West Bromwich Building Society Tracker Margins Legal Action

To Mark Alexander

Mark, to maintain the encouraging current flow of sign ups to the class action could you make a statement as to whether we welcome borrowers with more than one WB mortgage who can't afford X x £240 but can just about chip in for one, or whether we are saying it's all mortgages or nothing? I believe some recent posts have rather suggested the latter doubtless not intentionally. .

Needs a decision from the top.

Have looked around the Property 118 web site and don't see how to go about sending in a cheque & paperwork to join the class action.......where are the details being hidden ??

Hi Mervyn,

The details for payment (Law Department postal address as well as bank account and sort code for direct transfer) is in an email that Justin emailed out. You should receive the email when you register your expression of interest in joining the class action.

Mark, I too initially struggled to find the details for payment to join the class action. I have identified this as an issue. Perhaps the details for payment could be displayed more prominently on this website? I actually do believe it is something as simple as not knowing the details for making payment to join the class action is consciously (or subconsciously!) deterring some people from joining the class action.

Honestly, something as simple as the payment details and postal address for the Law Department displayed prominently on this website could massively increase the numbers of people joining the class action and paying into the fighting fund. It would be a shame to lose people who may have joined the class action because of obscure payment details.

Reply to the comment left by "Richard Adams" at "25/11/2013 - 22:33":

Hi Richard, I am a recent recruit also. I have posted letters as guided by this site and paid £720 for our 3 property sign up. I have yet to hear from Justine after more than a week of registered posting. I will be relieved when I do so. GPO tracking unhelpful.

As my pseudonym suggests ( and please permit this without coercion) I have been scammed almost into oblivion but am still here fighting with other litigations pending.

I took some time to come on board as I had to allow myself to be sceptical. (having worked in a caring profession and stayed out of commerce I am inexperienced and vulnerable and believe I have been targeted not particularly by WBBS but they are jumping on the band waggon).
I did consider that this whole forum could be a scam on a scam!! I am not given to paranoid delusions and in fact am a prematurely retired G.P. with consequently inadequate pension provison. Doctors are in a general and understandable sense, notorious for not getting to grips with finance. Out of necessity I am now attempting to do so.

Since having paid my fees I feel better but will feel even better when Justin acknowledges the fact. I have posted previously to state that I can well appreciate a multitude of reasons why others may be sceptical, and also why I can envisage an exponential increase in uptake to this class action which is being spear headed remarkably well in my opinion compared to others I have had the misfortune to have endured. Well done to all so far. Our joint victory and strength rests with numbers. I emphasise JOINT and suggest less haste more spead. I suggest the group stays united in maximum recruiting drive and thinks long and hard before creating any tiered system of remuneration/involvement which may fracture the true potential collective.

If WB seek to divide and rule, we must seek to unite and conquer.

This site is crying out for those watching who have not yet put their hands in their pockets to come on here (with pseudonyms if they wish) to voice their concerns, hopes and expectations, and then when most reliably informed, make their informed decision to either join or not. Welcome all come and talk.

Surely this site would be very interested to learn of peoples reason's for not joining. Short of speculating, WBBS rely upon those that don't bother as historical truths. Well history is changing. This is the first decade in the last 100 years when property prices have not doubled in price. Will all doubters please comment and raise their concerns.

The various regulatory bodies either do not have a clue or there is a more sinister governmental agenda to bash BTL investors ( a very diverse group) in a most generic way that is an injustice, hopefully soon to be proved. The open gateway for other lender's abuse would spell the death nell.

I am not an economist. I have no previous in financial training/experience and in fact I struggle to keep up with it all. I have been ear marked as someone with multiple BTL properties, an expert perhaps, and therefore no consumer rights. On this false and arbitrary premise I therefore become predjudicially targetable.
Once adequately educated I can grasp most things but this is blatently wrong on every level.

I have, for circumstantial reasons, decided to rearrange my failing pension provisions and trusted in future provision contracts signed in their place. These now appear to mean little. Are business contracts going the same way as marriage certificates? Emotive I know, but it seems that way to me. What expected future footing can any business ever have? What was all that "back to basisics" rhetoric? There is something more than meets the eye going on here and it needs to be confronted and nipped in the bud. Times are changing and scarey.

