West Bromwich Building Society Tracker Margins Legal Action

I have received a letter from my MP, Priti Patel, today.
She says ' I share your frustration with this matter. I agree that burying important details in the small print is not only deeply unhelpful but can also be akin to misleading. I take on board your point that you feel the mortgage was mis-sold to you as the margin above the baseline interest rate was increased midway through the contract which goes against the basic fundamentals of a tracker mortgage.'

She goes on to say ' I will take this matter up with the Chief Executive of the financial Conduct Authority to ask for his thoughts on the case, and also with the Treasury Ministers to ensure your concerns are noted at the highest level and to ask what can be done to help.'

I have also had the reply back from west Brom today including the threat that they could give us one month's notice to repay in full. I now have our mortgage deed which I will forward to Justin to add to our other documents. I am still waiting for them to supply all the information they hold about us; in their letter they mention data received from a credit reference agency and it will be interesting to see when they obtained this data and whether they had our permission.

I am beginning to think we should be talking to a PR company about getting some advertorials in the leading National Press after all. Do we have any PR people here or any recommendations on who to approach.

In my last life as an MD of a commercial finance brokerage our marketing department invested into for some independent market research. The company they commissioned contacted 10,000 landlords we had arranged mortgages for and a massive 70% of the respondents who regularly read daily newspapers were readers of the red tops, i.e The Sun and the Mirror.

This shocked us at first as it meant that the Mail, Telegraph, Guardian, Independent, Times etc only made up the other 30% between them.

It then occurred to us that several landlords come from working class backgrounds and work in the construction industry. They tend to buy a property as a 'pet project' and then rent it out. Many got the bug and purchased more by remortgaging to raise deposits in the boom times.

Does anybody here have any editorial contacts at The Sun and The Mirror?
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One interesting comment I got today from the Consumers' Association, when I asked about whether they would start a campaign like they did about the BoI, was that they had spoken to the Financial Ombudsman Service whose office informed them that they had received very few complaints from affected individuals. I was staggered when I heard that. I suspect that many of those affected don't actually know where to start, rather than the fact that they are happy to pay an extra £300 or so per month without any legal basis to have to do so. I suspect that they are already resigned to their fate.

Reply to the comment left by "Paul Eastabrook" at "31/10/2013 - 21:41":

You got me thinking now Paul.

Where do people go when they feel hard done by and need free advice?

Citizens Advice of course! Why didn't I think of this before (bangs head against wall).

does anybody here have any contacts at CAB?

I reckon they could be swamped with complaints come December when all the extra payment kick in. I wonder whether they would agree to refer all these people here? If they do we could be home and dry in terms of getting the additional support we need.
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Mark, you have my unbounded admiration for the work you have done and are doing.

You asked a few days ago about landlord magazines. I receive two by email, from NetRent and from Landlord & Buy to Let Magazine.

NetRent ‘s webpage http://www.netrent.co.uk/netrent_homev3/blog.asp carries news stories.
Yesterday it duplicated the article on the BBC’s website about the West Bromwich, with a link to the BBC’s page which in turn has a link to Property118. I sent an email to the owner asking him to publicise the petition you drew up. Every 2 months he sends an email linking to various articles.

I have also sent an email to my mortgage broker, my solicitor and several letting agents with a link to the petition asking them to sign it, to pass it on to their clients and to pass it on to their competitors.

Landlord & Buy to Let Magazine is produced every 2 months and is available free from: http://www.landlordshow.info. I have sent them an email linking to the BBC webpage and the petition.

They also run Landlord and Letting exhibitions, with free tickets available online. The last exhibition of the year is at Stoneleigh Park, Coventry, about 35 miles from WB's head office. It takes place on 27th & 28th November, just before your press conference.

This seems an ideal opportunity for victims of West Bromwich who live nearby to publicise the threat to tracker mortgages by informing fellow landlords about your campaign and petition inside the exhibition, or outside.

One slight drawback, Mark, may be that all CABs seem to operate in isolation, despite having common training. What did cross my mind recently on a trip to Wolverhampton is how big West Bromwich is in the West Midlands, despite being virtually unheard of in London and the South East. On that basis, it may be feasible to target CABs in the immediate area around West Bromwich. Any targeted action may also serve to embarrass the society on its home turf. I even considered the possibility of picketing one of its local society offices, maybe somewhere like Brum if it has one, rather than at its headquarters. That's just me thinking aloud really.

@Appalled Landlord - thanks for the tips, I will get onto this tomorrow. Rather then sending people to the BBC website though, perhaps it would be better to refer them to our press release which contains a link back to this forum? Please see >>> http://www.property118.com/press-release-tracker-rate-mortgages/

I live in Norwich so Coventry is quite a teck for me but I'm sure there will be a few affected landlords in the area and perhaps a few could attend and hand out leaflets at the door assuming we can get some organised?

@Paul Eastabrook - I like that idea, if everybody here was to contact their local CAB and advise them of our campaign we can all feedback the responses here. Again the Press Release could prove to be very useful. Did you notice that I fixed the orientation of your picture by the way? 🙂
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Reply to the comment left by "Mark Alexander" at "31/10/2013 - 22:16":

Thanks for doing that Mark. I had the same issue on LinkedIn and it took two of us 30 minutes to fix, so well done.

Reply to the comment left by "Appalled Landlord" at "31/10/2013 - 22:02":

I live very close to Stoneleigh and would be happy to attend the show on the 27th - sorry can't make the 28th - to hand out flyers and/or seek petition signatures.
How well attended are these shows? I would welcome ideas for a punchy call to action flyer. Needs to be short. have great bold heading, bullet pointed maybe and worded so it commands attention and ACTION. I'm struggling off top of my head right now to envisage how it should read.

Tomorrow I am going to forward the original article to News on the Block which is the trade journal of block managers and to The Estates Gazette. It seems to be that many of these mortgages will be on flats, flats are in blocks, blocks have managers so try and get your block managers involved as well by asking to spread the word. Many of them will have lenders' details easily available on record and might agree to forward something to any wbbs borrowers on their books.