Abbey National suck. an it's not just Jessops thread

[andrew748]

in june we swapped our abbey 5 year fixed rate 6.2% mortgage for an abbey 4.09% 3year deal. the buy out was £7K

now like many of you i remember when interest rates went to 15% and i saw my mother freak out and do odd stuff to cope.

so it seemed prudent to swallow the 7K penalty.

come August and although we have received numerous letters telling us we had swapped mortgages, nothing had changed bank account wise.
so we phoned and phoned and phoned
Abbey's mortgage complaints department truly are imbeciles.
lie followed admission followed lie at one point i was getting a lie and 5 minutes later they phoned my wife to contradict what they had just told me.
so we escalated the complaint to head office where the attitude wasn't much better and the insults were slightly worse but disguised better

any way to cut a long story short
continued chipping away at the corporate mentality has secured a full refund of the over paid interest, bank charges and £370 compensation.

but we have to sign a letter of satisfaction.

i'm tempted not to sign and see if we can get the £7k back via some sort of bbc watchdog related humiliation.

any tips or thoughts from you lovely people?

 

[EOS_JD]

Take the offer. Watchdog would only get involved where there were many many complaints and even then I doubt you'd get that kind of compensation.

 

[Keith W]

Banks are good at doing that - Lying

Watchdog have done a piece on Abbey before I believe.

I used to bank with TSB and they had a habit of lying to, so much so I closed my account with them, however some 3 months after closing my account I received a letter from them telling me I was being charged £35 for going over drawn! I went into the bank and asked how I could possibly have gone over drawn on account that I had closed.

TSB: "The account is not closed Sir, it is still active"

Me: "But I closed it down 3 months ago"

TSB: "That's impossible Sir, you have not closed the account down and you owe us £35"

Me: "Are you calling me a liar?"

TSB: "No Sir, I am just saying you did not close the account down"

It was at this point I showed him the signed and stamped letter I got from TSB when I closed the account.

Needless to say I did not pay the £35