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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David Vickers

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17:35 PM, 25th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Justin Selig" at "25/10/2013 - 16:40":

Whilst it's great that we have raised this amount of money in a short time frame, I must say I'm surprised that more people haven't joined our campaign. 170 loans represented, I personally have 3 so probably only 100 people sent money in so far?
There are 6700 people affected by the WB unlawful increase.

To all that are sitting on the sidelines, join in! We have a real chance to stop this injustice, let's make a difference, send your money in ASAP.

Thanks to everyone who's joined so far.

Devon Landlords

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17:51 PM, 25th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Justin Selig" at "25/10/2013 - 16:40":

Thanks for the update Justin, great news!

Just a quick question (we don't want to bog you down) but I am sure others may ask the same thing so best to air this now we feel - will your reply acknowledgement be by e:mail or by letter? We have not had either yet and sent our cheque two weeks ago. We know it's been received as it has cleared.

Thank you.

Justin Selig - solicitor

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17:54 PM, 25th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Peter - thanks for your email.

Your acknowledgement will be by email. If you have not received an acknowledgement, please send an email to jemma@lawdepartment.co.uk to let us know.

Thank you.

Justin Selig - solicitor

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17:54 PM, 25th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Peter - thanks for your post.

Your acknowledgement will be by email. If you have not received an acknowledgement, please send an email to jemma@lawdepartment.co.uk to let us know.

Thank you.

Dan Smith

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19:45 PM, 25th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "David Vickers" at "25/10/2013 - 17:35":

I am equally suprised David by the lack of participation. If each of us involved have 2 mortgages that totals 13400. Therefore as we currently stand less than 2% have written that all important cheque.

Should Counsel's opinion be favourable I understand the West Brom will be approached with a view to an "out of court" settlement on a non disclosure basis. This would only benefit those named & paid.

Should they wish to go to court and we win is it possible to ask for the judgement to be given confidentially? If so there would be no possibility of "case law" being established and only those named & paid participants would benefit. Certainly West Brom would not be announcing their defeat.

Perhaps then Justin could "sell" the winning judgement to other West Brom victims(on a non disclosure basis) for a sum equal to two years or £5000 whichever is the greater per mortgage. Possibly raising £60,000,000.

Of course the other victims could say that £5000 was outrageous and choose instead to pay the current, plus any future increases, for the remainder of their mortgage terms - perhaps £45000 per mortgage.

George Top

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20:04 PM, 25th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Well i would say that considering the fact that the original plan was to raise £15k for the initial scoping work the fact we have raised over £40k is great:-)
It sounds like the momentum is continuing so i'm sure we will have more by the time we have counsels opinion on how we move forward with this.

Great that Justin will be on BBC News tomorrow discussing the case.

Richard Adams

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21:42 PM, 25th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Helen Landlord" at "25/10/2013 - 20:04":

I agree with Helen 100%. £40K in a month is terrific, certainly more than I dreamed of at outset by now. There will be more as word continues to spread.

All the talk is of 6700 borrowers affected. Is that the fact - some having more than one mortgage - OR does it mean in reality that WBBS have 6700 BTL mortgages on their books?

We shall never get everyone on board. There will be borrowers who live in caves and despite all the publicity don't know about Property118m and there will definitely continue to be sidelining freeloaders who don't or won't understand that they cannot ride for free on the coat tails of our successful action. Poor cheapskate fools them!

417 mortgages is all we need at £240 a pop to hit £100K. That has to be doable.

Seething Landlord

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1:58 AM, 26th October 2013, About 11 years ago

I detect a conflict of interest starting to emerge between those who are directly affected by the WBBS action and those who have been asked to contribute to stop other lenders following suit. A confidential settlement would only benefit the first category and would represent a substantial win for the lender, totally inconsistent with the initial proposal at the head of each page of this thread and leaving the door wide open for other lenders to take similar action.

Mark Alexander - Founder of Property118

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9:48 AM, 26th October 2013, About 11 years ago

The initial target was £15k for legal advice and barristers opinion, we have sailed past that and it's not even a month yet. Conversion from registration to payment appears to be around 90% with a 10 day time lag. On that basis we should raise another £20k in the next two weeks. Remember, we don't even have a barristers opinion yet! From a standing start £40k is amazing. Media attention is building and will continue to do so. Barristers opinion will attract more attention and more people will seek us out when their payments increase as of Dec 1st. I agree that a conflict of interest may occur if WBBS try to settle but that's life I'm afraid. It will not stop the negative publicity they will receive and that alone will have already made other lenders think again. I knew we had to win this case, my confidence in doing so grows daily but there is a lot more work to be done yet. I am looking forward to getting the barristers opinion and the resultant press conference. Well done to all and let's continue to work together to increase the profile and importance of this case. We all need to ask ourselves whether we have done everything we can.
.

Ed Atkinson

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10:13 AM, 26th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Seething Landlord" at "26/10/2013 - 01:58":

Yes, I agree this is a tricky issue. I've contributed to stop other lenders following suit and a Court judgement is the result I'm hoping to see. But also, I want the message to go out to the affected WBBS customers that an out of Court settlement is a strong possibility and they may well miss out by waiting on the sidelines.

I guess if there is a settlement, and later my BTL lender tries on the same thing, then it will be easier to repeat this whole exercise. The key issue is how any WBBS out of Court settlement is free to be publicised. I would be very disappointed if there were no press coverage and no news on the general balance of the settlement.

Meanwhile, I think we might now have sufficient numbers and time lapsed since our initial publicity to do some research on how people are finding out about the campaign. Could an email be sent to all those who’ve signed up requesting that they complete a quick online survey? It will help us target future efforts and may provide some messages for use in communication with bodies such as the NLA.

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