Hammered

Eighteenth century German philosopher, cultural critic, poet, writer and composer Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche once said, “There are people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it” and much to my dismay this is precisely the position I find myself in now.

When, in November 2008, HBOS acquired a court order to repossess our family home, I contacted the landlord of a property which I knew had been reduced to a cold, leaky, rat invested shadow of its former glorious self. Too onerous a task for even the most robust of tenants to consider anything other than fleetingly, it had stood empty for the majority of the time that it had been available to let. However, where some saw a crumbling country pile which offered only ice cold winters, damp rooms and a fair few furry friends as housemates, I saw a five hundred year old home which was long overdue some TLC along with a landlord who might actually consider us, despite our financial circumstances.

After some tense moments of negotiation with regard to both our adverse credit history and the level of rent we could afford, the deal was done and in January 2009 we moved into a dilapidated manor house with Tudor origins. Over the past four years and nine months we have endured constant leaks, inadequate heating and all manner of wildlife infestations, but, with the help of our family and friends, we have battled with the elements to turn a once neglected house into a home and, until recently, believed all concerned were delighted with both the transformation, the financial arrangement and the way in which we have kept on top of the minor repairs.

However, following a meeting with a company advocating sustainable heating systems supported by the government’s renewable heat incentive, the attitude towards us has most definitely changed.  

After months of surveys and sales pitches, my seventy five year old landlord is now convinced we are grossly underpaying. Furthermore, he is adamant the installation of a bio-mass boiler (at a cost of somewhere in excess of £130,000) will not only service our family's heating requirements along with those of the four small commercial units he rents out in the adjacent barns, but it will also provide him with a generous return. Based on calculations produced by the salesman who remains blissfully unaware/disinterested in the ongoing structural problems of the property or the letting difficulties of the past, he has advised our landlord that the property will command a further £500 a month more in rent, inclusive of central heating fuel once the new heating system is operational.

What my landlord, his solicitor and the heating agent have failed to appreciate when formulating their calculations is;

·         A smattering of ancient radiators, many of which are broken and all of which are fed by small gauge pipes, will not be sufficient to provide adequate heating in a house of this size, however efficient the boiler

In order to stay warm I will still need to spend a further £240 to heat the water and fuel the fires on top of the inclusive rent

·        While my husband has enjoyed a cumulative wage increase of 7% over the past four years (amounting to approximately £90 a month in total) this has only served to reduce our reliance on tax credit and has not increased our household income

·         I am already in possession of £1066 pounds worth of Calor gas fuel for the winter (for which I am unable to obtain a refund) which I am still paying £154.00 per month

·         The ongoing economic crisis has not improved the chances of acquiring tenants for very large, expensive to run shabby old houses which are not water tight

And,

·         Demolishing listed outbuildings and listed walled gardens without the necessary consents usually ends in tears.

So, while I now await the outcome of irate neighbors incensed by the unapproved decimation of my historic rented home, a formal rent review via an agent which will inevitably result in my being served notice to quit and the information I have been waiting for from HBOS since February, I cannot help but be astounded to discover that despite my letter of the 1 August 2013, the Financial Ombudsman Service’s adjudicator has been unable to press HBOS to provide me with the documentation I have repeatedly requested of them via my Data Subject Access Request because he has, until yesterday...

Misplaced my correspondence!

The imminent Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche also said, “Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all” and as a result of the summers endless shenanigans, I am fast coming to the conclusion there are many who should have laid their hammers to rest some time ago.

Ridiculous Enemies

Roman economist, lawyer and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero once said,” There is no sanctuary so holy that money cannot profane it, no fortress so strong that money cannot take it by storm” and while bonus pots continue to unashamedly reward the untouchables for their ever increasing list of banking failures, it is no surprise to find the words of this ancient Roman theorist still ring uncomfortably true.

Reputedly focused only on electoral gain, Cameron and Osborne do nothing to bring our elitist banking fraudsters to account while regulatory figure heads Turner and Wheatley prefer to promote the fallacy that the dirty deeds of banking avarice are but a distasteful memory of the unregulated past. In preference to making use of the laws of incorporation  to the secure the prosecution of those who chose to serve themselves at the expense of the majority, banking losses remain socialized while those who condoned them keep the wealth their dishonesty has afforded them.

In contrast, the  opportunities to seek recompense for those who fell foul of this culture of miss selling and manipulation are limited by way of cut backs to legal aid and the withdrawal of funding to charitable organisations such as the CAB. Yet, driven by the terror of an alternative which could herald the breakdown of the current financial system (not to mention the loss of influential friends and their much valued votes) our two faced politicians have left the victims of this criminal banking culture abandoned and defenseless in the jaws of their oppressors. As one would expect the ongoing governmental trend to pretend and placate the voters rather than address the root cause of the banking crisis, has done nothing to deter the same self serving and morally bereft people who now insist that lessons have been learned.

In the real world it is business as usual for the bankers and despite much talk about plans to serve both the economy and the customer, the long suffering individual is still being persecuted and bullied into untenable submission. The cases below represent the tip of a huge iceberg which is unlikely to feature on any politician or regulator's radar because, unlike powerful corporations with budgets for legal and financial advice, the individuals concerned have once again been hung out to dry having been left with no alternative but to succumb to the whims of the all powerful banks demands and then crawl away to seek some quiet solitude in order to lick their wounds. This is because many have neither the stomach , the knowledge or the means by which to stand up to the wanton disregard of the banking fraternity they are forced to deal with.

