West Bromwich Building Society Tracker Margins Legal Action

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Alexander" at "02/10/2013 - 19:04":

Sorry, I don't follow why a payment of £240 is needed to fund the budget of £15000 for steps 1 to 4.

Reply to the comment left by "Seething Landlord" at "02/10/2013 - 19:27":

Hi it does state any excess will be used for stage 5. As 400 have shown an interest this is not a commitment. With BoI out of 300 only a 100 of us funded a Class Action, for the amount of input needed £200 is an absolute bargain, lucky it's not charged per hour.

It may be of use the fact that when the interest rate dropped to .5% I was bombarded with "offers" from the WBBS to change to a different mortgage scheme obviously NOT to my benefit. Surely this is a case of them realizing they had made a feau pas and thus they must have known at this time that the trading conditions (read market) were poor and to only have changed it when the BOE state that the interest rate will stay low for the foreseeable future and BOI have already done the dastardly deed. Is there something that we can use suggesting that this has nothing to do with market conditions and only for profit or some such?

Thanks for all your hard work here Mark, we are 100 per cent behind you and will be busy photocopying tomorrow morning and getting our cheque for £480 in the post to you and Justin - this is the best and only real way forward, to fight this together!

I'm with you with this.

Me, my husband, his brother and sister-in-law own 4 properties jointly, two of which are WBBS and 2 are with Mortgage Trust.
Should we be sending letters from each of us, or from all of us signed by all of us, or all of us but with just the one signature? How should we proceed with multiple owners?

Our mortgages were fixed at Bank Base plus 0.25% with the terms of "after fixed date ends, your loan reverts to a variable rate which is the same as the Bank of England Base Rate, currently at 4.75% with a premium of 0.99%, until the term end. "

I don't recall seeing any booklet and I couldn't find one with my paperwork.

PS
I'm on a kindle forum and have just posted a thread referring back to here to spread the word 🙂

Same here, stepping up to line and ready to be counted. It's 480 from me

Would it be possible to have some separate specific comment threads, Its get difficult to keep track of what's being said with aspect getting jumbled together, possibly with a master page for those newcomers that have only just found the site.

I've just been on Moneysavingexpert.com and there's the standard news article and thread where I found a lonely sole asking if their were any other WB landlords in the same boat as her. Hopefully she's found her way here by now and has found her way around.

There's been a few comments dotted around about the need for publicity and thing some have already done. I think this issue warrant a topic.

sorry more work

Hi Mark and everyone else,

I'm going to have to summarise this, as otherwise my thoughts and the issues will become long and convoluted, so forgive my directness:

I have received an e-mail from Justin Selig, the law solicitor acting for the cases on your site. However, I really feel that things are becoming muddled as it's not clear now what's happened, or rather going to happen precisely. So:

1 - I was under the impression that this was a 'Class Action', which to me meant an action as a 'group'. This was what the donation we made was for, to you, Mark, to take this 'case' (singular, notice, not each individual concerned) to challenge it in a court of law. However, Justin's e-mail has now confused matters rather;

2 - It now seems that we are expected to pay £240, per mortgage, to get the legal wheels rolling (I'm not complaining about the amount, but that it's an additional and unexpected, separate sum, in light of what I have just said in number 1) Why is this needed, when the donation was for a class action?;

3 - If this request from Justin is what's needed, and not the original donation to 118, then what's that money being used for? Was it even necessary to 'donate' if we now are having to pay for individual representation anyway?

4 - Are we in fact needing BOTH to donate and for individual representation? If so, why wasn't this made clear at the outset? Is not the Class Action enough?

5 - Although I'm not distrustful of Justin, I'm not comfortable paying out for something where the final amount is so unclear and unspecified. I realise that en exact figure can't be given, but a ballpark figure would be nice; even if this means giving figures for specified numbers of those bringing this action. This is in part because this has already happened - confusion I mean - in as much as donating to the cause, thinking that was going to be the sum total, only to then find that there is more needed, for whatever reason. Can you understand my concerns?

6 - If WBBS finds they are ruled against (which I fully expect, given that our Mortgage Offer clearly states no extra interest variable over the agreed margin on the BoE Base Rate - NO booklets or additional pamphlets were given; and even if they WERE, AFTER the Mortgage Offer has been SIGNED, it's too late to then add ANYTHING!) with this Class Action, then surely WBBS would legally be required to apply the ruling to ALL those affected, on tracker buy-to-lets? There would therefore be NO need to have individual cases brought, which is what Justin is bringing.

I realise that you, Mark, are doing this all yourself, and working your socks off, but we do need some clarity of the whole process and what exactly we are paying, and for what.......and if the donation is to go to help with the legals, then will what has already been paid, go towards the final step (number 5 in Justin's e-mail)?

Sorry to place more work onto you, Mark, but my wife and I really need to get our heads around this before we take things further.

Thanks in advance 😉

Reply to the comment left by "Andy Bell" at "02/10/2013 - 21:16":

I concur, Andy, but one aspect in particular that would make it much easier, is putting the latest comment FIRST, rather than at the bottom. So when you click any hyperlinks in e-mail notifications, you're at least likely to be taken to the right page. Currently you get taken to the beginning, and then have to select the final page number displayed to get the latest comment/s.

Poor Mark though, I feel for him. He must be working his socks off. However, I'm sure he'll have a Webmaster who he can pass this task over to!

I believe to get counsel's opinion and start the other tasks Justin noted in his statement then £240 is a price well worth paying. Also the £240 will be the first of several calls as I cannot believe that WB will simply change their mind unless legally forced to.

I have been involved in litigation in the past and no matter how right I felt I was it was scary and expensive - a group action with set amounts for set tasks for the people who sign up for it is the only way to do it.

I do believe that it would be useful if Justin or Mark could explain how those who do sign up to the lawyers and pay the £240 will benefit more than those who sit and wait. If this argument is persuasive then I believe more £240's and clients will be rolling in rather than waiting.

Reply to the comment left by "Incensed Landlord" at "02/10/2013 - 22:11":

I'm really sorry but you lost me on your first question.

What is it in Justin's email which makes you think this isn't a Class Action? There are several options open to us all and the advice from Justin is that we are progress the least expensive options first but waste no time and instruct Counsels opinion simultaneously, just in case we need to fight a group litigation case in the higher courts. That's perfectly logical and well explained in Justin's email and the discussions we have all been having online in my opinion.

As you are using a pseudonym I am unable to reconcile your references to a donation you have made. Presumably you are aware that Property118 is funded entirely by donations and sponsorships. Might you have made a donation to support the running costs of the Property118 forum in the belief that you were making a contribution to a Class Action fighting fund? If that is the case please email your contact details and I will telephone you in the morning - my email address is mark@property118.com

I have made it very clear on several occasions that we would not be asking for any money until we had a better idea on strategy. We are part way there and the fund raising has begun. We still can't be certain about costs per head though until we get the barristers opinion and a quote for A.T.E. insurance against legal costs in the event of any litigation failing and costs being awarded against us all. Further, we have no idea how many will actually pay the £240 either so even if we did know what the costs would be we would still be in the same position.

Anyhow, it's 11:02 and I've been at my PC since 06:45 today so I'm afraid I'm going to have to call it a day.

I am the webmaster by the way but I do outsource some very technical things as and when enough funds build up in the form of donations and sponsorships. I do have a couple of business partners who help out behind the scenes but when it comes to what you see on the website it's all pretty much down to me, every article, every response comment.

Goodnight.