West Bromwich Building Society Tracker Margins Legal Action

Reply to the comment left by "stephen stanley" at "03/10/2013 - 11:29":

Hi Stephen

I believe I have already answered very similar questions, please refer to comments left after 6pm last night and my various responses, page 18 of comments onwards.

Hi Mark,
We have just received a reply from West Brom to our complaint letter of last week in this morning's post. Their letter, which looks like a standard letter re-iterates the Section 5 issue, as we expected. However, they are also state "Also, under the terms and conditions, demand for full repayment of the loan can be made by giving one month's notice (Section 14 - 'When the Loan has to be paid back to us'). They also enclose a copy of an acceptance of offer letter that we signed. We are feeling a bit deflated now....shall we scan in and e:mail this to you?

Reply to the comment left by "Incensed Landlord" at "03/10/2013 - 11:27":

Ball park figure on total costs if this goes all the way to the Supreme court is in the region of £100,000 to £200,000. I appreciate that's a massive margin but it will not be more accurate until we have Counsels opinion. Our legal costs will be circa £100,000, we will recover some/most of that from the other side if we win. Justin has an indicative quote from a legal fees insurer on the basis that they will underwrite a costs award if the other side wins on the basis that we pay 50% of the insured value if we win. Therefore, if we assume the other sides legal costs award could be £200,000 the insurance will cost us half of that and it will only be payable if we win. It's a bit strange to get your head around so you may need to read that a few times. Until last year we could have also sued for the costs of this premium if we win but that is no longer possible so either way we will have costs. If we win we will pay the legal fees insurance, if we lose then we will have to pay our legal costs and the legal fees insurance will pay any award of costs to the other side.

If/when we win a litigation battle through the Courts against WBBS as a group of named individuals it will be for compensation based on the groups projected losses over the remaining terms of our mortgage contracts. That will be a tidy lump sum and will give us all plenty of choices, e.g. remortgage away, sell the property or simply pocket the cash and pay the higher rate. Only the participants to the litigation will receive such compensation and everybody else will be on their own to make their own arrangements from that point forwards. I will certainly NOT be helping them!

WBBS may reverse their decision to increase their margins for everybody else if the above scenario comes to pass but they may not, it's a commercial decision. On the basis that WBBS are chancing their arm to this point they may well continue to do so. If people are can't be bothered to litigate now why would they do so in future, is a view that WBBS may well take. Either way, if we win, we win! Good luck to everybody else but I for one am doing all of this work to rally support because I know I can't win this alone and I am VERY passionate about this.
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To my knowledge, only a ruling from the FOS could prevent WBBS from continuing to charge the increase. Can we really wait that long before we begin the fight though, it could take 12 months or more and they may just say the same as the FCA have said on the BoI case, i.e. sorry, we don't want to get involved, fight it out in Court.
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A brilliant post Mark. This sums up the situation. I hope that the point I want to make is not something that I missed in all of the hundreds of posts from contributors that I just missed but even so, I still think that now you are crystalising exactly what is needed it is worth reiterating.

My point is that IF WEST BROM GET AWAY WITH THIS EVERY MORTGAGE WILL DECLARE OPEN SEASON ON THEIR BORROWERS - IT AFFECTS US ALL. You need a definitive ruling on this once and for all and it needs to be something that other mortgagees will also have to take notice of such as a Supreme Court Ruling. I wonder if it would be helpful if a formal fighting fund were established with two levels of contribution; one in the sort of sum you have suggested which will reflect the interests of those with West Brom mortgagees who will have to be the actual litigants in the class action suit and another level of contribution of say £100 from everyone with a buy to let mortgage who is prepared to support Property 118 in what they are doing. This might assist in spreading the fees and my £100 is winging its way to you.

Reply to the comment left by "stephen stanley" at "03/10/2013 - 11:29":

Stephen

I think I may owe you an apology, it may have been an email which I responded to last night which asked a similar question to yours.

My response to that email .....

We have learned a lot from the BoI case, hence a different tack.

Only 100 people coughed up leaving us out of pocket and a Class Action which has stalled.

The WBBS case is different and there are many more ways to tackle this one, hence the different approach. When this case gets moving, and we are confident it should on the basis proposed, then we will be in a far better position to resurrect the BoI case too.

There is a possibility of WBBS doing a deal subject to an NDA exclusively for members of the Class Action group when they see that we are serious.

Now for a conspiracy theory - why do you think BoI back-tracked on 1,200 mortgages? Most of them were part of our group as you will see from the forum comments. Of course there is absolutely no evidence to be found of this “coincidence” being foul play, but needless to say, those for whom the decision went the right way are no longer rattling their sabres, thus leaving just an unlucky few who are. This is pure speculation on my part of what might have occurred.
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Reply to the comment left by "Peter Cole" at "03/10/2013 - 12:03":

“Also, under the terms and conditions, demand for full repayment of the loan can be made by giving one month’s notice (Section 14 – ‘When the Loan has to be paid back to us’)

Myself and another person has also brought this up this week, but no one has replied. Does anyone know if they can do this ? If they can, when they know who is involved in the class action can't they just demand us all to redeem our mortgages ? Or do we need to default on payments before they can use this clause ?

Reply to the comment left by "Peter Cole" at "03/10/2013 - 12:03":

Hi Peter (and Will and others who have raised this point previously)

ALL mortgages have a 28 day repayment on demand clause, don't let that worry you. They need a Court order to enforce it and there are no grounds for them to obtain such an order, it would be a bit like you serving a section 8 notice on a model tenant.

Please send the response letter to Justin along with everything else. I should receive my complaint response any day now as I posted my complaint letter this Monday.

As a matter of interest, did you use our recommended complaint letter template and if so did they also send the requested documentation?
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Hi Mark

Thanks for the response, I'm in, I will be sorting out the paperwork over this weekend.

Thanks for your reply Mark - we just e:mailed you the letter before we got your reply. We didn't use your recommended complaint letter template because we had already sent our letter before you had made the template.
We are now feeling fighting fit after your reply about the 28 day clause and are ready to photocopy all relevant documentation and send it along with our cheque to Justin this afternoon!!

Reply to the comment left by "Annette Stone" at "03/10/2013 - 12:23":

Hello Annette

That's very generous, thank you.

I will speak to Justin and my business partner Neil about this next week.

PS - Thank you also for your generous donation towards the running costs of the forum, your support for our efforts is very much appreciated 🙂
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