come to the end of a 5 year fix with santander, asked on here and was directed to L&C for advice, they advised us to go with a barclays fix with no fees, free solicitor etc.  all good so far.

the solicitors got in touch, optima legal, dont know if theyre barclays own or independent, but barclays must have sorted them anyway.  they set me up with an online portal where we can communicate, still all good.

the santander fix would leave around £50,000 which i told L&C in the first place, so thats what they were getting their figures from.  im not very clued up on how it all works, so was regularly asking optima questions such as “it wont be dead on £50,000, so how do barclays know how much the mortgage will be?” etc etc.  optima replied that they would contact santander mid september for a redemption fee so it would all be in place for changeover day, 2nd october.

started getting nearer the date, i asked for update, all quiet.  asked again, nothing.  i said please get in touch, its sposed to be happening tomorrow!  rang em up and they said theyd send me an update message.

today i receive emails containing the relevant bumph, completion date of 10th october, £1500 shortfall, how do you want to pay it etc :-/

ive just been on the phone to both optima and santander.  optima blame santander stating they tried to get redemption fees regularly mid september, they had no reply, finally got one 27th but it only lasted til end of the month, only 3 days, blah blah, no time to complete, its had to be put back.  santander state thats wrong, there are no redemption requests mid september, and they wouldnt have been any use anyway as its standard practice for them to only give 7 days worth.  they say there was just the one on 27th and that its valid for 7 days, not til end of the month so it would have covered the 2nd and it should have happened.

after speaking to both parties i get the feeling optima are useless.  theyve missed a completion date for no reason, theyve given barclays the £50,000 figure rather than a true figure (nearer £51,500) hence barclays offer with a shortfall.

theyre asking me to agree to the 10th as a new completion date, but if i do, then im accepting i owe £1500 which i dont have.  if i refuse and tell em to get it sorted properly, barclays will have to give a new figure, itll drag on longer, and all the while im on santanders SVR which has already cost me £50 for the few days theyve messed up so far.

whats the crack?  can i insist on optima refunding me any money i shouldnt have had to pay?  whats the best way of getting this sorted?  i intend ringing barclays tomorrow to see what they say, theyre probably oblivious to it all.  but are optima their solicitors anyway?

iz confyoozed and require advice please

thanks

I would email Barclays and Optima and say you’re very upset about how unprofessionally this has been dealt with, that you are not in a position financially to transfer at only £50,000 so need a new offer urgently at £51500. In addition you expect a small amount of compensation to cover you being out of pocket financially by having to go on your current lender’s SVR + the stress and inconvenience this has caused. If they can’t resolve it to your satisfaction in the next week you’ll refer it to the financial ombudsman

No if you could actually get anywhere with the ombudsman for such a situation though and it does assume Santander is telling you the truth.

My remortgage + change providers took nearly 12 weeks (with First Direct) for them to sort which I thought was ridiculous bordering on incompetence but they actually did it all without making a mess of it like your provider seems to have done (and I’d been lazy and on SVR for a few years before anyway so the delay didn’t really cost me financially).

I had exactly the same issue when I remortgaged last year (not the companies involved) and kicked up a bit of a fuss which resulted in getting a contribution towards the cost – nowhere near the full about which, IIRC was about £800, but at least it was something.

Speak to L&C. They’re your mortgage broker – get them to bang some heads together. L&C are usually excellent at this kind of thing btw.

positive update so far…..

been on and off the phone to all parties having a right royal chunter, end result being that optima rang me yesterday to apologise for messing up and agreed to waive the £50 interest fees for being on the santander SVR for a week or so.

had a word with the missus, we agreed to empty our bank accounts and pay the £1500 shortfall, as lets face it, we do owe it still and itll just be a large overpayment which should see us be mortgage free a few months earlier than expected.  we did want to slightly overpay each month anyway, so over the coming months we should hopefully claw it back.  if we didnt do this itd just stall the whole thing anyway and just drag on.

so……. hopefully therell be no more hiccups and we should get a smooth transition over to barclays on the 10th.

thanks for your advice.

I had optima handle one of my re mortgages and they were next to useless . Couldn’t contact people, couldn’t find who held the lease on the land etc, found most stuff myself on the end .