Last week Mortgage Introducer revealed how some lenders, including Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Chelsea Building Society, had been severely criticised for switching their contact numbers to national rate 0870 ones.
Brokers had noticed that some of the number changes had occurred after ‘Mortgage Day’ and felt this was simply a ploy by the lenders to save money at the broker’s and client’s expense.
Although the Chelsea insists it had not switched to 0870 after ‘Mortgage Day’ and has had this number for several years, it said that it has now appointed a working party to review the number.
Andy Barr, public relations manager at Chelsea, said: “As a result of Mortgage Introducer flagging this up to us, we now have a team reviewing our 0870 number and have just put in a request to have the number changed to local rate.
“Any money we have made from the number this year, although we stress it would not be a large amount, will also be given to charity. We didn’t realise that this was such a big issue with brokers until Mortgage Introducer raised it.”
Mortgage Introducer, alongside its readers, is now urging other lenders who have these 0870 numbers to switch to free call after it became clear some brokers were actively avoiding using lenders that had these national rate numbers.
Ken Sives, partner at Sives Financial Services, said: “I will seek out lenders that have free call numbers. So lenders that have 0870 numbers need to review this.”
Sives added brokers could also seek alternative contact numbers for the lender if they don’t want to shell out calling the 0870 number. “Brokers should log onto ‘saynoto0870.co.uk’ and you can look for other numbers, i.e. normal landline numbers, for the companies you wish to contact.
“I’ve used this on various occasions and it seems to work,” Sives said.
Damon Sylvester, mortgage consultant at Vale Mortgages & Finance, also contested any lender who says it makes no money out of having the 0870 number.
He said: “The fact of the matter is that lenders have a choice whether to set up 0800, 0845 or 0870 numbers. With the first two they will get no payment if either a broker or customer calls.
“However, the 0870 number is an income/revenue generating tool with payment usually between 2p and 4p per minute of incoming call.”
“Therefore, someone on hold or on a call for 30 minutes has just made the lender 60p at the very least. Not a vast sum I agree, but multiplied by the calls received in a day it can mean a significant sum and certainly enough to cover operator/ employee costs.
“I would therefore like to know why Abbey and other lenders chose 0870 over 0845/0800. Efficiency? I don’t think so,” Sylvester said.
Sally Lauder, press manager at Alliance & Leicester, said: “Like many other organisations, we use local and non-geographic numbers to provide the best customer service for our brokers.
“We are currently in the process of reviewing all our numbers but 0870 numbers are used everywhere these days, even BBC’s Watchdog uses them.
“In the majority of cases we answer our broker calls within three minutes. Also, our average duration of call for brokers is about four minutes which is roughly 32p,” Lauder said.
