I’m fuming and wondered if anyone has any advice on how to escalate and try to resolve this…

Been through a mortgage application with Nationwide. All agreed no issues. On the day of completion have a call from my solicitor at 10am. ‘I have some difficult news – The nationwide have put the wrong purchase price on the paperwork. I had flagged this to them a week ago and was told that it would be resolved and to proceed but this morning they have said that they now need to withdraw the mortgage to correct it! I have to comply as otherwise I’ll be struck off. We need to return the drawn down funds and won’t be able to complete today. It will take a few days for them to sort it and re-issue! This is 10am on planned completion day last Thursday!

Now the massive initial saving grace was that we’re in rental and hadn’t given our notice as we’d missed the deadline for last month so our plan was to use the overlap to just go in and start to redecorate etc and then move in a few weeks later. The sellers are also going into rented. It could’ve been MUCH worse! The sellers were great. We’ve been getting on well throughout. They’d even had us over earlier in the week showing us how stuff worked in the house. so, they said not ideal, but we’re going as planned. Neighbour has the keys and will keep an eye on the place.

So we’re now in breach of contract. They’ve kindly given us 7 days grace before considering invoking any penalty interest which would be approx £50/day.

I ring up my solictor again today to get an update. Nationwide have received the funds back but a system error now means that the whole application needs to be manually re-keyed and they’ve said this will be done by next Friday 5th November!

I’ve rung them and gone mental but they’re insistent that is their best timescale. I’ve raised a complaint (5 days timescale on that!!). Couldn’t speak to anyone else more senior apparently.

I’m going to bounce down to the branch in the morning but is there anything else I can do?! I’m livid!!!!

I’ve been here with another building society, in Scotland.

It took a letter from my solicitor to point out that we were in breach, full purchase amount plus costs, and so we were intending to sue them for this amount if it came our way.

New mortgage was completed in 36hrs.

I’m also nervous as Nationwide have just cocked up a current account switch with me…

If you get 7 days and £50 a day after that is all your loss then (1) I’d say you’ll be laughing! (2) I think Nationwide might cover the cost! (3) I’m not convinced that your solicitor has done a good job – if they told nationwide about a problem a week before but didn’t tell you, you might want to cheekily ask him if his professional indemnity covers this!

Oh, and I can’t see any reason the right person at Nationwide can’t sort this in 24 hrs, and even the ordinary problem solvers can surely do it by end of the week – before it costs them a penny! Try twitter – I doubt the social media team will be much help – but I’ve never made a problem worse by tweeting the customer service people.

How quick to get a mortgage elsewhere?

Sorry, my solicitor did tell me at the time about the mortgage purchase price issue but said at that stage it should be a formality to correct it and he then went on to get that assurance from Nationwide apparently. It did cross my mind if he had dropped a ball but I don’t think so. I believe it’s Nationwide’s incompetence.

I’ve been on Twitter too. Just been given a platitude and referred to complaints procedure.

Believe me, Nationwide can fix this if they want to. I did something similar (my fault, to be fair) the day before exchange, and apart from giving my solicitor some grey hairs he was able to get hold of someone at Nationwide to redraw the agreement.

The problem is your solicitor.

Either your solicitor or Nationwide have insurances that if you become liable I’d be pulling down on. This should not be your issue.

I had a similar thing with Nationwide, there was some confusion about the property I now own regarding freehold / leasehold so they stopped the funds at the 11th hour. I would add I had the most useless trainee solicitor in the world, who was hardly on the ball for the 9 months it took her to coordinate a very simple transaction.

In order to stop the whole thing falling through (I had to move regardless to get away from my neighbours for various reasons), I delayed moving out for half a day a bit of grace from my buyer, put all my stuff in storage and moved back to my mothers for a fortnight until this simple query was resolved, with my mortgage broker earning his fee by badgering them daily.

The other thing Nationwide noted to my mortgage broker but somehow forgot to tell me at the last minute, was that they had reviewed the surveyors report again and adjusted the value of the property due to ‘damp, and remedial works required’, although this did not affect the initial mortgage.

When I worked in mortgages for a bank we could have sorted this in minutes, and that was 20 years ago. They can sort this if they want to.

I’d mail the CEO and then visit the branch

Joe.garner@nationwide.co.uk

Before you bounce down to the branch livid, remember it’s not the fault of the staff in bank on the counter/greeting you. So count to ten first.

