West Bromwich Building Society Tracker Margins Legal Action

Wow! There have been some amazing revelations in the last few pages of this forum and if they do not steel the remaining readers (sideliners or newbies) into action I hope the following might.

My thought is this: Can you afford not to join this action?

I'm a struggling landlord with a very small portfolio - 4 properties in total (all on trackers) and I've thought about this in every available moment since receiving my letter from WB. It's a big worry. I have just the one mortgage with WB and it's the smallest buy to let loan I have. My biggest fear is that WB get away with this and other lenders will follow suit. Open Season. It will only take one other lender in my case to exact the same additional rate overnight and I will basically no longer have a buy to let business/pension. I will be bankrupted. A slow, steady, incremental rise to the Bank of England Base Rate I can cope with and have plans in place but wham! 2% just like that across my remaining mortgages - no can do. (I'm still awaiting my 1.9% letter by the way).

I'm not interested in being paid off to shut up and go away because that will not stop other lenders from trying this illegal move. I want this to be declared illegal in court for all to see. This is a shocking money raising scam for an ailing Society and I won't pay for their rotten decisions made while the sun shone. A contract is a contract. A non-disclosure pay-off will not save my small business.

Take a look at the Terms and Conditions with your other B2L mortgages and you'll soon see that they too will give it a go if they think they can get away with it now you know what weasly clauses they’ll use to justify it.

Please do the maths across your whole portfolio. Can your business survive if your other tracker mortgage lenders decide they can change the rate at will? How many tenants will you have to give notice to? Will the Private Residential Landlord be a thing of the past?

This is about way more than a few hundred quid a month extra - it’s about you business, livelihood, pensions and tenant’s homes. £240 is a drop in the ocean in comparison and an easy business decision. Join and let’s get this overturned in court once and for all. So please don’t wait if your mortgage begins with an 8! And for those of you who are already 'in' stay with it! Together we stand and all that.

PS Just to follow up my last posting: Experian got back to me saying West Brom had not been delving around in my credit file. They must have used another agency.

Reply to the comment left by "Alison Buckland" at "20/11/2013 - 17:04":

Interesting point about Experian. They haven't got back to me yet but, in the meantime, I signed up for a trial account with EQUIFAX last week and they certainly haven't had any searches made on me by WB either at any stage in the last year, to date.

Reply to the comment left by "Dean " at "20/11/2013 - 13:53":

Dean

Despite my earlier post affirming it there seems to be some confusion here? I'm in 100% paid up & docs with Justin. If there were M&S vouchers for being one of the first 10 to sign up I might have qualified even! I don't need persuading about it being right what we are doing.

And yes that affords me the choice of accepting a settlement, being named in the class action as I am, or saying stuff it WBBS "see you in court". This scenario is entirely hypothetical at present while WBBS make up their nasty minds so I reckon I'll cross that bridge when and if I come to it. That said I shall be 100% influenced by the Property118 consensus which at present is let's go the whole hog tempting though it might be to cut and run accepting an offer.

Reply to the comment left by "Dean " at "20/11/2013 - 12:56":

Brilliantly put Dean. I wish I had time to do more. I have done what I can alongside holding down a full time highly stressful job (and alongside keeping up with the scores of fresh e-mails -(and I get TWO of each for some reason) when I get home from work before catching up with my work/work and preparing dinner. My aadmiration for and gratitude to you, Mark and several very active and proactive others on here knows no bounds - PLEASE keep it up

I’m right behind a court case. Like Dean says, if 1,000 interested parties each contribute £100 we’re there. Failing that if 100 people contribute £1,000 we can do it. And that’s 3 months increased repayments to us, which we will get back when we win. Or as Shaun, Jackie and many others suggest somewhere in the middle is more likely, but we can raise the cash to take this to court.

And we can set a precedent so that even with a pathetic bunch of politicians and toothless civil servants, we can prevent this abuse from happening again.

I think Mr.Westhoff has seriously underestimated us.

