Can PTSB over-ride an agreed repayment plan?

T

Tower002

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Hi
I am looking for some help / advise. It’s my first time so I might be a bit rambling, please excuse me.
Like numerous other people in the country we are under financial pressure. But we have managed to keep our heads above water by a lot of financial juggling, robbing Peter-to-pay-Paul etc. My husband is a carpenter and made the decision to move to London to get work last April. Me & our 3 year old moved out of the family home & rented a little closer to my family.
My husband missed two mortgage payments, and because it took over 3 months to rent out our own house it took until the end of Aug to get up-to-date. We were paying a mortgage, rent on a new house & my husband was paying for boarding so it took longer than we thought.
Anyway, by the end of Aug we were one payment behind and a tenant had moved in. We came to an agreement with PTSB that we would repay the one missing payment over four months, starting on Sept 17th with each payment being €174.29. The total arrears amount was just under €700. I have a letter from PTSB dated 10/09/2012 confirming these details.
There was a delay in the tenant paying rent for Sept, the usual teething problems. PTSB had set up the SO for October and not September so the tenant went off to get it fixed.
I rang PTSB on the 17th & explained the problem. They said fine, thanks for letting us know, we will keep that in our notes. And I paid the first €174.29 repayment.
I asked the man in Collections if the automatic SO could pick up when the tenant would lodge the rent & then apply for the Sept repayment. He said yes and so I said fine & confirmed that the next payment in the repayment plan would be 17th of Oct. Turns out that the tenant had lodged the rent that morning & PTSB had taken the mortgage payment so on the morning of 18/09/2012 we were just over €500 in arrears. Great.
My husband transferred his meagre wages (he earns £100 a day on-site in London) via CurrencyFair into our current account yesterday, it was £350 which converted to €439. This morning PTSB took €545 from that current account, leaving it overdrawn, to clear the arrears amount on the mortgage.
When I rang to say that there had been a mistake, that the outstanding arrears was to be repaid on an agreed repayment plan & could they reverse the transaction PTSB refused. They claim that because I enquired during the phone call on 17/09/2012 about the automatic SO that I was aware of the process & had agreed to it.
Are they right? As far as I am concerned I am on an agreed repayment plan with PTSB and that they have taken my money without my knowledge and more importantly without my consent. Am I right or am I just wasting my time?
Normally I wouldn’t mind but that €400 was the final amount required to pay for our 4th & final attempt at IVF. We have a bill of €4450 due on 04/10/2012 and that €400 was the final bit. It took a lot of saving, going without & a little help from my mother to get this money together. Due to our age & our finances it is definitely our final attempt. And that is why I am so angry & upset. That & the injections that I am currently doing!
And to make matters worse PTSB have left our account overdrawn as a result of this transaction & I won’t get paid until next Tues so have no way to bring it up to date. So I will get charged interest on this.
I intend to write a letter of complaint to PTSB – am I just ****ing against the wall? Should I just suck it up & go concentrate on more important things in my life?
 
Please, whatever you do, don't ruin your IVF attempt by getting too stressed about this, which is a far less important matter. Sounds like your finances are in very good shape despite your difficult circumstances so you shouldn't be worried.

I can't imagine PTSB are correct, just write a letter putting your case, and CC the Financial Ombudsman they will be forced to put an answer in writing - they won't be as quick to fob you off & say it was your fault. Some of the more financially aware people here will probably give you better advice on that though.
 
+1 concentrate on your ivf . How dare they treat you like that because you missed a couple of payments they should be patting you on the back for keeping up the repayments .
Did you not enquire about a holiday break for a couple of months or maybe interest only for a few months i cant imagine your poor husband is having a good time trying to get all the money together.
Is the rent covering your mortgage . Go in to the bank and speak to someone in there, its best to engage with them and try to come to an arrangement with them. But as i said concentrate on your ivf its more important than bricks and mortar .
 
Hi everyone.

Firstly thank you for taking the time to reply to my rambling post.
I'm delighted to see that I am not going mad thinking that PTSB have just rode roughshod over the agreed repayment plan - that's just what I can't understand. Why would they agree to a 4 monthly repayment schedule, for one missed payment amount, and then ignore that to take whatever money gets lodged to the current account?
Anyway, thanks for the advise and I am off now to write a detailed letter of complaint & , as per your suggestion, send a copy to the Finanical Ombusman.
With the exception of this missed payment everything else is up-to-date, we are managing to pay everything that needs to be paid, all other loans & monthly expenditures are completely to-to-date so we're not doing too badly.
Thanks again for all the help.
 
Hi Tower002, a friend of ours has an investment mortgage with PTSB and got into difficulties with repayments. Arrears approximately €850.00 The bank threatened a debt collection agency to chase the arrears if she did not clear them off or make some arrangement with the bank.

She made an agreement with them over the telephone to repay the arrears over a period of time but within a few weeks of the agreement they wrote to her looking to meet to discuss the arrears case and also said they were hoping to avoid repossession!!!!! She is currently meeting all repayments to date on the mortgage and weekly repaying the arrears.

So again this is another case of riding over the agreement.

Did you cancel your D/D with them?
 
Hi Kerrigan - thanks for that reply.
Seems like PTSB have form for doing whatever they like whenever they like.
I didn't cancel any DD with the bank as we are in a position to pay our monthly mortgage payments and so we will continue to do so.
It just irritates me beyond belief that PTSB can seem to go ahead and do whatever, regardless of what they agree with you.
My issue with them is so small in the greater scheme of things-exactly the attitude that they are hoping for! No-one to rock the boat...

Anyway, thanks again for the replies.
 
Backtracking on this Tower it looks like you had a written agreement and you did not keep to it (and indeed you didn't have the money to pay them). You did however telephone them and thought you had a new agreement. Somehow this didn't make it to your file.

Going forward you need to do two things, you need somehow to have extra money set aside to cope with things like tenant's not paying rent on time, and all correspondance with the PTSB should be in writing.
 
Hi Bronte

Thanks for your reply. I did have a written agreement with PTSB to pay the one outstanding arrears payment over four months - on the 17th of each month, staring in Sep, I was to pay €174.26 with the last payment being on 18/12/2012.

I rang PTSB on the 18th of Sep, paid the agreed amount & confirmed with the person on the phone that the next payment would be on the 18/10/2012. As far as I can remember I didn't make any new arrangement with the bank during this discussion.

One week later PTSB took the remainder of the outstanding arrears from the current account when money was lodged. There was no agreement, writen or verbal, to cover that scenario.

Anyway, I've learnt my lesson. We have become landlords by accident so it's taking a little while to get our heads around all the scenarios that might occur. And I have started to put something aside every month in case there is ever a delay from the tenant again - and the money is not going into a PTSB account!

Thanks again.
 
Tower002 said:
.

We came to an agreement with PTSB that we would repay the one missing payment over four months, starting on Sept 17th with each payment being €174.29.
The total arrears amount was just under €700.
I have a letter from PTSB dated 10/09/2012 confirming these details.
I rang PTSB on the 17th (September) & explained the problem. And I paid the first €174.29 repayment.
Click to expand...

Can we again clarify. You had a standing order for 174.29 Euro starting on the 17th Sept. Did that standing order go through.

How did you pay the first €174.29 as mentioned in the last sentence above?
 
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