I would be very interested in hearing how you get on Dr Moriarty?
Well, it’s taken a couple of months and gone ‘around the houses’, from the Branch Manager to the complaints department and now, for some strange reason, to the Head of Sales and Marketing, in whose name we’ve received unsigned letters (duplicates to each of us, with my wife’s name misspelt) addressing us by our first names and full of the kind of cheery marketing pap you’d expect about the great services NIB provides and the way they like to reward their loyal customers.
On the substantive issue, it says:
Following this review, you have three options available to you:
1. Daily Banking Packages - Given your requirement for a daily banking package you can continue to maintain your 24/7 package for a fixed quarterly fee of €5. Alternatively you may decide that an Easy Plus or Prestige package better suits your needs, where for a fixed quarterly maintenance fee, these packages also offer free transaction banking and some excellent additional benefits such as preferential interest rates and discounts on other banking services. The leaflet enclosed will explain each package in further detail.
2. Servicing Account - A National Irish Bank Servicing Account is available for customers who choose to maintain the account purely for servicing their mortgage. No fees apply to this account. Therefore you could decide to move all your other banking transactions to an alternative account and maintain a Servicing Account purely for your mortgage payments.
3. Direct Debit - You also have the option to close the account(s) mentioned above and complete the Direct Debit form enclosed which will allow you to service your mortgage from an account with another bank. Choosing this option will have no effect on the LTV rate on your loan and no fees will apply [their emphasis].
I’ve replied indicating that option 1 is of no interest to us, since in the meantime we have already transferred all of our transactional banking to another bank. Our Freebank account is therefore now effectively functioning as a servicing account along the lines described in option no. 2. We've again stressed that we do not wish to close this Freebank account until such time as the requirement to keep it open is no longer a part of the terms and conditions of our mortgage.
On the face of it, option no. 3 seems to indicate that NIB is prepared to remove this requirement (especially as they helpfully enclose two DD mandate forms). Indeed, the cynical part of me is inclined to see this as a deliberate trap for the unwary, who might reasonably assume from NIB's bolding of the 'no effect on the LTV rate' phrase that it was OK now to close their current account without jeopardising the tracker rate on their mortgage. In reality, of course, this rather vague wording, in an
unsigned letter from the Head of Sales and Marketing is nothing like adequate confirmation for this purpose. The reference to ‘the LTV rate on [our] loan’ omits the point that ours is a tracker mortgage guaranteed to remain for the life of the loan at no more than the prevailing ECB rate plus 0.5%. The fact that the margin over the ECB rate is determined by our LTV is of far less significance.
I’ve therefore asked once again that, before closing our Freebank account, NIB provide us with written confirmation, duly signed and authorised, stating that to do so will have no effect upon the status of our ECB LTV tracker mortgage — presumably the simplest way to do this would be to provide a signed letter from the Branch Manager or from the Head of the Mortgages department confirming that the relevant clause in our Loan Agreement document is no longer operative. If they won't do that then they can (rather pointlessly) require us to keep a facility account open for as long as they wish; I'll simply feed it from our new BoI current account instead of paying into the mortgage account directly.
I may still refer the matter to the Financial Services Ombudsman, just to keep them working a bit longer. The gobsheens have wasted enough of
my time over this...