Steve Brockman, director of A2B Mtg Co Ltd, called into question the lender’s commitment to service.
He stated that he spent an entire day attempting to submit one mortgage application online to Abbey before a submission deadline.
But with the website consistently unavailable and Brockman unable to get through to the helpdesk, the deadline passed and his client was forced onto a higher rate.
Abbey pulled its tracker range on 22 February and extended its application submission deadline to 10pm on 25 February.
However Brockman, having finalised the application with his client on 22 February, found not only was he unable to get onto Abbey’s site, but the application was locked on three occasions.
Despite the help of Abbey’s regional office, there was no explanation as to why and Brockman claimed that, after an hour on hold to the helpdesk, he was cut off.
Brockman, said: “The site was obviously overloaded, but that’s down to Abbey, not me. It relaunched the tracker rate at plus 0.25 per cent, so my client is in a worse position because the site was unavailable or locked out through no fault of his own.
"I haven’t left it to the last minute and allowing 24 hours to put one case in isn’t excessive. Brokers are sick to death of websites that can’t seem to cope with the business.”
Clive Kornitzer, chief operating officer at Abbey for Intermediaries, said: “Where possible we give brokers 48 hours’ notice before withdrawing our products.
"This is compared to some lenders who offer no warning at all. In this particular case we were overwhelmed by the last-minute demand we saw from brokers who had seen our alert about the rate withdrawal.
“We soon became aware that our systems were experiencing a few problems with the abnormal surge in demand and so extended the deadline by another two working days to help last-minute applications.
"We understand the frustration some brokers experienced, but our alerts helped many more applications get processed before the final removal of the product.”