I am in no way qualified to advise other fence sitters, other than basic London board GCE maths (showing my age) which says this is a no brainer, If you buy into the honesty of this site as I have eventually done. Its simples!

Mark/Justine. Any chance of an honesty and mission statement from property 118 and Justin to satisfy the disbelievers out there that may make the vital difference?
I still have no terms of engagement from Justine which I have discussed with him and might be proving to be an issue with others.

Chris.

I registered an expresion of interest some weeks ago. Don't recall an email......unless it went into my spam/ junk mail box which has now been deleted.

Can someone send me another please ?

Reply to the comment left by "Scotty Lifetracker" at "26/11/2013 - 15:56":

Thanks for confirming that Scotty - there may well be others of us in Scotland who have been holding back from joining.
So, any Scots who have been unsure as to whether they can benefit from joining the class action need worry no more!

It would be very easy for me (or someone else) to post in this message the account number and sort code that direct payment can be made to but the potential for fraud in posting an account number and sort code in a comment is obvious therefore I doubt I need to spell it out.

On a different note, I just phoned up the West Bromwich Building Society and have discovered that I also have one buy-to-let tracker mortgage at 0.99 above BBR which is NOT affected by the rate hike. This mortgage was taken out in 2004 (whereas I believe the affected mortgages were taken out between 2006 and 2008. This mortgage account number also begins with the number 9 as opposed to the affected mortgages beginning with the number 8. I read on this forum that only mortgages obtained through intermediaries are affected as these related to mortgages from the West Bromwich Mortgage Company as opposed to the West Bromwich Building Society (as direct customers of the West Bromwich BS on the buy-to-let trackers are not affected)? I obtained this non-affected mortgage from a mortgage intermediary back in 2004 and have confirmed with the West Bromwich building society that it was purchased through an intermediary. So why is it not affected by the rate hike (believe me, I am grateful it is not affected .........YET).

Any views/comments on why this might be?

I asked the customer services representative on the phone why this tracker mortgage was not affected by the rate rise. She went to ask her manager and then came back to me after several minutes with the standard crib sheet response of "whilst this mortgage is not currently affected we can review the rate on this mortgage in the future to ensure our business is run prudently, efficiently and competitively.

So where does this leave those people who have contributed £240 per affected mortgage beginning with an 8 but also have a mortgage with the WBBS that begins with a 9 which is CURRENTLY not affected. Do we need to pay an additional £240 into the fighting fund for a non-affected tracker or risk having that mortgage excluded for the purposes of the class action especially if WBBS increase the rate on those buy-to-let trackers with mortgage accounts that begin with the number 9.

(You can pretty much bet WBBS will be looking at (or have looked at) increasing the rate on the mortgages beginning with a 9).

Finally, just as I was about to put the phone down with the WBBS customer services rep', she asked me if I would like to take out life insurance with the WBBS!! I immediately informed her that l didn't consider life insurance necessary as I have decided I was going to kill myself after seeing the rate increase letters that dropped through my letter box and suicide normally precludes a payout under most life insurance policies.

(On second thoughts, I think I'll just substitute thoughts of self-harm with thoughts of seeing the West Brom's legal team's eyeballs ripped out of their ars*holes at court).

Can someone confirm that it is OK to join the class action by choosing to register a selected few of their BTL properties instead of all of them ?

I am out of action tonight and tomorrow morning but will review all comments and respond accordingly tomorrow afternoon.
.

Reply to the comment left by "Mervyn Wharton" at "26/11/2013 - 17:21":

Mervyn,

If you provide me with your email address, I will email the payment details for the Law Department to you. I suspect, like you, that Justin's email may have gone into your junk email / spam box (this may have happened to numerous other people as well. That is why I believe it is so important to prominently display the payment details for The Law Department on this website / forum).

I would post my email address on here but it would just completely remove the mystery surrounding The Man From Nowhere.

Alternatively you could scroll up to the "To Do" list towards the top of this page, complete the expression of interest form again and hopefully it should generate an email containing the payment details which should be emailed to you. However, I am also more than happy to email the payment details to you if you wish.

Mark, would you be able to tweak the website so that the payment details for The Law Department are displayed for everyone visiting Property118 and this forum to see?