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Complaint letter to the bank following letter foreclosing on loan please read?
Hi,
I am posting up a complaint letter Im about to send to my bank. If anyone has the time to read, its a bit long but relevant, and discuss it would be amazingly helpful. I can't afford a lawyer, at all, and I have no legal help. So am winging it on my own!
Thanks xxx
Dear Sirs,
Formal Complaint : Account Numbers :
Thank you for your recent letters foreclosing on a ‘loan’ I used to buy my family home in 2004.
We wish to make a formal complaint about the way this account has been set up, handled and finalized.
We believe there is no contract on which to foreclose.
The history
I asked you for a mortgage to buy my Mums house in 2004. My marriage was very violent and the last assault resulted in the loss of an unborn child. I needed to get my 2 year old child to safety and, as I owned a third of my Mum’s house already raising the funds to buy the remainder seemed our route to safety.
You held the business accounts for my Limited Company and I approached my Relationship Manager as my route into the bank to ask for a mortgage.
Without referring me to a mortgage advisor a loan was organized for the amount needed. I was not told what this loan was, how it would work, the implications of the loan etc. Given the violence my options to ‘shop around’ were time limited.
Over the last ten years this loan has been renewed every 6 to 12 months with additional fees and unexplained rises in interest rates.
The bank has struggled to define what the loan is when asked, acknowledged by your staff in various memo’s and over the years it has been a ‘flexible business loan’, ‘a bridging loan’, a ‘business advance’ and an ‘on demand loan’.
Nothing in the contract specifies it is a business loan and there is no term relating to business endeavor. I have never been self employed to warrant a business loan and as a Company Director any business loan I would have taken / been allowed would have been in my company’s name not my own.
Alongside, as a letter from the relationship manager states in 2007/8, an implied term of the contract was always that it would convert to a residential mortgage on the sale of my marital home. A business loan cannot convert to a personal loan particularly where a limited company is involved.
It transpired from documents provided as part of a Subject Access Request that the relationship managers had authorized the loan on the basis I was a ‘property developer’ who’s main business interest was ‘property letting with a turnover of £140,000’. You know, from having my company’s accounts and within memo’s provided, that my main business was ‘professional and scientific’ and my turnover was nothing like this figure.
No one has been able to explain why I was unable to have a residential mortgage and after the above coming to light why I wasn’t able to have a ‘buy to let’ mortgage as that would have been more fitting to the lies that you had told to set this up. It seems the loan was set up to line the banks pockets and afford me no security even though I was a low risk customer.
My company was liquidated in 2006 as I couldn’t cope with the pressure of the criminal court case against my husband, his continued threats and a small child.
The bank were made aware I had no money and couldn’t meet the repayments. Instead of foreclosing on the loan you ran up a £12,000 overdraft on my current account taking only payments for the loan and bouncing all other payments. This was also my partners account and no request was made to him for any overdraft to be set up. He is now joint and severally liable for this amount.
Following this I couldn’t afford as I told you to make any payments and this lasted for about 12 months. Instead interest accrued against the loan at £28 per day. The relationship manager at the end of this period told me he ‘understood where I was as his mum had been through a similar thing’ but ‘he couldn’t protect me from his superiors anymore.’ Whilst I appreciate the sentiment I am sure this is unprofessional and caused untold hardship. The unpaid interest was capitalized without any discussion taking it from £128,000 to £137,000 in 12 months on top of £12,000 of overdraft.
I do not understand why as responsible lending would dictate there was no fore closure. The bank conducted, no financial assessment, did not use their pre existing knowledge of my circumstances and chose to ignore my past 12 months of non payment over riding the decision that I was a high risk.
I was then forced to open a business account even though I was not self employed and didn’t own a business. I was told this was only to service the loan account. As I was unable to afford the repayments, of which the bank were aware, it meant that the bank could once again take a full monthly payment from an overdraft I hadn’t asked for sending me deeper into financial difficulties whilst charging additional fees. I was not allowed to service the loan from my account at Lloyds.
No statements for this business account have ever been sent to me and its opening receipt does not follow standard procedure.
