# Can bank's take an amount of redress owed off morgage balance?



## Catwoman (19 Nov 2017)

Does anyone know can the banks take a significant amount of interest overcharged in the tracker examination off your morgage balance without your consent and just offer you redress on the balance?


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## Brendan Burgess (19 Nov 2017)

Hi Catwoman 

If you were overcharged €10,000 interest, it would be something like: 
€7,000 overpaid by you 
€3,000 too high a mortgage balance. 

So to put you back in the position, you should have been, you would get the overpayment of €7,000 back, and the balance would be reduced by €3,000. 

If you were overcharged €10,000, but you were €30,000 in arrears, then the correct approach was to set the €10,000 overpayment against the balance and you would get no refund.

You will find a full explanation here: 

*Calculating the refund when a tracker is restored*


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## Sadhbs (19 Nov 2017)

If your mortgage is not in arrears will the bank give a cheque for the refund or will they automatically pay the refund of overcharged interest against the mortgage balance?


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## Brendan Burgess (19 Nov 2017)

If you were overcharged €10,000 interest, it would be something like:
€7,000 overpaid by you
€3,000 too high a mortgage balance.


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## tigger45 (21 Nov 2017)

if the bank treated the excess interest charged as overpayment couldnt that have a higher benefit to the customers?
not at low levels of overcharge, but for those of us with high overpays and long time periods?
why is this not an option?


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## Brendan Burgess (21 Nov 2017)

Hi tigger 

I don't understand your point.

The principle is fairly simple.

Although the interest overcharged was €10,000, the person only overpaid €7,000. So that is all that they should get back in a refund. 

Brendan


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## tigger45 (5 Dec 2017)

My question was this, if you overpaid your interest over a number of yrs, say 5, at a rate of €500 per month you would entitled to 30k overpayment returned but if it was treated as an overpayment on the principal for 5 yrs it's potential impact is to reduce your mortgage by 50 - 60k, isn't it? 
I'd imagine the banks don't want to do this but it starts to look more fair if they do.


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## RedOnion (5 Dec 2017)

Hi Trigger, that's what they're effectively doing. As part of the redress they're calculating interest on the overcharged amount.


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