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A VICTIM OF the tracker mortgage scandal has expressed her frustration at her treatment by Bank of Ireland after it informed her she had been overcharged for years on her home loan.
It emerged last year that financial institutions in Ireland had charged thousands of customers denied tracker rates and charged higher interest rates than stipulated in their agreements. The Central Bank estimates almost 10,000 accounts have been impacted.
The woman, who does not wish to be named, told TheJournal.ie that she was first told of the overcharging on her account in December last year.
“In my case, it had been for a little over eight years. It was the usual story, I switched to a fixed rate in 2006 when interest rates were rising. When they came back down, I asked to go back on it, but I was denied the right to return to a tracker,” she explained.
The bank’s initial letter, seen by TheJournal.ie, states the customer had “been charged an incorrect rate of interest on your mortgage for a period of time”.
It adds that it will move her to the tracker rate set out in her mortgage documentation “to ensure that you do not experience any further detriment as a result of our failure”.
The letter also said the bank would write to update her in February 2017 to provide an update on:
The explanation of the exact circumstances that caused our failure in the first place
Any redress and compensation that may be due to you once finalised
Details of a payment towards the cost of independent professional advice that you may wish to seek
The independent appeals process that will be available to you.
The letter she received in February contained none of this information.
Instead, it stated that, “given the scale and complexity of this examination, your mortgage account remains under review and this work is still ongoing”.
The bank informed her that once her account had been fully reviewed, it would write to her with an update on the four points it referenced in its initial letter.
“I was eagerly awaiting that letter in February but there was nothing in it, it was just a fob-off. There has been nothing in the way of an update since. So, I thought I’d give them six months [from the first letter] and I rang last week looking for an update. There was no information, I was just completely stonewalled,” she said.
“They said it may not be until the end of this year now. I just got so mad, they just don’t seem to get the disruption it caused in people’s lives – there doesn’t seem to be an urgency to refund people’s own money.”
‘Struggling’
The woman has estimated she is owed as much as €15,000.
“It’s a load of money that I could have earmarked for other things,” she said. During the period of time she was overcharged, her mother was suffering from dementia and she had to pay for home care for two years.
“I’m a public sector worker, so I’m not badly paid, but I wouldn’t have spare cash to spend. From month-to-month I was genuinely struggling I had enough stress going on at that time without having to worry about my finances. And my story is nothing compared to what some people went through – some people lost their homes.”
She said she believes financial institutions who overcharged their customers need to be held to account, both by the Central Bank and by the country’s politicians.
“If I owed them that amount, or was six months in arrears, they’d be ringing me every day. When I ring them once in six months for an update, they treat me like an inconvenience,” she said.
“It’s frustrating when you consider how much money we put into those banks.”
In response to a query from TheJournal.ie about progress with its redress scheme, Bank of Ireland referred back to a statement in made in December last year.
This statement from six months ago stated the bank had identified 602 accounts where a right to, or the option of, a tracker rate of interest was not provided to the customer in accordance with their loan documentation.
It also identified 3,916 accounts on a tracker rate that was not the rate specified in their loan agreement. The bank offered its apologies to affected customers and committed to commencing with refunds in the first quarter of this year.
If you have been affected by the tracker mortgage scandal, we want to hear your story. Get in touch by sending a message to trackermortgage@thejournal.ie.
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Michelle O’Neill is absolutely correct in her call for this, but the North being the North; it is pretty obvious that the push from Michelle and the pushback from Arlene stems from something other than Coronavirus/public health.
@LangerDan: What about that funeral she attended not so long ago. Didn’t see much social distancing, did you? Plus did everybody there do self isolation after? Only thing she did with that statement was prove she is every bit hypocrite that she shamelessly branded to others.
@Richard Cronin: There has been more than enough hypocrisy to share around during this pandemic from many quarters. However it is important that we do not allow past hypocrisy create tunnel vision. I’d rather a hypocrite make a U-Turn than stick dogmatically to their original position. The issue here is, it makes perfect epidemiological sense to have an island wide solution to this; but the Northern parties are so entrenched in Green-Orange politics that such sound calls get proposed and opposed under a different light.
@LangerDan: so why are all the airports & harbors open? It’s not like the virus is going away anytime soon. Plus how is all this to be payed for? Most hypocrites are around for the sound bites but not for actual problem solving
@LangerDan: cash for ash foster would rather flood the place with unchecked tourists than listen to sf warning
She’s 100% right but unfortunately has undermined her own authority on Covid by attending Sinn Féin funeral that broke all common sense rules of social distancing.
@Brendan Walsh: hypocrisy in action
@Brendan Walsh: she had no choice, she was only following orders.
@John Mulligan: yaaaaawwwwwnnnn
@Richard Cronin: it is 14 days today since that funeral and as the numbers show, it was so well organised around social distancing regulations that not a single case of covid has been traced to it.
@M Bowe: actually 21 days.
@M Bowe: the west Brits are out in style
Poor Arlene. Would sooner see her people dessimated by a lethal virus than give an inch on her beloved Union.
@Toon Army: Maybe Michelle and colleagues should have thought of that before organising a mass attendance at a recent funeral.
@TL55: I don’t think they planned on a funeral??
Sinn Fein demanding internment for people entering Ireland. Detained without trial. Hilarious.
Does anyone really take this woman seriously?
@Brian Renaghan: Of course not Arlene Foster is a relic of the old era but luckily people are listening to Michelle O’Neill and taking what she says seriously.
When it came to closing and opening schools, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales took a different approach than England, so why are they insistant that they MUST now maintain the common travel area controls (or rather a lack of controls) with the rest of UK.
It really is hard to take anything from SF seriously. This type of proposal requires consensus from the executive and that is the forum for such an initiative. This solo run is just sectarian politics at its worst.
@camio55: do you even know what sectarianism is. Maybe check it out before using it!!!!!
@M Bowe: Sectarianism is a form of prejudice, discrimination, or hatred arising from attaching relations of inferiority and superiority to differences between subdivisions within a group.
Never thought I’d end up on Arlene’s side. Strange times.
Yet she went to a funeral where how many people attended? Calling for holding areas for people without due process? Congratulations you are every bit the hypocrite you shamelessly brand other politicians
@Richard Cronin: you are giving her too much credit. She doesn’t have any say in policy, she was appointed by the army council and is just a mouthpiece for them, the same as her clone in the south.
This is just an attempt by her handlers to leverage the covid crisis to suit their own agenda.
Sinner wants to stop traffic from Britain and align with Republic. Shocker
And the Republic of Ireland needs to protect itself from the spread of Covid-19 from Northern Ireland and vice-versa by limiting mass gatherings including attending IRA funerals, Michelle, Mary Lou and Pearse.
The porous border that the Unionists love could kill a lot of people !
have your say