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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Dean

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16:29 PM, 16th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Cheers David

Ill do an email and tomorrow will include it in an email to everyone who as signed the petition on Change.org

Dean

ian

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16:37 PM, 16th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Dean just to let you know I got your Email (change.org) many thanks

Neil Gallagher

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16:38 PM, 16th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Absolutely fine. You have a lot on your plate and I'm sure posts like mine don't help. The link was a great update of the situation.

I'd like to raise one point now though. I have a number of properties as I have said previously and have always used the same one man band solicitor. What will the impact be on his business if I win a claim against him? Whilst I understand the point of it but I doubt any solicitor would have been able to foresee this situation or read the terms and conditions the way that the West Brom have. This course of action makes me a little uneasy to say the least!!

Thanks in advance

Neil

Dean

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16:51 PM, 16th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Neil Gallagher" at "16/10/2013 - 16:38":

Thank Ian at least I know the emailing form Change.org works

Neil . Your solicitor will have Professional Indemnity Insurance . It will at worst cost him the excess and possibly a premium on his insurance policy each year. I doubt that will be an issue . i think what might happen if Insurance companies start getting sued over this the figures will be that much they might fight West Brom.

Take the next step Neil , sign up pay the fee and keep supporting the Class Action .

Fingers crossed by Friday 26th October the fund could be up to £50000

Mark Alexander - Founder of Property118

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16:52 PM, 16th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Neil Gallagher" at "16/10/2013 - 16:38":

Thank you for your understanding and forbearance of my stress levels Neil.

If solicitors PI insurers end up paying out then all solicitors offering conveyancing services PI insurance premiums are likely to go up whether claims have been made against them or not on the basis of such claims will be a new level of perceived risk. Even though your solicitor is a one man band he will require PI insurance to practice, therefore, whether you end up claiming against his PI or not it is unlikely to make any difference to him. I don't believe there to be such as thing as No Claims Discounts on PI insurance policies.

The process of advising PI insurers of the risk, by solicitors putting them on notice of potential claims, will ring alarm bells. As at least one other person commented earlier into this thread, such a threat might just encourage the PI insurers to back our Class Actions against the lenders concerned as that would be far more economical for them.
.

Andy Bell

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17:08 PM, 16th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Neil Gallagher" at "16/10/2013 - 15:53":

Neil, You're probably not the only one weighing up if you should commit fully to the action.
I hope we can tip you towards joining, I made the decision after talking it through with my wife. The discussion boiled down to:

I'll get nowhere fighting this on my own.
If they get away with it It'll cost me around 50K.
The £480 is equal to about 6 weeks of the extra interest.
And crucially I was so pent up and angry the £480 is a small price for my health. (I'm much calmer now I know I'm doing everything I can to fight this)

As for risk, I took a view on the risk V. benefit. The risk is limited to £480 (I would re-asses if it ever came to making additional contributions), the benefit is 50K (+ potential for damages) = 1:104.
Even if we only had a 50/50 chance of wining it would equate to wining £104+ for a £1 stake on the toss of a coin.

I did some "due diligence" checks, as I'm sure most people will have.

Then I made sure the loss of £480 is affordable from either cash flow or capital savings (I have been building reserves to cushion legitimate rate rises).

After all this the answer came a very simple YES go for it.

Your situation may be different but I hope the process I went through will help you make a decision.

Justin Selig - solicitor

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18:16 PM, 16th October 2013, About 11 years ago

I have just sent the following letter to Andrew Tyrie MP, Chairman of the Treasury Select Committee.

Please do not use this as a template email.

Dear Mr Tyrie

I am a solicitor instructed by over 200 borrowers who have been affected by the Bank of Ireland and West Bromwich Building Society’s decisions to increase the margin they charge on their tracker mortgage.

I am aware that you know a certain amount about the Bank of Ireland issue, but you may not be aware that we presented the FCA with a very credible claim on behalf of our clients but we unfortunately received a knockback from them who have simply taken the Bank of Ireland’s response to our claim and not sought their own independent legal advice on the issues.

Since we published the FCA’s decision not to take action against the Bank of Ireland, we learned that West Bromwich Building Society have followed suit. You will be aware that the FCA made an assurance to you earlier this year that the Bank of Ireland’s case is an isolated issue and would not be repeated by other lenders. This is obviously not the case. We are worried that other lenders may also impose similar increases which would have a huge impact on people’s finances.

I understand that the FCA has today announced that it will be investigating the West Bromwich rate rise, but it would be helpful if you would urge the FCA to obtain its own legal advice on the situation and not rely on the bank’s legal advice as they did in the Bank of Ireland’s case. I do not believe that their actions in the Bank of Ireland case are the actions of an independent regulator. Indeed it would be helpful if you could ask the FCA what independent legal advice it took itself on the Bank of Ireland situation.

I am attaching a copy of a letter I have sent today to West Bromwich which highlights the issues we have with their actions.

If you think it would be useful for me to come and meet you to discuss the cases, I would be more than happy to do so.

Yours sincerely

Justin Selig
The Law Department
7A Wellington Road
London NW10 5LJ

Devon Landlords

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18:27 PM, 16th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Just a bit concerned about the Solicitor situation which is currently being discussed. As was brought up on here about a week ago, we were one of those that used the West Bromwich's Solicitor (Homefast Property Lawyers) as they were re-mortgages.

Reading through the wording in their letter to us it states "I have been instructed by WB Mortgage Co to act on its behalf in connection with the remortgage of your property. This means that I will not be acting for you..........should you have any legal queries, you should contact your own Solicitor to obtain independent legal advice...."

But we did not ask our Solicitor for any advice as it all seemed so quick and straightforward at the time.....thoughts please - slight concern here with us....

Mark Alexander - Founder of Property118

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18:36 PM, 16th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Peter Cole" at "16/10/2013 - 18:27":

Why would that concern you Peter?

If only 20% of borrowers used their own solicitor, and records received to date show a far higher percentage than that did, then that's at least another 28+ legal opinions (based on todays numbers) we will get which are bound to be supportive of our arguments when the letters to solicitors are eventually sent out. Naturally these numbers will rise, as will the concerns of their PI insurers who may well decide that adding funds to support a case against WBBS is a commercially viable option for them.

For us to resort to suing individual solicitors would, in reality, be a last ditch attempt and we would have to win one test case first. It doesn't do us any harm to rattle as many cages as possible in the meantime though does it? At the very least we will have dozens of solicitors either admitting liability or backing our case. It's a win/win for us, either in financial or PR terms, possibly both 🙂
.

Devon Landlords

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19:00 PM, 16th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Thanks Mark, although could it be used against anyone that did not use their own Solicitor in conjunction with the West Brom's such that West Brom could argue if we had sought our own independent legal advice at that time our Solicitor would have drawn our attention to clause 5.1 in the T&C booklet?

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