Instead the bank continued to offer up repayment arrangements which were not achievable again without any form of financial assessment and left us with no savings, no money and caused severe financial hardship as we were asked, following home visits from relationship managers to pay off the overdraft without ever seeing a statement or being offered a route of challenge.
At the same time I was also forced to sign a statement adding new terms to the contract solely to insure it could be seen as a business loan and so excluding me from the new provisions of the consumer credit act that would have afforded me protection which without a business clause would have been deemed a personal loan. Again I had no choice in this and all questions were avoided, repossession and my children’s homelessness always being the stick with which to beat me into submission.
It’s also clear from paperwork provided that the bank were becoming more confused about the ‘sketchy background to this loan’ and they needed to get out of the ‘churning’ situation they had created with regards to Claytons rule and the revolving credit nature of the agreements / overdrafts.
In 2009 a new relationship manager was assigned. I have made two complaints about his behavior but I would imagine both have been eaten at a local level. My main issue was his misogyny. I sat through an hours meeting listening to his opinions about women in divorces and what ‘they take their husbands for’. He made no bones about telling me he had 5 children and what he had lost in his divorce. He was making judgement’s which given my own widely documented situation were unjust and unprofessional.
He believed I was still living at my marital home, that I was letting out my actual home, hiding the rental income and so the interest rate was increased considerably even though just a month before I had had a visit at my home from the previous manager.
In sending this paperwork to my marital home, this manager caused two issues.
Firstly I was not notified of the increase in interest rate and a further £5,000 of overdraft had occurred, again no statement meant I had no idea what was going on. Secondly my confidentiality was breached and my husband used the information contained to attempt residency of my child by stating I was not coping financially.
I offered xxxx £30,000 in 2009 from my divorce settlement asking for the loan to be converted, as had been promised, to a residential mortgage. I heard nothing from you.
In September 2010 I was called to a meeting. The manager demanded partial repayment of the loan or he would within 48 hours convert it to a capital repayment loan. I asked again why I couldn’t have a residential mortgage and he said ‘I am not a mortgage advisor’. He stated if the new monthly repayments weren’t paid we would lose our home.
He then sent paperwork for a loan that was 7 years in duration, that saw a 6% above base interest rate at a time when interest rates were at their lowest and increased the monthly repayment by 100% to £1100. Again no financial assessment was conducted as to whether this was affordable and no explanation as to the product or its terms were explained even though over 7 years the full amount would not be repaid based on its terms. Most importantly the implied term of the original contract for conversion to a mortgage was ignored.
I refused to pay and complained but no response was forthcoming.
The loan was recalled in 2011. Repossession started in 2014, no explanation as to a 3 year gap has been given.
All of this history shows an unfair relationship has been created where there is significant imbalance, peppered with undue influence, ransomous behavior and breaches of all responsibilities to which you are a signatory as you have:
Given an unfair relationship, amongst other breaches, can be established and you have not acted in any way responsibly towards me we would ask that the debt be written off and we be restored to the position we were in prior to the initial agreement in 2004.
Your actions and your ignorance, have meant we have suffered untold hardship as a family with all our savings and saleable items going to meet the demands of your staff towards this loan and associated products. No one has listened to us. The stress has aggravated my health problems leading to periods of critical hospitalization and, as my condition has worsened, I am now unemployable. It has meant we have been unable to pay our other liabilities and so now have appalling credit histories and the childhood we could have provided for our children has been undermined as your threats have seen our money slip away from us.
We have copied the FSA, your board of Directors and the OFT into this complaint and look forward to your response.
I am posting up a complaint letter Im about to send to my bank. If anyone has the time to read, its a bit long but relevant, and discuss it would be amazingly helpful. I can't afford a lawyer, at all, and I have no legal help. So am winging it on my own!
Thanks xxx
Dear Sirs,
Formal Complaint : Account Numbers :
Thank you for your recent letters foreclosing on a ‘loan’ I used to buy my family home in 2004.
We wish to make a formal complaint about the way this account has been set up, handled and finalized.
We believe there is no contract on which to foreclose.
