thing less daunting

Super stuff..Thanks Brendan..On it.

e..

Thank you Brendan that is really appreciated as it makes the process less of an ordeal. I will contact AIB and request an appeals package and get it submitted before the deadline.

Folks, I have tweeted about this. If you are on Twitter, please retweet it so that it gets to an audience beyond the usual readers of Askaboutmoney.

https://twitter.com/BrendanBurgess/status/1094694498209357824

Brendan

Thanks for your very clear guidance. Much appreciated.

That is brilliant stuff Brendan, if we get anything else back out of this you deserve your own redress

Thanks for your continued work on this.

Thanks a mill Brendan, that's great work!

Thanks a million Brendan. I've felt really out to sea on all of this and haven't had a clue how to fill out appeal and proceed further so am very grateful for the above and all your help on this matter.

Great step by step guide Brendan. Definitely makes submitting an appeal alot easier. Thanks

This is a huge help to me thank you so much appeal being posted tomorrow.

Hi all,

I rang this am to request appeal pack. They tell me it could take 7-10 working days to get to me. Patrick, guy I spoke with, said that if it's getting close to deadline and it hasn't arrived that I should contact BDO on 1800800110 as they are independent point of contact for us customers and he says they won't be strict re deadline date for submissions but guess it would be best to have appeal in on time and I don't intend giving them any chance to say mine was late.

Hope this is helpful!

Thanks
Anita

Brilliant stuff Brendan. We’d urge everyone to submit an appeal. The bigger the numbers the better chance we have of our voice being heard!

Submitted today , lets keep this going.

Thank you Brendan this it will help big time filling out the form, thanks again