Chris Varney, mortgage advisor at CeMap, claimed that he had his time wasted by incoming calls from a Woolwich call centre with in excess of 15 calls received.
The calls mainly asked for additional information about ongoing applications that were being processed. One conversation involved the caller telling Varney that in order to progress a case a new product would need to be chosen as the loan to value (LTV) had gone over 63 per cent since the application was submitted.
Varney asked what value had been placed on the property which he claimed they were unable to answer, instead saying that the information on the application caused the LTV change. He then made the point that the valuation was an estimate and established that he had asked for a non-disclosed valuation which translated to an electronic valuation being done online.
The caller then confirmed that the valuation had not been done and he tried to ascertain why the LTV changed from 40 per cent at application to 63 per cent. Woolwich responded by indicating that the desktop valuation was £322,000 rather than the market value of £535,000.He was also told that the system had updated itself and that a valuation has been instructed so a new product didn’t need to be selected.
Varney said: “Now, this may seem excessive but my telephone system tells me that the above exchange took up ten minutes of mine and the caller's time. I'm sure the length of this call could have been at least halved if both participants had not had to ask the other to repeat themselves on numerous occasions.”
A spokesperson for Woolwich said: “We are sorry to hear about Mr Varney’s unsatisfactory experience with one of our contact centres. We will of course look into the specific service issues he has raised.”
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