The history
I asked you for a mortgage to buy my Mums house in 2004. My marriage was very violent and the last assault resulted in the loss of an unborn child. I needed to get my 2 year old child to safety and, as I owned a third of my Mum’s house already raising the funds to buy the remainder seemed our route to safety.
You held the business accounts for my Limited Company and I approached my Relationship Manager as my route into the bank to ask for a mortgage.
Without referring me to a mortgage advisor a loan was organized for the amount needed. I was not told what this loan was, how it would work, the implications of the loan etc. Given the violence my options to ‘shop around’ were time limited.
Over the last ten years this loan has been renewed every 6 to 12 months with additional fees and unexplained rises in interest rates.
The bank has struggled to define what the loan is when asked, acknowledged by your staff in various memo’s and over the years it has been a ‘flexible business loan’, ‘a bridging loan’, a ‘business advance’ and an ‘on demand loan’.
Nothing in the contract specifies it is a business loan and there is no term relating to business endeavor. I have never been self employed to warrant a business loan and as a Company Director any business loan I would have taken / been allowed would have been in my company’s name not my own.
Alongside, as a letter from the relationship manager states in 2007/8, an implied term of the contract was always that it would convert to a residential mortgage on the sale of my marital home. A business loan cannot convert to a personal loan particularly where a limited company is involved.
It transpired from documents provided as part of a Subject Access Request that the relationship managers had authorized the loan on the basis I was a ‘property developer’ who’s main business interest was ‘property letting with a turnover of £140,000’. You know, from having my company’s accounts and within memo’s provided, that my main business was ‘professional and scientific’ and my turnover was nothing like this figure.
No one has been able to explain why I was unable to have a residential mortgage and after the above coming to light why I wasn’t able to have a ‘buy to let’ mortgage as that would have been more fitting to the lies that you had told to set this up. It seems the loan was set up to line the banks pockets and afford me no security even though I was a low risk customer.
My company was liquidated in 2006 as I couldn’t cope with the pressure of the criminal court case against my husband, his continued threats and a small child.
The bank were made aware I had no money and couldn’t meet the repayments. Instead of foreclosing on the loan you ran up a £12,000 overdraft on my current account taking only payments for the loan and bouncing all other payments. This was also my partners account and no request was made to him for any overdraft to be set up. He is now joint and severally liable for this amount.
Following this I couldn’t afford as I told you to make any payments and this lasted for about 12 months. Instead interest accrued against the loan at £28 per day. The relationship manager at the end of this period told me he ‘understood where I was as his mum had been through a similar thing’ but ‘he couldn’t protect me from his superiors anymore.’ Whilst I appreciate the sentiment I am sure this is unprofessional and caused untold hardship. The unpaid interest was capitalized without any discussion taking it from £128,000 to £137,000 in 12 months on top of £12,000 of overdraft.
I do not understand why as responsible lending would dictate there was no fore closure. The bank conducted, no financial assessment, did not use their pre existing knowledge of my circumstances and chose to ignore my past 12 months of non payment over riding the decision that I was a high risk.
I was then forced to open a business account even though I was not self employed and didn’t own a business. I was told this was only to service the loan account. As I was unable to afford the repayments, of which the bank were aware, it meant that the bank could once again take a full monthly payment from an overdraft I hadn’t asked for sending me deeper into financial difficulties whilst charging additional fees. I was not allowed to service the loan from my account at Lloyds.
No statements for this business account have ever been sent to me and its opening receipt does not follow standard procedure.
Instead the bank continued to offer up repayment arrangements which were not achievable again without any form of financial assessment and left us with no savings, no money and caused severe financial hardship as we were asked, following home visits from relationship managers to pay off the overdraft without ever seeing a statement or being offered a route of challenge.
At the same time I was also forced to sign a statement adding new terms to the contract solely to insure it could be seen as a business loan and so excluding me from the new provisions of the consumer credit act that would have afforded me protection which without a business clause would have been deemed a personal loan. Again I had no choice in this and all questions were avoided, repossession and my children’s homelessness always being the stick with which to beat me into submission.