Over the past few months I have discovered;

HSBC, who laundered 600 million in drugs money and paid only the equivalent to a few weeks profit in fines as a consequence, are unprepared to renegotiate the terms of a 15% LTV mortgage of an employed professional woman, and a mother of three, who cannot make ends meet now her husband has been sectioned under the Mental Health Act. She has never missed a payment and had originally planned to repay her loan in five years time. She has been told by HSBC she has no alternative but to sell her beloved family home of twenty years as quickly as possible.

HFC, a key offender in the miss sold PPI scandal, have repeatedly told a chronically ill widow that her 30% LTV mortgage must be repaid in full. She has been advised her mortgage cannot be rescheduled  (her husband died without sufficient  life assurance to repay the loan) despite having made every payment in full every month for twenty years and a guarantee from her pension provider confirming she can afford to continue to pay. She is faced with the unpalatable prospect of selling her lovingly restored home as quickly as possible.

Barclays, who made a healthy profit from the manipulation of LIBOR rates, repeatedly told an 85 year old woman who believed she had purchased a lifetime mortgage  at 20% LTV that she would have to repay the outstanding balance on her mortgage with immediate effect or face the ordeal of the bank applying to the courts to take possession of her home. On attempting to initiate a formal complaint she was told it was unlikely to be dealt with until after her house had been forcibly sold.

And,

HBOS, who have earned themselves the reputation of being the worst bank in the world , unnecessarily forced the sale on my home rather than allow me to rent it to cover my mortgage payments, spent the past four and half years telling me a woman has no right to be informed separately from her husband about mortgage arrears if her husband is already in discussion with them and, having made use of a fictitious purchase price and purchase date in order to over value my home and sell me a mortgage in the first place, now tell me the discovery of these falsified facts has nothing to do with them. Furthermore, in true HBOS bully boy fashion, I have received two demands from their debt collections agency despite HBOS’s own acknowledgement that they understand my case is currently under investigation by the Financial Ombudsman Service.

French enlightenment writer, historian, philosopher and master of wit, Voltaire, once said, “I have only made but one prayer to God, a very short one: O Lord make my enemies ridiculous, and God granted it” and if recent events are anything to go by, ridiculous enemies appear not to be the exclusive domain of Voltaire!

Truth and Punishment

Mahatma Gandhi, preeminent leader of Indian nationalism in British-ruled India once said, "Many people, especially ignorant people, punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you are right and you know it, speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth" and after receiving not one, but two heartless letters of HBOS hogwash this week it is clear that ignorance and a complete disregard for the truth is not just the prerogative of Gandhi’s British-ruled India.

It is now four and a half years since the sale fell though on our home and I was prompted to discuss with Halifax Bank of Scotland how best to avoid repossession. Deaf to my proposals to create a tenancy to cover mortgage payments, I embarked upon another fruitless year of communication with HBOS after they forced its sale. During this highly stressful period I enlisted the help of the Citizen’s Advice Bureau’s but, despite their best efforts, no amount of explanation could satisfy this infamous bank that we were in extreme financial difficulties or persuade them to arrest their pursuit of us. It is was only after I consulted a government funded debt management organisation in desperation that I discovered the mortgage on my home may well have been miss sold in the first place.

It has taken me a further three years, via the Financial Ombudsman Service, to persuade HBOS to investigate my complaint only to find their original offer of mortgage was based on both a fictitious purchase price and a fictitious date of purchase at the application stage. I was sure making HBOS aware of this discovery would illustrate, without question, that not only did my compliant have substance but both HBOS’s surveyor and the broker to whom they paid more than £4,000 for placing the mortgage with them, had over-valued my home at outset. Convinced I had finally secured HBOS’s attention, I was relieved to have taken my first, albeit small, step forward after so many unsuccessful years of trying to communicate. Here follows their reply and sadly nothing could have been further from the truth.

In HBOS’s first letter they state,

“The information that was provided in this [mortgage application form] was what was entered into our systems. We took this as being accurate in good faith, and based upon the valuation that took place during the application process, there was never any reason to think this was wrong...Having viewed your comments and our response, my previous letter...has provided you with our final conclusions...As you have reached the end of our internal complaints procedure, any further correspondence received will be placed on file as we do not feel that further communication with you will help resolve your complaint.”

In HBOS’s second letter (which arrived by the very same post) I am told “this matter” has now been put in the hands of their debt collectors.

Because of the scandalous actions of banks such as HBOS, the taxpayer has been saddled with,

•         An £850 billion bill to bail them out,
•     £1.1 trillion of potential liabilities
•     £560 billion of quantitative easing to rebuild balance sheets

Yet I who have lost my home, my livelihood and my financial future at their hands can not only expect to be pursued by them for a £217,000 shortfall for the foreseeable future, while they, in the face of evidence which clearly illustrates there has been serious wrong doing, choose to remain ignorant of the truth and punish me for having the audacity to speak out.

Harvey Fierstein, American actor, playwright, author and champion for gay civil rights once said, “Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim and accept no one’s definition of your life,” and because of the way in which HBOS have continued to treat me, it is my plan to turn this day along with each and every other one into an opportunity to follow, without deviation, every single word of Mr Fierstein’s advice.