Some guy came into my young daughters branch livid because he couldn’t work the app and she was his teller. She tried to help but think he just wanted to rage at someone. Thankfully her managers stepped in and dealt with him but not before he shouted and screamed at her.

She was holding back tears later that night when she told me (she quite shy and timid and obviously scared)

Hope you get the house issue sorted. (Or have a livid dad hunt you down if you rage at the staff)

Thanks for the feedback. @macdubh I’ll be courteous to anyone I speak to in branch. But as it stands it’s my family who are close to tears so I will be pushing this for a resolution as much as I can.

Crap situation however I am sure NW will sort you out.

Re the PI insurance thing – you would have to prove the solicitor was negligent in their professional duties to claim against them however even if it drags on for 10 days over the 7 then the cost is only £500. I say only as whilst that is a lot of money to you it is nothing to NW or the solicitor if they wanted to clear it as a gesture of good will.

NW will not be insured against something like this – not worth the money to insure to them, they would just pay it and even if it were a PI claim against the solicitor then their excess will be at least £5k so again, they would just settle it.

Either way I would not expect you to be out of pocket.

Hope you get it sorted quickly 🙂

Before you bounce down to the branch livid, remember it’s not the fault of the staff in bank on the counter/greeting you. So count to ten first.

This. Sounds like a massive cock-up, but please be mindful that there will be nothing that the branch staff can do about it. To be honest, there is no point going there, you’ll only make your and their day worse.

Ring the mortgage people, and the complaints people, and explain a) what you want doing, b) by when (be reasonable, don’t say “by this afternoon”, say “by close of play Friday” or something and c) the costs you face, that you will expect them to cover, should it not be done in time.

Now is the time for calm, measured, assertivness. Going ballistic will not help.

Sorry, my solicitor did tell me at the time about the mortgage purchase price issue but said at that stage it should be a formality to correct it and he then went on to get that assurance from Nationwide apparently. It did cross my mind if he had dropped a ball but I don’t think so. I believe it’s Nationwide’s incompetence.

Its certainly likely to be Nationwide’s underlying fault, and their lack of urgency to fix it – but that doesn’t mean he’s done everything he should. If he made you aware of the problem when it came to light though – he’s probably covered his arse.

I’ve been on Twitter too. Just been given a platitude and referred to complaints procedure.

It strikes me that to get real attention on SM you need large numbers of followers and/or other people liking / retweeting your crisis!

One of the tricks of the SM team will be to very quickly pull it in to “can you DM me so I can discuss this” probably dressed up as a way to protect your personal data. What they are really doing is moving potential bad press from the public eye. If you aren’t getting anywhere by DM – its useful to summarise the lack of action back in the public eye without giving away your personal details. So quote the original message and post “after various private messages @nationwide think the best way to solve an urgent problem is to follow their official complaints procedure taking several days – meanwhile, I’m incurring penalties for breach of contract from THEIR error”

Now if you can nudge friends, family (or say a mountain biking forum with thousands of users) to like / retweet this – you might get more traction. Probably worth tagging #mortgage or other phrases you can find (tags with lots of use generally get more attention) as again it’s more likely to be shown to others (e.g. mortgage advisors – they really don’t want them thinking they are an admin catastrophe).

Just remember that you can play the Social Media and mailing the CEO game as much as you like, but at the end of it all is some poor sod in the mortgage department, who’s got absolutely shitloads of cases to work, who this will drop on. The more pressure you put on Social Media and the CEO, the more pressure will be on that poor bastard.

If you’re out of pocket, they will cover it, and probably more. As I said, calm, measured, polite-but-firm assertiveness at the right people is the way forward.

Whilst this might seem like the end of the world right now, it will be sorted in a week or so, maybe with you out of pocket for a couple of weeks whilst they sort out your compensation.

You’ll be in your nice new house, working out why the bastard vendor has stolen all the lightbulbs in next to no time.

I would be going ballistic at this. firmly but politely going into the branch and refusing to leave until its escalated to someone who can deal with it.

As above no need to shout at minions but if they say ” I can do nothing” ask – who can. get them here / on the phone /email them now and refuse to leave until its sorted

I would be going ballistic at this. firmly but politely going into the branch and refusing to leave until its escalated to someone who can deal with it.