It’s also clear from paperwork provided that the bank were becoming more confused about the ‘sketchy background to this loan’ and they needed to get out of the ‘churning’ situation they had created with regards to Claytons rule and the revolving credit nature of the agreements / overdrafts.
In 2009 a new relationship manager was assigned. I have made two complaints about his behavior but I would imagine both have been eaten at a local level. My main issue was his misogyny. I sat through an hours meeting listening to his opinions about women in divorces and what ‘they take their husbands for’. He made no bones about telling me he had 5 children and what he had lost in his divorce. He was making judgement’s which given my own widely documented situation were unjust and unprofessional.
He believed I was still living at my marital home, that I was letting out my actual home, hiding the rental income and so the interest rate was increased considerably even though just a month before I had had a visit at my home from the previous manager.
In sending this paperwork to my marital home, this manager caused two issues.
Firstly I was not notified of the increase in interest rate and a further £5,000 of overdraft had occurred, again no statement meant I had no idea what was going on. Secondly my confidentiality was breached and my husband used the information contained to attempt residency of my child by stating I was not coping financially.
I offered xxxx £30,000 in 2009 from my divorce settlement asking for the loan to be converted, as had been promised, to a residential mortgage. I heard nothing from you.
In September 2010 I was called to a meeting. The manager demanded partial repayment of the loan or he would within 48 hours convert it to a capital repayment loan. I asked again why I couldn’t have a residential mortgage and he said ‘I am not a mortgage advisor’. He stated if the new monthly repayments weren’t paid we would lose our home.
He then sent paperwork for a loan that was 7 years in duration, that saw a 6% above base interest rate at a time when interest rates were at their lowest and increased the monthly repayment by 100% to £1100. Again no financial assessment was conducted as to whether this was affordable and no explanation as to the product or its terms were explained even though over 7 years the full amount would not be repaid based on its terms. Most importantly the implied term of the original contract for conversion to a mortgage was ignored.
I refused to pay and complained but no response was forthcoming.
The loan was recalled in 2011. Repossession started in 2014, no explanation as to a 3 year gap has been given.
All of this history shows an unfair relationship has been created where there is significant imbalance, peppered with undue influence, ransomous behavior and breaches of all responsibilities to which you are a signatory as you have:
- Not made any attempt to adhere to and so breached the Lending Code and your responsibilities as a signatory to both the new and old Banking Codes, the OFT’s Licensing Provisions, including Debt Management Guidance, Non Status Lending Guidelines or the Financial Services Authorities Guidance or your own customer charter and so taken away any consumer protection and legal rights these would give me.
- Taken full advantage of me, my vulnerability and my situation by:
- Giving no advice, no explanations of the product, its risks or that it was an all monies charge and the implications of this and so breaching a relationship of trust.
- Not introducing me to the correct agent i.e a mortgage advisor within the bank to insure the correct advice was given and
- Miss-selling the loan and all subsequent reviews using false information to insure its existence for your own benefit and then
- Not honouring the implied term of contract on which this has relied since 2008 that it would convert to a residential mortage on the sale of my marital home and
- Aggressively misled me to believe the product / changes were compulsory i.e capitalizing interest into the loan, the need for a business account to service the loan, all overdrafts that you set up without any application from me as they were all items deemed to be ‘in my best interest’s’ to do when clearly they are / were not. All paperwork states that these were applied for by me but I have not applied for any of them and you have unsurprisingly, when asked, been unable to supply my applications. Again this is the bank covering its own tracks.
- Lending in a way that is irresponsible. Lying to insure the loan is agreed in house with your paperwork showing statements like ‘satisfactory use of facilities in the last twelve months’ or ‘no adverse information’ when you had in fact allowed an overdraft of 14k on my personal account against my wishes and charged it against my house, no payments had been made against the loan for over a year by me and I told you continually I had no money and could not afford to pay. No financial affordability tests were conducted as to whether we could afford the loan at each review, credit scoring was conducted, failed and overridden by staff.
- Failing to disclose relevant information, making up paperwork and attempting poorly to cover up mistakes made by staff in setting up this contract.
