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Virgin One
by mikebig
Right ,
No fancy jargon , straight down to earth opinion - I dont give praise normally having been jaded by years of ineffective and pretty dull or ordinary service. We have had our Virgin One mortgage around 15 years now and I dont run it in conjunction with my current account but I took it because of the ... flexibility.
Fortunatley over the period I have stayed in employment but by overpaying we nearly completed our mortgage 8-9 years early. We had a small inheritance which helped pay a lump sum off but later when we had nearly finished paying our mortgage , when we needed a new kitchen I decided to borrow a further £8K , it was really easy to arrange when the money hit our current account and I decided to take a gamble on borrowing a little more at 3.6% rather than drawing from savings that were tied up tax free. With extra money since I have been investing in a NS&I product that pays RPI plus 1% PA. So we will see if I can achieve better than 3.6% average over 3 years.
From a customer service point of view the paperwork from Virgin has always been correct and the security and telephone manner of the staff make some of the other banks look like rank amateurs.
They are a very good outfit , top service , not the cheapest but definitely the best value for money ! - Mike
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Woolwich
by hugo
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not use Woolwich when chosing your mortgage provider. They took so long to get the mortgage offer to us that we nearly lost out on our flat purchase. To call them incompetent would be a complement. Thy are beyond useless. I will gove you an example... my mortgage adviser sent them bank statements and my visa (I am ... australian) and we assumed that all had been received by woolwich ok and they were reviewing the documents. about 12 days went by and we hadn't heard anything from them. We then call them and they claim to not have received them! you'd think they ought to call you to ask where they were.... but no, you have to do all the chasing... then we sent them through again... and alas, still no word from woolwich, we chase to check they have received them and they say that the scan of the visa was not correct, they needed it in color not black and white!!! again, they did not call us to inform us that they had rejected the visa scanned document, we has to acall them! in the end more than 20 days had passed before they were satisfied they had the correct documentation.
this is just one example! i would be here all day to give you the full run through of their awful service.
take my word for it, you jeapordise your purchase going through on time if you use woolwich. BEWARE.
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Mortgage Express Ltd
by H L
After being unable to sell our property before our permenant move to Australia, we realised our only option was to lease our property out.
I contacted Mortgage express, as I knew we needed to get their permission for this to take place. We only had a small amount left to pay.
Unfortunatley their 'Lettings Deptartment' did ... not accept phone calls and did not use email. We ended up packing up the house, filling the sea container and arranging tenants, with out their permission. 10 weeks later we have still not received permission, even though we have met all requirements from them. We received letters from them asking for different info and different ways we MUST pay the fee! They will only correspond by letter (takes 10 days to get to Australia) and will not speak to me by phone or email. We could not leave the house empty when we moved to Australia (as this is a condition of the mortgage), and we were not given permission to rent it. They told us we were possibly not able to go to Australia, as they would decide what was to be done with the house. When we own 85% of the house, I wouldnt have thought they could control our lives like that.
I found Mortgage Express to be very backwards in customer service. I was shocked to find that they do not use email! They seemed to find any reason to prolong making the decision and we are still waiting now 10 weeks on. I would encourage others to consider alternative lenders at all costs.
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