Dean Bainbridge of DKB Mortgages accused the lender of giving poor service and taking weeks to get the application to go to offer. He claimed that the case he made the application for was initially on a valuation-free deal, but this had to be changed to a more flexible offset tracker due to more funds being needed. He indicated that this change was made without any questions from Abbey.
However the day before the application was due to go to completion, he was called and told that if a valuation fee of £490 was not immediately paid then the mortgage would not complete as the funds would not be released.
Bainbridge said: “I found this staggering - waiting until the day before, putting the whole chain of around a dozen properties in peril was astounding. This gave me no time to source an alternative deal.”
He said that Abbey offered to issue a new offer letter for a different product, but as the client has waited weeks for the last decision in principle, he was very confident that the offer would not materialise on the same day, when the funds were needed.
Bainbridge said: “It was a case of them saying to me that if the fee wasn’t paid my client couldn’t move, and I was so disgusted that I personally paid the £490 myself on my credit card, as I felt unable as a professional to tell a client his purchase would collapse if he did not pay £490 immediately. Have they never heard of TCF?”
David Stewart, media relations manager at Abbey, commented: “Although we are unable to comment on the specifics of the case, we feel that we gave premium customer service in this instance as we checked that the fee was to be paid.”
