Tracker Mortgages - increasing payments

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ciarand

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About 18 months ago I took out a tracker mortgage with Bank of Scotland for my first house. After a few months I asked them to increase my monthly payment. After some correspondance they told me that this was not possible as my tracker was not "flexible". Essentially they told me there was an €80 fee for every change of mortgage terms. I have moved my mortgage to NIB who are quite happy to allow occasional or regular overpayments.
However this has cost me a bit of money. Does anyone think BoS are out of order on this? Anything I read about trackers (apart from the Bank or Scotland small print) says you could pay additional amounts at will - this was one reason I did not go for a fixed rate. I've taken the matter up with BoS and IFSRA. Any advice or has anyone else come across this problem?
 
I suspect that there is little you can do. If you go through the fine print of any offer letter, from any bank, they can do pretty much what they want. If you were of a nervous disposition, you wouldnt sign any offer letter from any bank. I suspect you have very little scope to talk to BOS about it. It does seem a bit unreasonable though.
 
Check the terms & conditions of your mortgage agreement. In general variable rate owner occupier mortgage holders should be able to accelerate repayments or redeem the mortgage early without penalty. I would have expected this to extend to tracker mortgages. If you can't find anything specific covering this in your loan agreement terms & conditions (and even if you can) then perhaps run it by [broken link removed]. (Update: sorry - I see from your post that you already have - any feedback from them yet?).
 
I think they are out of order but possibly within their own terms and conditions .

If they advertise trackers with the ability to pay off 'at will' and then contradict that in the small print you do have a case with the IFSRA after you first send a letter to BoS demanding the out of pocket expenses * for transferring your mortgage and after BoS refuse to meet your demand for those expenses. Also ask for an exemplary amount, say €1000 , for the hassle . BoS may say that varying your DD up by €80 a month is not 'at will' but as all the other banks allow this then they are nitpicking.

Can you show us where BoS say you can vary their trackers 'at will' , its that not important because I personally would not touch a tracker where you were charged €80 per request anyway and am grateful that BoS have been outed for this. BoS probably did not point out any free alternative overpayment method to the upwardly varied monthly DD and thereby prevented you from acting 'at will' by not doing so .

* NIB (after all) did stump up a % of your costs or €600 or similar to help you move .
 
They didn't deliberately mislead me but I feel they were negligent in not pointing out an important difference between their trackers and everyone elses. Maybe I'm being a bit innocent. Ifsra said I had to take it up with Bos first. I have a holding response from Bos. So essentially I am looking for any points that I should make to them. Dealing with their call centre involved a lot of time on hold and they seem pretty amateur. They managed to lose my redemption cheque! My solicitor had to send them another one.
 
ciarand said:
Dealing with their call centre involved a lot of time on hold and they seem pretty amateur.
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You would be better off putting complaints/queries such as this in writing so that there is a clear paper trail established. Have you checked the terms & conditions of your loan agreement as I suggested earlier to see what, if anything, is stipulated about the limitations on and charges applicable to varying repayments?
 
I have been with NIB for ages . I recently found out they were offering a poorly advertised tracker at a lower rate than my current one and asked to be moved to it. Luckily this only cost a few bob. No sooner had the ink dried on it then they introduced their fab offset mortgage, so had the whole thing redone again. I now save approx 90 euro a month n interest repayments ... so get the offset, the rate is a tiny tiny bit more than the tracker.
 
ciarand said:
They didn't deliberately mislead me but I feel they were negligent in not pointing out an important difference between their trackers and everyone elses. Maybe I'm being a bit innocent.
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I rang up BOS today, asked about overpayments on the tracker and asked about being charged by BoS for them . I found that they were EXTREMELY evasive about their administrative payments on their tracker . I then rang NIB who confirmed there were no administrative charges for overpayments or other DD variations .

If their f*k**in* tracker is Fixed (in effect it is , unlike BoI , AIB and NIB that I have checked) they should advertise it as a "Fixed Tracker" because you have to pay for any Variability and let the other banks call their product a "Variable Tracker" .
 
irisheyes said:
I have been with NIB for ages . I recently found out they were offering a poorly advertised tracker at a lower rate than my current one and asked to be moved to it.
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BoI charge nothing at ALL for that , not even €20 to cover the paperwork.
 
It never even occured to me that their could be charges if extra payments were made on a tracker (hmm...irish banks...what was i thinking!).
Whats Ulster Banks record on this??
 
tonka said:
If their f*k**in* tracker is Fixed (in effect it is , unlike BoI , AIB and NIB that I have checked) they should advertise it as a "Fixed Tracker" because you have to pay for any Variability and let the other banks call their product a "Variable Tracker" .
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By "fixed" I presume that you mean fixed repayments as opposed to fixed rate? Otherwise it's not a tracker at all.

By the way, what does "f*k**in*" stand for? I can't figure that out.
 
Sorry folks ..but from the 'ole process engineering point, they are not obliged to facilitate the change in payments .. what you can do is take lump sums off separately ..which amounts to the same thing. Having systems all singing and dancing, would not be Fred the Shreds way of reducing costs.
 
I think that ciarand mentioned in a PM to me that the minimum lump sum capital repayment allowed here was €1,000. I'm not sure if this is in or around the norm for lenders? Anyway, if arbitrary changes in the regular repayment amount are not allowed without charge (EBS allowed me to do this years ago by the way) then I suppose it might make sense to accumulate the spare cash and make one or more lump sum capital repayments when you have enough.
 
I have a tracker with BoS since the early stages (when they paid £500 (€635) off the legal fees)

I was informed at some stage in the last 2 years that the minimum lump sum capital repayment was €500. (It used to be €1000 in the early stages.)

Marion
 
How about if you wanted to increase your repayments by say €100 per month? This is what I really wanted to do but Bos were having none of it. Also a €95 fee for any lump sum repayment (which has to be greater than €1000) is a bit prohibitive.
 
Hi Ciarand

I had wanted to do this initially but when I rang they told me what the minimum rate was.

I decided to put the money I had intended to pay off my mortgage into a Quinn life tracker. I'm happier that I did this.

Marion
 
Anybody know what the story is with the UB Tracker mortgage - easy enough and no fees to make increased payments on it or not?
 
To close this off - I went to the regulator. He ruled that the bank possibly is not allowed charge these fees and recommended compensation for me. (About 25% of the cost of moving mortgage). I've asked for 100% compensation, that the bank inform customers and refund customers that have paid this money. (Obviously point 1 is a lot more important to me than points 2 and 3!)
 
Ulster Bank

Hi

I have an Ulster Bank tracker (1.05% above ECB Rate) and I have easily been able to increase my payments without penalty.

Past 30
 
To my knowledge BoS is the only company which charged this possibly illegal fee. I'm with NIB now myself.
 
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