West Bromwich Building Society Tracker Margins Legal Action

West Bromwich Building Society Tracker Margins Legal Action

18:38 PM, 30th September 2013, About 11 years ago 3869

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West Bromwich Tracker Rate Mortgages Legal Action Group

West Bromwich Building Society Tracker Margins Legal Action

Are you affected by the West Brom Tracker Rate Hike?

If your mortgage account number begins with the number 8 you are highly likely to be one of the unlucky 41% of the mortgage customers of the West Bromwich building Society with a West Bromwich Mortgage Company account affected by the 1.9% increase in your tracker margin rate. However, if you arranged your mortgage directly with West Bromwich Building Society (i.e. not via a broker) or before 2006 the chances are that your account number will begin with the number 9 and you are not affected – YET!!! West Brom will give no assurances that mortgages with account numbers beginning with the number 9 will not be affected at some point in the future.

OUR INTENDED CLASS ACTION LITIGATION OVERVIEW

Tracker Rate Class Actions Updates

The reasons we started this campaign are very simple:-

1) We believe the actions of West Brom are immoral

2) We believe the actions of West Brom are unlawful, i.e. they have no legal grounds to increase their tracker rate margins

3) We have no wish to subsidise other areas of the West Bromwich Building Society business model

4) We are fearful of other lenders following suit if West Brom are allowed to get away with this

Mark Smith (Barrister-At-Law) said …

“Representative actions, where one person starts a case representing many others, who all want the answer to a legal question from a court such as ‘is this contract enforceable against me?’ but are not seeking damages. All those who sign up to the action will get the benefit of the win, but they do not have to start their own cases, as they are ‘represented’ by the lead claimant.

The only people who will definitely benefit from success in the case are those who have signed up. There will be no free rides. Any others will have to fight their own corners individually, either alone or with legal help (which will inevitably cost significantly more than the group case).”

We will NOT settle on any basis.

Landlords take legal action against West Brom Mortgage Company

We have a moral duty to do what is right for those who support the values upon which this campaign was started. Our promise to all who support these values is that we will not sell out on you at any price. We will continue to fight this injustice and we will fight any other lender who tries to follow suit.

Are you with us?

This discussion thread is now closed – we’re off to Court!

To link to the new discussion please CLICK HERE

West Bromwich Mortgage Company Tracker Margins Legal Action


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Annette Stone

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16:59 PM, 21st November 2013, About 11 years ago

Woops I missed off some zeros I think. Good job I am married to an accountant!!!
I hope everyone gets what I mean despite my ropey maths

Devon Landlords

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17:15 PM, 21st November 2013, About 11 years ago

We feel the momentum is building very positively today and the power of this forum is increasing, significantly improving our chances of winning this Class Action. We took on a large Surveyors Company through normal solicitors routes several years ago - it cost us over £10K to win a £15K claim over an 18 month period. It was incredibly stressful and we did it on our own. To fight the WBBS through a forum that clearly has a depth of professionally minded and educated members is an absolute bargain at £240 per mortgage. So the more members that join the better and we will certainly support the pledging model being discussed this afternoon! Keep the faith everyone!!

Mark Alexander - Founder of Property118

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17:36 PM, 21st November 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Annette Stone" at "21/11/2013 - 16:56":

I have just had a very long conversation with Jusin about this and he's going to give it some further thought.

Please be careful about terminology, we are not authorised to sell shares.

I don't see any reason why a person who is not affected couldn't underwrite a percentage of these costs. I don't think any of us minds where the money comes from (so long as it's legal of course) the objective is to raise the money. If we can add an incentive of a possible return on that money then it obviously becomes a lot more attractive.

As I said to Dean though, the risk is zero return on investment and zero return of capital if nobody else joins the Class Action. This is more akin to a bet on a horse than an investment, however, for some of us who have studied the form books it is a very appealing bet isn't it?
.

