I write in anger – yet again a lender withdraws its products at a moment’s notice.
It caused me bother just a few weeks ago when Bristol and West brought out new rates and withdrew them faster than a speeding train.
Today’s episode involved the West Bromwich Building Society – I had a first appointment with a client on 15 February 2008 and recommended a five-year fixed rate deal for his remortgage.
A relatively small mortgage meant keeping fees as low as possible was the most sensible thing to do – I sourced and discovered its 5.69 per cent five-year fixed rate with no valuation fee, no arrangement fee and free legals – a smashing deal. We arranged a second appointment for this coming Friday to sign up.
To my horror, today an e-mail comes from West Brom at 16:07 advising of the product withdraw taking place, just 53 minutes later at 5pm.
Lucky I was in the office when the e-mail came out – even more lucky my client was available to talk on the phone to confirm the final details for the application.
What was more disturbing, that was at 16:15, upon trying to log into the website to start the decision-in-principle (DIP), it was ‘down for maintenance.’
The broker support line wasn’t answering and despite two messages I left for the lender, it didn’t call back. I did manage to get onto the website and complete the DIP at 16:40 – great, West Brom stated that DIPs must be done by 5pm and applications in by 5pm Wednesday. Sigh of relief at this point. Until on the last but one page of the full application the dreaded screen appears: ‘This product has been withdrawn’. This was at 16:50.
Lucky for me, an e-mail to the business development manager and a call back from him a few minutes later and all was sorted – the DIP meant the product was secured and the full application is now in. Apparently it ‘had some problems’, resulting in the screens I was getting.
Now, I ask, what would have happened had I not been in the office when the e-mail arrived? What if my client had been unable to talk on the phone? He was at work – is it fair of me to contact him outside of the agreed contact time we spoke about of after 6pm on weekdays? Had I been with other clients at the time, this one would not have had this deal and I would no doubt have a complaint and/or lost business.
How can we keep up with TCF and actually implement it when this is the service lenders give us. It’s not the first time and will not be the last.
Lenders are forever coming back to us saying ‘it is rare for us to do this’, ‘unexpected levels of applications’, and using the service excuse.
Of course you will get increased application volumes if you launch a product that blasts the competition off the radar –these lenders know the business they will get from them.
I also read the comment from one person stating, basically, this is going to happen, tough luck, get used to it. Wow, what an attitude to have towards looking after clients.
It is not the way to work and this practice needs to be brought under control now before it goes too far. I was lucky today, I might not be next time.
Regards,
Mike Oliver
UK Mortgage Specialists