- Allowing agreements to have excessive costs at each renewal, this amounts to over £6,000 in set up fees in the first 5 years.
- Unreasonable use of the power to vary interest rates at will despite base rate being at its lowest for years and having a charge on property making the risk low. This is particularly evident in the loan contract issued in 2010 which is nothing more than ransomous.
- Charging unjustifiable default charges on overdrafts incurred by your refusing to foreclose on the loan even when you were told we had no money to pay it and were living considerably below the poverty line.
- Compounding default interest taking a loan of £128,000 to £137,000 in 12 months plus overdraft charges of another £12,000.
- Excessive interest rates being allowed on the loan and through unauthorized overdrafts. As you have never sent us statements on this business account (leading us to believe it does not properly exist) or complied with our 3 Subject Access Request we can only estimate the fees we have paid as being close to £30,000.
- Applying unreasonable pressure to sign agreements and meet your demands without explaining material fact both in face to face situations and not giving sufficient time to consider terms of agreements
- Allowing churning to occur by continually renewing, at will, the credit facility compounding any outstanding interest as you go and ignoring provisions in the Lending Code as to what you should do to assess affordability and avoid irresponsible lending despite:
- Attempting to avoid case law laid down in Claytons Rule as per the memo of 11/11/2008 ‘you will wish to rule off any revolving credit facilities to avoid the rule in Claytons Case’.
- Attempting to divert any protection the changes to the Consumer Credit Act in 2007 would have given by forcing the insertion of a business clause into the contract, against the Unfair Contract Terms Act, which without this term exposes it to be a personal loan and so unenforceable and
- By lying about my circumstances as a ‘property developer’ whose ‘principal activity is ‘property letting’ with ‘an estimated turnover of £140,000 per year’ to service your attempt to make this a business loan and so exempt from the CCA. With the contract from 2010, it states that we can now use the loan for anything we like. This contract is unsigned.
- Your general behavior has been unreasonable and ransomous. You for closed on the loan in January 2010 yet you have done nothing to start proceedings until January 2014 with no contact in between despite no payments against the loan being made.
- You have not adhered to pre court protocol in any way. There has been no attempt to rectify the situation in any shape or form on your behalf. You have not explained the delay in foreclosing, why you have waited so long to begin action etc.
- You have sat on £15,700 in the business account whilst we have starved and not told us by statement or other wise that the account was in credit. You did not apply it to ‘service the loan’ yet you are repossessing on the basis we owe £13000 in interest. It is then ironic that whilst you have never failed to take our money before to ‘service the loan’ this time it serves your own interests to now not take it as it allows the repossession to happen. This money was maintenance for my son and Disability Living Allowance for me, both of which are essential payments to improve our quality of life. You told us the account was closed and as always sent no statements. My son had stopped seeing his father and so we assumed this and the DLA award had ended.
- You have breached client confidentiality twice under the Data Protection Act. Firstly by providing details of our account to my current partners ex wife. You have my complaint logged on your system but no response was ever forthcoming. You sent information about this loan to my partner and the subsequent overdraft a rise in interest rates I did not know about as a result of the wrong address being used. This resulted in a residency application for my son and was hugely distressing. You have a complaint registered but again you’ve not had the decency to answer or make good despite acknowledging receipt.
- We have made three Subject Access Requests to you. Only the first has been answered in part. The second failed on the basis we needed to complete a proforma which we had not needed to complete with the first application and the third has been ignored completely.
Given an unfair relationship, amongst other breaches, can be established and you have not acted in any way responsibly towards me we would ask that the debt be written off and we be restored to the position we were in prior to the initial agreement in 2004.
Your actions and your ignorance, have meant we have suffered untold hardship as a family with all our savings and saleable items going to meet the demands of your staff towards this loan and associated products. No one has listened to us. The stress has aggravated my health problems leading to periods of critical hospitalization and, as my condition has worsened, I am now unemployable. It has meant we have been unable to pay our other liabilities and so now have appalling credit histories and the childhood we could have provided for our children has been undermined as your threats have seen our money slip away from us.
We have copied the FSA, your board of Directors and the OFT into this complaint and look forward to your response.
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