Britannia Building Society Mortgage

I bought another house with them and moved in during Sept. I paid for a valuation and survey which I was told I must use who they recommend. The valuation came back saying no structural problems. Valuing it with full price sellers wanted. Turns out when I moved in garage had to be demolished it was collapsing and very apparent to builders. Floor was sinking and drains which run through it had collapsed. Balcony only access to rear garden was dangerous and retaining wall collapsed. This could have killed my family . Issues not established until after moving in and mortgage company refused to deal with me referring me to the surveyors who say mortgage valuation was nothing to do with me only mortgage company . House was incorrectly valued and costs exceed 50 per cent of value and mortgage offered 50 pounds as an apology and works are costing over 113k. surveyors refuse to acknowledge their mistake I'm so down and worried about this. Truly ruthless company who don't care.

current deal was coming to an end so requested a new deal and borrow further £5,000 to upgrade house. New deal would allow us to reduce mortgage term and pay on an extra £10 a month. Mortgage advisor assigned to us was useless and didn't ring back when promised to and failed to return our calls. Every time we rang we were advised only this person help us as the person answering the call was on another team, which I find hard to believe as they seem to be all sat in the same call centre. Eventually after having a shout for a manager was advised iit was being refused due to affordability despite our owning 80% of property and Britannia now saying we will go on their SVR at a cost of over £40 a month more. Unable to obtain any information as to how the affordability was calculated as the mortgage advisor did not take note of any of our actual monthly expenditure and used area averages instead -

And they just get worse...

What should have been a simple request has turned out to be nightmare. All we wanted to do was arrange a new fixed rate mortgage with Britanna. Having been customers for 15 years we just wanted a new fx ate deal, burrowing less than before and where our monthly payments would be less. First phone resulted that an adviser would advise us in four weeks time, yes four weeks! Then four weeks came and guess what? No phone call. Next phone their useless helpline to be told we can book you another phone appointment in five weeks time! Their call centre and remortgage department are totally useless. customer service, well what customer service. Anyway another lost customer as moving to HSBC....

Having had our mortgage with Britannia for over 8 years I found myself in the unfortunate position of being made redundant near our mortgage renewal date.

HISTORY : Never defaulted or missed a payment in 11 years we have had a mortgage have no credit cards debt or outstanding payments.Own three cars all paid for and have some savings.

Additionally my redundancy would cover 18 months of mortgage payments and my wife returns to work in a few months from maternity.

Finally I have a good chance of finding employment soon with a assessment centre to attend after 1 week of being made redundant.

Given all this the risk to Britannia is not that high however they have claimed we are to much of a risk to give a fixed mortgage to but have defaulted us onto the higher variable rate which they will not review for 12 months.

This is a great deal for them as they get a extra £200PM extra from me in the difference between the fixed and variable (if it stays at this rate)which over a year nets them £2400 more than is needed to be paid (so much for ethical trading and doing the best for loyal customers).

Britannia could of done so much more to support me and would of had another 8 years of my business however I will never recommend this company again and will think twice about spending any money in any of the co-operatives businesses.

I do not believe Britannia have offered me the best deal which is what the whole new mortgage review covers and has failed a loyal customer due to there greed and realisation they can prey on a customer who has very limited options.

I recently visite a Britannia BS branch in search of a fixed rate bond. I found the staff very friendly and informative. I liked the smallness of the branch and the personal nature of the staff as they helped me - very different from the crowded high street banks. I had a review of my finances with their consultant and got some useful information without her trying to sell me something. I like the branch approach to doing banking with Britannia where I can go in and see a member of staff without the anonymous situation of the telephone or internet. I am very happy with this building society and have invested in two bonds and an easy access account.

Here are the quick facts of my experience with the Britannia in Huddersfield...

Having shifted our banking and mortgage to the Cooperative, we were asked to speak to staff at Britannia about moving our mortgage across. No initial problems, but they managed to misplace the photocopies of all our identity documents (passports, bank cards, birth certificates...)

I kept getting emails from their solicitors asking for them. The staff at Brit' finally admitted to having misplaced them but not before I was subjected to some of the worst customer service I've ever experienced. This including being shown the flat of a staff members hand, as you might an unruly spaniel, while insisting that they hadn't lost my documents, which of course they had.

To be fair, it transpired that they had lost them but only inside the building but this was a far cry from the original story that they were "at head office in Leek" or "the solicitor had lost them."

Following a written complaint to their head office, I was sent two, completely unsolicited, cheques. One for my appalling treatment in the branch by staff and one for the lost documents fiasco.

Two months in and they are at it again. This time they had been using somebody else's account to pay our mortgage having mixed up our details! Super fun. This jolly news was followed up with a letter informing us we might lose our home if we don't pay our mortgage... Utterly hilarious.

We have had a mortgage for the past 17 years with Britannia and they have always been good communicators. We have had yearly accurate statements regarding our payments and the overall amount owing. We wanted to reassure people that we have always felt secure with this building society. They also ported our mortgage when we moved several years ago to a new home and this was an easy stress free process.

Britannia had all of our paperperwork, P60's, wage slips, bank statements etc at the first meeting, but only looked into them AFTER encouraging us to get a £450 survey done. They then offered us a mortgage way too low to buy our preferred property.

Avoid them like the plague!

I am very disappointed, I thought they were supposed to be an 'ethical' bank?

I'm writing this in case anyone finds themselves in the same position that i was in. I found myself suddenly able to afford to buy a house rather than rent and my lease was up in 6 weeks time.

I found the graduate mortgage from Britannia through share to buy and what a cracking rate it was. 3.79% for a 90% mortgage for two or more graduates. So the girlfriend and I found a house and sorted out a solicitor. Made an offer and everything was going well. The application however was a pain.

Share to buy didn't pass on most of the information we told them so we had to fill in a second application with Britannia. This application was apparently sent but never arrived in the post. I ended up getting the call centre to email the application to their branch for me to pick up. We filled it in and sent it back through their internal mailing system. It never arrived. We got a third application and filled that in and sent it special delivery to one of the assessors (make sure you get a name!). Throughout all of this whilst the call center people were only doing their job and were very polite they were completely and utterly useless. We got fed different information, a lot of it false, and had to keep calling constantly.

As soon as we got beyond the call center everything moved very quickly. We got the mortgage agreed (finally!) and got the keys within a couple of days and have ended up paying a lot less than we would be had we been renting.

So overall my advice would be this, go for it by all means but look to get beyond the call center to the ranks above very quickly. There is a small team that handles things beyond the call center and if you can communicate directly with them then your application will go far quicker. I would also recommend getting agreed dates for things to be completed and even with these keep calling up britannia to chase them. They will do nothing themselves and if you don't hound them then they will leave things to get stagnant.

I wish I had read the reviews before encouraging my children to apply for a Britannia Mortgage. The whole process was a catalogue of delays, inadequate advice or support and a very poor standard of customer care. After 10 weeks the vendor has put the property back onto the market, as unable to wait any longer and my children have now moved to another mortgage provider.