West Bromwich Building Society Tracker Margins Legal Action

West Bromwich Building Society Tracker Margins Legal Action

18:38 PM, 30th September 2013, About 11 years ago 3869

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West Bromwich Tracker Rate Mortgages Legal Action Group

West Bromwich Building Society Tracker Margins Legal Action

Are you affected by the West Brom Tracker Rate Hike?

If your mortgage account number begins with the number 8 you are highly likely to be one of the unlucky 41% of the mortgage customers of the West Bromwich building Society with a West Bromwich Mortgage Company account affected by the 1.9% increase in your tracker margin rate. However, if you arranged your mortgage directly with West Bromwich Building Society (i.e. not via a broker) or before 2006 the chances are that your account number will begin with the number 9 and you are not affected – YET!!! West Brom will give no assurances that mortgages with account numbers beginning with the number 9 will not be affected at some point in the future.

OUR INTENDED CLASS ACTION LITIGATION OVERVIEW

Tracker Rate Class Actions Updates

The reasons we started this campaign are very simple:-

1) We believe the actions of West Brom are immoral

2) We believe the actions of West Brom are unlawful, i.e. they have no legal grounds to increase their tracker rate margins

3) We have no wish to subsidise other areas of the West Bromwich Building Society business model

4) We are fearful of other lenders following suit if West Brom are allowed to get away with this

Mark Smith (Barrister-At-Law) said …

“Representative actions, where one person starts a case representing many others, who all want the answer to a legal question from a court such as ‘is this contract enforceable against me?’ but are not seeking damages. All those who sign up to the action will get the benefit of the win, but they do not have to start their own cases, as they are ‘represented’ by the lead claimant.

The only people who will definitely benefit from success in the case are those who have signed up. There will be no free rides. Any others will have to fight their own corners individually, either alone or with legal help (which will inevitably cost significantly more than the group case).”

We will NOT settle on any basis.

Landlords take legal action against West Brom Mortgage Company

We have a moral duty to do what is right for those who support the values upon which this campaign was started. Our promise to all who support these values is that we will not sell out on you at any price. We will continue to fight this injustice and we will fight any other lender who tries to follow suit.

Are you with us?

This discussion thread is now closed – we’re off to Court!

To link to the new discussion please CLICK HERE

West Bromwich Mortgage Company Tracker Margins Legal Action


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Comments

Gavin Ewan

13:32 PM, 22nd September 2013, About 11 years ago

Hi Mark

I joked to my wife when the letter fell on my hall floor on Saturday 21st September that the letter from the West Bromwich was an increase in the tracker rate , to my horror it was.

I will be phoning them on Monday to complain as there is nothing in my Acceptance of Offer suggesting that they can increase it ,basically it is a tracker BOE base rate + 0.99% ie 1.49% until the term end ( 25 years from November 2006)

I expect there are going to be a lot of very unhappy people, as I am , I have been effected by the BOI increase also.

Gavin

Shaun Mcallister

14:32 PM, 22nd September 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by " " at "22/09/2013 - 13:32":

Gavin - I agree with you. I shall be fighting them all the way

Zoe Earnshaw

20:49 PM, 22nd September 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Shaun Mcallister" at "22/09/2013 - 14:32":

I have received the same letter.I've read that a proportion of the bank of Ireland cases have been reversed.does any one know how/by what means. Seems btl loans aren't the remit of the FOS? don't have much hope that a phone call to west brom is going to help without some serious clout. Some minion will just keep repeating its within the small print/out of their control etc .Zoe

David Lawrenson

9:33 AM, 23rd September 2013, About 11 years ago

The most likely to follow BOI will be Barclays-Woolwich and NatWest.

In case of the former the lifetime base rate trackers followed their own BARCLAYS base rate, not the BOE base rate.
These two rates have always been the same.
And the lifetime trackers were set very low indeed, which means it is costing Barclays a lot of money, so a lot of motivation probably exists.

Barclays may likely now find a way to up their base rate, as their may not seem to be a "way out" for them within the small print.

However, we have also seen "small print get outs" in BM Solutions mortgages too.

David Lawrenson
LettingFocus - PRS Advice

Justin Selig - solicitor

16:04 PM, 23rd September 2013, About 11 years ago

I have had a look at the paperwork and there doesn’t seem to be any reference to the ability to increase the margin, so I don’t know how they think they can get away with it. In the BOI case there was a reference to the ability to increase the rate as per the mortgage conditions. In this offer letter there is not even a reference to that.

This is definitely worth fighting.

Devon Landlords

16:32 PM, 23rd September 2013, About 11 years ago

My wife and I have two mortgages with WBBS and received our letters on Saturday. We are absolutely furious to say the least! We telephoned our mortgage broker first of all this morning and they said we must ring WBBS. We spoke to someone in Customer Services who is "lodging our complaint". Apparently WBBS then take up to 28 days to respond. We have just typed a letter lodging the complaint also. We suggest that all affected Buy-to-Let landlords join us in doing this to exert maximum pressue on WBBS. The next step we guess will be them writing back with standard excuse letter....reading info on the web we have learnt that £15 million is being raised by their doing this - their Chairmans report (which can be viewed on their website) states that business is good and they are also about to build a spanking new Head Office at the cost of goodness knows how much! We will be taking this to the Financial Ombudsmen Service and DO NOT accept the 2 per cent hike. They are treading on extremely dodgy ground legally as none of this information was included in our Key Illustration Documents but only in very small print in the enclosed booklet. Our attention was never drawn to this when we took the mortgages out. We believe that this could contravene the "Unfair Contracts Act". It may be worth setting up an Action Group and we would consider managing this if there is enough interest - please feel free to contact us.

16:45 PM, 23rd September 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Peter Cole" at "23/09/2013 - 16:32":

Peter - We also received our letter on Saturday with regard to our BTL mortgage. When I rang this morning and explained nowhere in the Key Facts or Offer Letter did it state they could increase rate without a change in Base Rate I was told it was on Page 15! of the terms and conditions booklet - I also believe they are on dodgy ground - surely a "tracker mortgage" only tracks changes in Base Rate? - My complaint has been formally lodged but I'm expecting to get the complaint refused - I'll then take it up with the Financial Services Omnibus and any other appropriate body. I'll be willing to join a Action Group.

Mark Alexander - Founder of Property118

17:16 PM, 23rd September 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Peter Cole" at "23/09/2013 - 16:32":

Hi Peter

We already have an action group.

United we stand, divided we fall.

This is the perfect opportunity for those affected by WBBS and BoI to stand united and see a test case through.

The opportunity is to claim compensation equal to the increase for the entire term of the mortgage. WBBS claim this increase will raise £19 million per annum. If we assume their average mortgage has 10 years to run that's a potential quantum for claim of £190 million.

A letter of complaint to WBBS and the FOS is a decent starting point but for 190 million pounds you can bet WBBS are going to put up a very tough fight and are highly unlikely to cave in based on a very stroppy letters from affected customers.

If you read through the BoI discussion on the same same topic you will soon see that we have been through all this before and are now 6 months ahead.

The BoI thread has attracted somewhere approaching 30,000 readers and over 800 comments to date.

See >>> http://www.property118.com/bank-of-ireland-increase-differential/37002/

17:20 PM, 23rd September 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Peter Cole" at "23/09/2013 - 16:32":

would be very interested in joining any action group

Mark Alexander - Founder of Property118

17:50 PM, 23rd September 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Denise Doms" at "23/09/2013 - 17:20":

Please complete the form above Denise

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