As above no need to shout at minions but if they say ” I can do nothing” ask – who can. get them here / on the phone /email them now and refuse to leave until its sorted

You can do that on the phone with the mortgage department, no need to go into the branch. The branch, honestly, will just end up ringing the same people, they will have no ability to expedite the case.

Its much easier in person to pressure folk. they say they have to ring up – you say fine. I will wait here until yo uhave done. Its much easier to fob folk off over the phone

Just left the branch. It was certainly the right call to go in. Spoke (politely and calmly) to a very helpful member of staff who was understanding and empathetic. The polar opposite of the person in the mortgage team I spoke to yesterday. She rang someone and that person has raised an escalation request. This has to be approved but she assured me she would pursue this through the day and would update me later on progress. If approved this should move things forward much more quickly.

I understand things go wrong which is why, despite the issues we had last week, I didn’t escalate anything and gave them the chance to rectify it. But once you start to get into stuff like 10 more days minimum to manually re-key something when we’re already in breach of contract just isn’t on. Fingers crossed now.

Its much easier to fob folk off over the phone

Agreed, but if the mortgage people are fobbing anyone off, they’ll fob the branch staff off too (in fact it’s easier for them to fob off the branch, because they know they’re ‘shielded’ by them, from you). You then put the branch person in the horrible position of being stuck between the person who wants it doing, and the person who can do it, with no ability to affect how or when it’s done. Best case is the branch person gives you the phone, in which case you’ve not achieved anything more than you would have done at home.

I worked in bank branches for a number of years, I have some experience of what I speak.

EDIT – realised I hadn’t clicked Submit on this, did so, then saw the post above. Typical 🙂

Similar happened to me 6 years ago. Nationwide also.

Got a call at about 1600 on completion day (Friday). Removers had been hanging around for hours waiting for the ‘go’. Solicitor said, ‘sorry but problem at Nationwide funds won’t come through best you arrange somewhere to stay for the weekend and some storage for your belongings’.

In the end. The house we were moving into was vacant. The vendors let us move our stuff in but not stay there. We stayed at the inlaws for the weekend. We had to get out as there was a chain below our house.

It all got sorted on the Monday. We owed the vendors interest, extra time for the removals company etc.

The solicitor was adamant it was Nationwide’s mistake. And wrote me a long letter saying he had the go ahead.

I got in touch with Nationwide via phone / online. All very impersonal but forwarded all the information to Nationwide. Within a few weeks I got all the extra costs due to failure to complete compensated and a small amount of ‘compo’ (pittance amount).

Don’t panic. As long as the Solicitor is happy it was Nationwide’s mistake it should get resolved. It’s a pain, and a big deal at the time, but it will get sorted.

I worked in bank branches for a number of years, I have some experience of what I speak.

Me too, now in cushy back office job posting on a cycling forum during the working day. 😉 Maybe this is why banks are so slow, who on here is in Nationwide mortgage department and can work this case?

Doesn’t sound like your Solicitor is up to much for me. Why have they not put the Nationwide under severe pressure instead of accepting the unacceptable timescale they gave him and left it to you to chase? What are you paying them for exactly? Sounds weak and feeble to me.

I bought a council house a few years ago. Had a mortgage agreed with NatWest – the mortgage offer lasted 6 months. The council took an eternity when my Solicitor was dealing with them – ranging from total silence to requests they made to the council being ignored and supplying incorrect info. It went down to the wire i.e. the last day of the 6 months mortgage offer – one day later and the mortgage offer would be withdrawn and we’d have to reapply. This is where the Solicitor steps in, at midday they called the council and threatened them with that if this didn’t get completed today they’d be sued and would be liable for all our costs so far and any future costs occurred because of their incompetence and faffing – hey presto they got off their backsides and got it sorted.

Your Solicitor needs sacking imo.

Similar thing happened to me. For whatever reason the bank did not transfer my deposit payment to the solicitor on time, despite me paying their fee to have this done, and being stood in the bank at 11.30am on the Friday I was due to get the keys.
‘you must do this by 12noon the teller said’, ‘you’re in luck, it’s 11.30am’.
Penalty was £30 per day (2008), so £90 for the 3 days it took them to do it, and the bank covered it.