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17:37 PM, 21st November 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Helen Landlord" at "21/11/2013 - 13:59":

me too - how annoying! I have always in the past got 2 posts for each message but altho' the first one was only 2 lines long the second was the comment in full - now BOTH are just the 2 line version

Mark Alexander - Founder of Property118

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17:52 PM, 21st November 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Denise Doms" at "21/11/2013 - 17:37":

The good news Denise is that you can now safely unsubscribe from either or both 🙂
.

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17:56 PM, 21st November 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "The Man From Nowhere" at "21/11/2013 - 16:16":

can someone please explain the 'punt' notion in words of one syllable please so that my partner and I can discuss this too over the weekend as I'm not really understanding (sorry ... me: <---- blonde!)

Mark Alexander - Founder of Property118

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18:07 PM, 21st November 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Denise Doms" at "21/11/2013 - 17:56":

I will have another at explaining this.

People pay more than they need to in order to get to the target funding level to start legal action.

When the target is reached, new people pay £500 per property to join the Class Action. They want in but we don't need their money any more. We've done all the hard work so they pay more for arriving late to the party. It will cost these people a lot more money than £500 a property to create a private action of their own.

Whether the case is won or lost we should end up with money left over in the pot.

This pot of money is then shared pro-rata between the people who invested before the deadline. The more they invested, the bigger share of the pot they get back.

The risk is that nobody else joins the Class Action and there is no pot to share.

The opportunity is that lots more people join the Class Action and the founder members get some or all of their money back, plus the potential of a big return if a lot of people come in after the price has risen to £500.

The people who come in at the £500 level do not take a share of any surplus funds raised but they haven't speculated anything or got involved when we needed them most either so that's fair.

The Man From Nowhere

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18:13 PM, 21st November 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Alexander" at "21/11/2013 - 18:07":

Hi Mark,

Whilst the idea of charging latecomers a bigger fee to join the legal action group sounds like a good idea and seems fair in principle, my only concern with that is whether we should try to build up a contingency fighting fund first? I wouldn't want to deter people from contributing to the fighting fund simply because they feel that the fees are too high. A balance needs to be struck between the fee being attractive enough for people to become members without reducing the number of people who decide to pay the fee because they feel they can't afford it. Also, a larger fee may also encourage more "fencesitters".

It should be borne in mind that banks and building societys have extremely deep pockets too and even if we are successful in our court claim at first instance, who is to say West Bromwich wouldn't then take the case to the Court of Appeal if they were granted leave to appeal? It would be a pyrrhic victory to win the case at first instance and then lose at appeal simply because we had no funds to fight an appeal with.

Just a thought but it may be well worth building up the biggest war chest we possibly can.

Also, only the Court of Appeal, the House of Lords and the European Courts are capable of creating binding precedents which is important if we are also looking to create caselaw to preclude other lenders from taking a leaf out of West Bromwich Building society's book and following suit with their own rate hikes. Equally, a precedent could be used to challenge the Skipton BS, Bank of Ireland, Manchester BS etc.. but again, the precedent can only be created in the Court of Appeal or above.

Mark Alexander - Founder of Property118

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18:17 PM, 21st November 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "The Man From Nowhere" at "21/11/2013 - 18:13":

It's a good point you are making and this eventuality could/should possibly be built into the two tier system we are debating. Please understand, the tiered funding structure we are discussing is merely conceptual at this stage, there is certainly nothing cast in stone yet.
.

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18:28 PM, 21st November 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Alexander" at "21/11/2013 - 18:07":

Thanks for explaining that Mark - so... next jobs then: explain the above to Dale and discuss; unsubscribe from one set of 118 notifications; contact my bank re any D/D notification of change requirements - and if they confirm what I suspect then send a letter to WB rejecting their proposal that they will take an additional 1.9% from my bank on Dec 1st because I only received their 1.9% letter this afternoon (dated November 2013) - therefore giving me only 6 working days notice that they plan to rob me

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