There is nothing "Express" about Mortgage Express (Mortgage Express Ltd)

Name: mrtesttube

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Product:	Mortgage Express Ltd
Date:	29/01/08 (367 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Flexible lending criteria, high LTV rate, good for first time buyers

Disadvantages: Poor inter-departmental communication

Why do people who use BT and then change to Virgin or other telephone companies, always eventually come back to BT? I'll tell you why. Other companies broadband or telephone services may be cheaper and better value, but the customer services that you receive from BT is priceless - no long queues to speak to someone in a foreign dodgy call centre and good customer service. I don't mind paying an extra few quid a month for a good all round service than paying a few quid less for a better value service with abysmal customer services. Mortgages are the same.

Two years ago, I was a first-time buyer, looking for a mortgage company to lend me the full asking price of £96,500 to buy my the house I loved. I did not have a deposit as I was not very financially well off at the time and required a 100% Mortgage.

Mortgage Express were my best option - they offered a 3 year discounted Interest Only Mortgage and up to 100% LTV (Loan To Value). The £200 valuation fee and mortgage arrangement fee were simply added on to the mortgage to make things easier for me. They were very accomodating at the time and seemed to have one of the best value first time buyer's deals on the market, although they did worry me a little when it took 2 months for them to get my mortgage finalised. These worries would come back to haunt me...

I paid the mortgage without default for 2 years and everything was going smoothly until I decided to sell up in order to move in with my partner. I decided to port my current mortgage across to another property which I wished to purchase as an investment. Mortgage Express offered me a way to do this - I could keep my current morgtgage after I sell my house (albeit changed slightly to a buy-to-let mortgage), so I was able to withdraw equity from what I made from my property and put some of this down as a deposit for my new home. Even though I was porting my mortgage across to a different property, I still had to fill out an application form and send away my previous three month's pay slips and my previous year's P60. Mortgage Express handled this side of the transaction very well.

However, when it came to getting a hold of my deeds from Mortgage Express after my own home was sold, it was like gtting blood from a stone! An offer was made for the asking price for my house and in early December 07, my solicitor wrote to them requesting the deeds. So far, everything is going great - Mortgage Express have arranged the new buy-to-let mortgage for me and will sort my house sale out in no time.

Just before Christmas I rang my solicitor to see if they had arrived and, lo and behold they had not. On the 3rd January my solicitor rang me to inform me that my Mortgage company had sent my deeds to the wrong solicitor - one in Middlesex. I coincidentally live in Belfast, where we have a completely different conveyancing legal sysytem to England so only God knows how they ended up in Middlesex. I rang Mortgage Express and they told me that the name of the solicitor in Middlesex was on my account and that it must have been my fault for some reason. They could not explain to me what had happened or admit that the error was their fault.

After 4 weeks of endless letters between my solicitor, Mortgage Express and the Solicitors in Middlesex, no-one could locate my house deeds

I rang my very frustrated solicitor today for an update on my house deeds and she told me that they have received nothing yet. So I decided to telephone Mortgage Express and give them a piece of my mind as they could be ruining my house sale for me and the people buying my house could withdraw at any time.

I telephoned them today (29th January 2008) and went through one of the very pleasant ladies in Customer Services for a shortcut, demanding that they get my deeds problem sorted out pronto. After being on hold for 10 minutes after she contacted the Deeds Department she came back to to tell me that my deeds were in fact not lost or had not been sent to a solicitors in Middlesex, but they were "in their basement all along", and in fact there had been "a cross error of miscommunication!" So a month had been wasted all because of their total incompetence and bad communication.

So they should be sending them out today to my solictor at last - 7 weeks after she initially requested them! What a joke!
This time wasting has nearly caused my house sale to fall through and my new house purchase to fall through. Please reconsider if you are thinking of using this Mortgage Company: they are unprofessional and dithering and there seems to be a total breakdown of communication between departments when chasing paperwork. I am sure that they are good at chasing new business customers and monthly payments, but when it comes to selling your house or porting your existing mortgage across, they just do not seem to care. There is no sense of urgency and I am afraid now that my house sale may not go through because it has taken them over 7 weeks to find my deeds, which were right beside them all along!

My mortgage is up for renewal in December and I can honestly tell you that despite getting a good deal initially with them (which I am thankful for), I will never use them again as their customer services and after sales leaves a lot to be desired.

Summary: Starts off well, then deteriorates if you want to move house