Reply to the comment left by "Dean " at "20/11/2013 - 07:19":

Hi Dean
Two mortgages my friend has, both start with 8 and both have increased, my mortgage starts with 9 and was taken direct with WBBC and was told this is a life time tracker. The mortage i took out was dealt by a different dept mine was in birmingham and my friends was in Coventry. When the mortages were going through Coventry office did not have any info on my mortgage and telephone numbers were different, but now when we ask for intrest paid for tax year my friend and i can do it at the same time.
I have enquired with WBBS if my mortgage will be affected the reply was "not at the moment only one's being looked at the moment are at those taken out through brookers" i hope this helps waiting for offer letters and fees for Justin will be sent i agree if need be more funds are required then we would be happy to part of this class action

Hi Dean
Did you get my reply or would you like me to send it again Pindy

Reply to the comment left by "Alexander Law" at "20/11/2013 - 19:13":

Well said, Alexander, I'll be proud to be one of the 100! Even prouder if there are 1000 or more!

I wonder how many of the WB employees involved in this have seriously thought about their future and what happens when the society loses in court? When it's all over and the costs of this disaster are being counted there'll be some tough questions for those who came up with this ridiculous course of action and for those that were seen to support it. Will you really want that on your CV? And what will it mean for your future career prospects?

If you work for WB and are reading this and do not agree with the actions of the mad few that think this is a good idea you need to speak up now. If you don't you'll be seen as supporting them and when it's all over you'll be one of those that is ridiculed and laughed at by the rest of the industry. They'll all say: 'What a bunch of thoughtless losers!' and 'Silly guinea pigs sent out to slaughter!' It's no good claiming then that you were just following orders.

Once this goes to court it will all be all too late. The names of those responsible will come out in due course and they'll have to explain how they thought that lying and disregarding the law was ok in the pursuit of their greed. If you do not want to be one of them then the time to do something about it is running out.

Reply to the comment left by "Dean " at "20/11/2013 - 07:19":

Hi Dean
The mortgages my friend have both start with 8 and were both taken out through a brooker, My mortgage which was taken through WBBS direct has not been affected and the mortgage starts with 9. We both took the mortgage at the same time, brooker mortgages were dealt through a office in Coventry, but mine with a office in B'ham. Coventey office could not help me with any of my enquries they had no details about my mortgage but now when making a phone call to request tax year end intrest paid statement my friend and i can deal with this on the same phone number. I did receive a letter requesting to me to go to a new deal about 2 years ago i think this was a 2 year rate and when the rate comes to the end my mortgage would revert back to the original intrest rate/deal.
I am not sure if it matters but my friends statements are white and blue but mine are purple. Waiting for offer letters and will forward to Justin and pay fees i would be happy to pay double if needs be.
Hope this helps Pindy

Hope this helps
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Reply to the comment left by "Mike L" at "20/11/2013 - 20:02":

Mike, well said.

The WBBS employee who has been tasked to liaise between the 'Exec Team' and my requests for Westhoff to take a brave pill and answer some questions (and even knew I personally was posting messages on this forum and confirmed they were all reading property118) is called Lee Carroll.

Although Lee is a 'Customer Relations Manager' today, he was a Team Leader of Mortgage Operations between 2007 - 2008, exactly when I was miss sold/misled to take out the Lifetime Tracker Products by the WBBS.

I would be interested to know if the Managers of the Mortgage Operations Team and The Compliance Team of the WBBS in this period, if they had to swear on oath, whether they would admit that even they were aware/unaware of the WBBS attempts to do their best at hiding this clause and making it as misleading as possible in the 'separate handbook' they claimed to have sent out.

Any of the Mortgage Operations & Compliance Team at the WBBS during this period should check their memory & morals and ask what more they could have done to Treat Customers Fairly (including treating brokers fairly) when they were involved in the Miss Selling and Misleading Advertising/Promotion and the general deceptive nature of this 'TOXIC' product. The WBBS Legal team at the time also have questions to answer in regards to why this misleading and yet 'important' clause was not highlighted in any other documentation the consumers were being sent and were signing in the sales process.

Shame on all of the WBBS staff who either knowlingly were allowing this to happen or still as worse, were totally unaware of the misleading product they were involved with designing and promoting and administering the sales of.