Bank of Ireland increase differential on tracker rates

Reply to the comment left by "Dave Louden" at "17/03/2014 - 21:06":

Dave,

There's a few things you should do at this stage:

1) To help protect your position, send a letter or email to the BoI that states "‘I am paying the revised monthly amount on account number xxx pending the outcome of a legal test of your contractual entitlement to charge this sum. My paying of this sum is not an admission of your right to do so, and is without prejudice to my claim that you cannot"

2) Send a complaint into the BoI about the rate hike. Continue sending in complaints until the BoI provides you with its final response rejecting your complaint and stating it it entitled to raise your rate (Don't worry. This is all part of the game). Once you have the final response from the Bank of Ireland, send a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service. There is a six month time limit from receipt of the final response of the institution you are complaining about to submit a complaint to the FOS.

As an aside, each complaint to the Financial Ombudsman costs the BoI £500! (There's a little guerilla warfare for you)

3) Keep an eye on this forum and keep a keen eye on the West Bromwich forum on here. The West Brom case is further advanced at this stage than the BoI one and we anticipate that the claim against the West Brom will be formally submitted at court next month.

I can tell you there are developments going on in the background regarding: the BoI case in respect of funding a legal challenge. Those of who who attended the members meeting in London on 27th February will know what I am referring to. It may be that The Law Department has also contacted affected members to provide you with further information regarding funding solutions.

In the meantime Dave, keep following this forum and the West Brom forum religiously. There is a secure forum for BoI members and West Brom members where most of the legalese has been discussed but you would need to join the action group to gain access to it. That said, it's probably best to leave the law and legal strategies to the lawyers. I can also tell you that you have a very strong case according to expert opinion.

p.s. I'll give you a hint as to who this is. We spoke earlier on Facebook. However, I prefer to remain anonymous on here.

If you want to discuss the above further, please feel free to give me a call bud. I'm happy to help.

p.p.s Let any friends and colleagues at work with affected BoI or West Brom mortgages know that they can fight back and point them in the direction of this website. Alternatively, point them in my direction and I'll happily provide them with the requisite information about this case and the West Brom one. Time is of the essence to join the West Brom case as the cut off date for new members to join is 28 March 2014.

If anyone is interested in complaining about (lack of) service from FOS, I have copied and pasted their response to my preliminary enquiry:

Thank you for your email. Our service currently holds both electronic and paper copies of all complaints submitted by consumers. When we receive any correspondence from either a consumer or a business the information is logged and placed with the file so that is can be examined and considered as part of the overall case.

I appreciate you are frustrated with what appears to be the lack of progress on your case. These complaints have raised some complex issues which have taken longer than we would have liked to resolve. Going forward we are close to completing these matters and I will keep you updated with developments affecting your case.

I understand that you have already submitted detailed information about your complaint. As each case is assessed on its individual merits and each complaint will have its own unique set of circumstances the questionnaire was sent out to establish if any changes had arisen since the complaints were submitted and to provide an overall summary of the effects of the interest rate rise.

If you wish to complain about our service there is a process for you to do this. In the first instance this will be dealt with at manager level. Please let me know if you would like this matter dealt with as a complaint and I will pass the details on. For information I am on annual leave next week and will return on 31 March 2014.

Yours sincerely
Elaine Parsons
Adjudicator

I plan to make a formal complaint.

Thank you Theresa for this. I will write another letter and address it to Elaine Parsons this time. It is so frustrating that nothing is happening for us, so doing something will be a good. I think we should all write to Elaine Parsons....

For the heck of it I have made lodged two complaints with FOs about base rate differential
1 - the legality/justification for the action taken by BOI & not unlike many others on this site
2 - mis-selling of mortgage in the first instance as other products were available with terms and conditions which were must more sure & certain both at the time & now. I have suggested that the time the bank sold the mortgage it had no idea what would trigger the differential clauses & could not therefore have explained the key product risks to my brother, a solicitor or even itself!

Application for discovery of internal documents from the banks' risk management function might be interesting particularly anything relating putting forward the internal case/ justification for making changes to T's &C's

glad to see west brom action is moving along very positive i wish them all the best,wondering how our action stands at the moment i guess its waiting for the above. would it be pos to get an update weekly maybe sometimes the silence is deafening .

Reply to the comment left by "Paul Anderton" at "29/03/2014 - 15:13":

I feel your pain, the BoI campaign is running at a snails pace and the lack of updates from Justin make it all the more frustrating. Please Jusin or anybody at The Law Department, please report at least weekly, even if you have nothing to report as such. All we want to know is what is being done to move this campaign forward. If nothing is being done then please tell us that and give the group the opportunity to move on and/or to consider appointing alternative legal advisers.
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Reply to the comment left by "Mark Alexander" at "29/03/2014 - 16:27":

thank you Mark, I so agree with you. Just a "we are here for you and will get back soon would be great." Unfortunately, for those who could not get to the London meeting and I tried, after the meeting there was nothing from the Law Department and I sent a very short email asking whether the would like some money but there was no reply. I really think people are giving up and it may be difficult then to revive this cause.
I second Paul's comment about the West Brom. it is so exciting, I read every comment every day (a few times a day) a heartfelt Good Luck.

Hi Mark,
I assume from your last post we are all waiting on Justin to inform us of the next stage?

Also, with my 3 affected properties costing £7200 in additional payments each year, if i looked at a 'New Deal' from BoI, if this case was won would i be able to revert to my original mortgage deal or do i have to sit tight on the current deal I'm on until the case closes?

Regards Darrell

Reply to the comment left by "Darrell G" at "29/03/2014 - 17:23":

That's really a question for Justin to answer too Darryl.
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LEGAL ACTION UPDATE:

Dear All

In response to Mark's and others recent comments - I apologise for the lack of updates on this forum. We have been emailing people directly when we are approached for an update, but I am sorry that I have not been updating this forum. From now on, I will post an update here every Friday afternoon - as I did for the West Brom case.

We haven't been sitting on our hands for the past month or so, so I'd like to update you on what we have been doing.

We are currently in discussion with a number of different insurers about obtaining insurance to cover the costs of litigating this case. The BOI case is different from West Brom in that the Terms and Conditions used by BOI are not all the same and there are a number of different scenarios where we would have to litigate separately - and not lump everyone into one group action. Because of this, the cost of bringing a claim will be higher than in the West Brom case. However we are confident in the strength of our case such that we should be able to get an insurer to cover the costs of going into the litigation as well as any adverse costs. If we can get this covered, this will be hugely beneficial for everyone (except BOI) as we should be able to attach a very large number of claimants and it won't cost anyone very much (if anything at all).

The reason for the lack of updates so far is that we are waiting for an answer from the insurers. This is not a quick process as they have to take their own advice on the merits of the case and decide if it is a risk worth covering.

I will report back again on Friday with another update.