A stress you don’t need. I think the bank should pick up the fees.

Me too, now in cushy back office job posting on a cycling forum during the working day. 😉

Amen brother.

who on here is in Nationwide mortgage department and can work this case?

Not me, wrong department 😉

We had something similar with Barclays recently, there was a typo in the house address. The whole application needed to be redone to sort it. They managed to turn it around in a couple days.

However the big difference was it was before exchange – I can’t believe your solicitor has let you exchange contracts without the correct mortgage offer. I think that is where the main culpability is here.

Your Solicitor needs sacking imo.

perhaps – but even if changing solicitor was a solution it almost certainly doesn’t save you time – not get Nationwide to pay quicker!

I would be going ballistic at this. firmly but politely going into the branch and refusing to leave until its escalated to someone who can deal with it.

As above no need to shout at minions but if they say ” I can do nothing” ask – who can. get them here / on the phone /email them now and refuse to leave until its sorted

there’s a very real danger that what you (as an angry customer) think is firm but polite and the bank consider is rude or threatening (like refusing to leave the branch) – I’m sure ultimately Nationwide have an option to say, “sorry we’ve decided we don’t want to give you a mortgage after all”.

Just remember that you can play the Social Media and mailing the CEO game as much as you like, but at the end of it all is some poor sod in the mortgage department, who’s got absolutely shitloads of cases to work, who this will drop on. The more pressure you put on Social Media and the CEO, the more pressure will be on that poor bastard.

I’m not sure I’m seeing your point here. Don’t pressure the bank because the bank has given loads of work to someone? At what point is he entitled to be upset? when its a day late? two weeks late? a month late? If the Social Media team and the CEO are getting complaints like this they need to raise it so that there is (a) fewer mistakes (b) quicker ways to fix them (c) more helpful ways to escalate problems.

If you’re out of pocket, they will cover it, and probably more. As I said, calm, measured, polite-but-firm assertiveness at the right people is the way forward.

And you know, the bank and the SM team could probably go a long way to reassuring the customer that (i) this is their policy (ii) because its their policy it will be easy to get processed (iii) because it will be easy to get their is a real incentive for the bank to get the processing sorted ASAP. Thats the sort of answer that SM teams can easily be empowered to provide rather than – please use our complaints procedure.

Poly – it seemed to work for the OP 🙂

Can’t recall the details but Direct Line provided our mortgage for a house purchase, but in a similar vein, somehow failed to provide the funds on the requisite day, resulting in a hasty bridging loan being taken out through our local bank branch to covert their shortfall.

Once dust had settled, an appropriate letter and copies of relevant letters, missed transfers and additional costs – settled claim in full…

Well, we have the keys, sort of.

After Wednesdays intervention the money came through late yesterday. However too late in the day for the solicitors to organise transfer etc. So it will be done first thing Monday morning. However the sellers have let us have the keys now so we can measure up etc.

Good old in-branch Nicola! She rang yesterday to see how things were. I was quick to heap praise on her for turning everything round. A proper example of good customer service. Still have a complaint open and will be looking to claim back the penalty interest but glad it’s almost resolved now.

Good old in-branch Nicola!

Worth putting that on social media and writing to the branch manager. Good people deserve good outcomes, she could use it in her annual review.

Been asked but again … why has / did your solicitor exchanged when there is no valid mortgage offer

Edit and send the report on title drawing down the mortgage funds??

Worth putting that on social media and writing to the branch manager. Good people deserve good outcomes, she could use it in her annual review.

Definitely planning on this.

In regards to the solicitor. We did have a mortgage offer. But a document, the certificate of title I believe it’s called, came through wrong with the wrong figure on. This is in Scotland and they put the property valuation figure (which they use to calculate the LTV and base the mortgage off) as the purchase price. However as is common in Scotland we offered over this so the purchase price was higher. Also as we’re in Scotland there is no ‘exchange’ as such. There’s a bargain concluded through missives.

As I understand it, my solicitor flagged the mistake to the nationwide. They told him they would correct it and to proceed. He did and drew down the funds to make the transfer but at this point it became apparent that Nationwide hadn’t corrected the error. They then retracted the whole offer and said he must return the drawn down funds and they would then re-issue from scratch. My gut feeling is Nationwide’s systems are geared towards the English house buying system and I’ve fallen foul of that.