It is a flexible account, and I did not agree with the way that my payments due and balance owing were shown on my regular statements. I had always told the domestic authority that we only owed a small amount.
However, as Abbey always showed the balance as the initial amount borrowed, and not that amount less the savings element, it always appeared that my mortgage was not decreasing.I phoned up – on a premium line – with the usual press button options.
One of its staff then wrote me a long and largely unintelligible letter telling me how flexible mortgages worked – a letter which, in my opinion, constituted advice. I had the temerity to ask what were this person’s qualifications.
Some months later I got a platitudinous reply which did not give me the information I asked for, but did enclose a leaflet on the lender’s complaints procedure.
Is this the lender’s interpretation of ‘Treating Customers Fairly’, remembering that I was writing in as a customer not as a broker?
Noel Broadgate
Mortgage adviser
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