Halifax Home Insurance & deed-store

[Imacrank]

Hi there,

I am hoping to get some advice on behalf of my grandfather, I am a newbie so please do bear with me.

Approximately 3 months ago I discovered that my grandfather was being charged an awful renewal fee for his home insurance, so I said I would do a search for him long story short, I realised that he had not been having his bank account debited for his Home Insurance premiums & that instead Halifax bank had been adding the fee & interest charges to his deed-store, now this amounts to almost £5000.

My grandfather finished paying his mortgage in Jan 2002, however because of Halifax's policy to hold your deeds in deed-store this account must not exceed £125, hence the interest being charged on top of Home Insurance fee's. My grandafather had always paid his mortgage through standing order/debit etc & I must stress that this mortgage was taken out in 1987, my grandfather does not remember agreeing for this to be done this way to begin with.

I contacted Halifax & then spent the next 2 months chasing them up about how unacceptable this is, they agree that this situation should never been allowed to escalate to this amount. It was then agreed that they would at the very least remove the interest charges for the last 10 years(since the mortgage was effectively paid off) On one such chase up call I requested to know the amount that was being taken off the account balance & was advised that it was £4681.40 I checked 2-3 times with the person that I was speaking to that this was the correct amount & was assured that it was,
however I was waiting for this to be confirmed in writing, this did not arrive so I kept chasing & waiting on hold for an hour or more at a time I was then informed that this was not correct & in fact they would only be taking approx £1000 off the total bill, which they say is the interest charged for the last 10 years, I have questioned as to why I was told the amount I was but so far have not been given a satisfactory response.

So in regards to the amount I was first told & then the amount they have now said, where does my grandfather stand on this? Till now they still have not sent out a letter confirming the amount they are offering as I have repeatedly requested them to do.

Any help or advice regarding this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks

[Choklertsrus]

Re: Halifax Home Insurance & deed-store

Hello Imacrank

I just read your post about the Halifax Deed Store.

I'm in a similar situation with my uncle, he "paid-off" his mortgage in 1989 but I've recently discovered annual statements from Halifax which indicate he owes them almost four thousand pounds for Deed Store.

There are no actual demands for payment just these annual statements.

I can only find statements dating back four years which is strange, given that my uncle hasn't thrown anything away since the Second World War.

Have you had any success with the Halifax yet?

What have they done to resolve your Grandads complaint?

Kind regards

Christine

[ConfusedCW]

Hi,
I appreciate this post is 6 years old but I am in the same situation. Just going through my Dad's estate & there is a mortgage statement from the Halifax with almost 20k due for the same reasons as you have described. As you can probably imagine, I am horrified. My Dad got the mortgage in 1978 and had paid it off by 1990. He was always careful not to have any debts so would not have been aware of this.
Could you please let me know how/if you resolved this?
Thank you.

[des8]

Halifax have a reputation for this type of action.
Elderly people who have had a mortgage and insurance policy with Halifax are often not prepared to change insurers .
Halifax realise this and jack up the insurance premiums by about 5% per annum.
Eventually the insured says he can't afford the premium (after all he may be on small pension), so rather than reduce premium Halifax say don't worry, we'll just charge it to your account.
With that they open the mortgage account and charge the premium to it (and of course add interest on a yearly basis)
Win Win all round for them.. of course they will say your father had a yearly statement and that will be their defence.

I would start of with a complaint to the CEO.
Go straight to the top

If that doesn't work get on to the papers. I think the Guardian had an article about this some time ago so they might pick up on it for you.
Then there is always social media (but keep it factual to avoid defamation action!).