Name changed but I am long in the tooth.
So various circumstances happened which meant I was eligible for UC. I was astonished but anyway.
I also have a mortgage. I extended it when I bought out ex husband. Then I read about Support For Mortgage Interest. My ex was a horror and by the time I saw him off, my credit rating was fucked so my mortgage interest is shit at 5.9%
So then the SMI thing pays the interest but only up to a level of their own rate of 3.2%. And when/if you sell then you pay it back. It’s a no brainer for me, it either reduces my outgoings or shortens my term, which ever I wish, and is settled from sale proceeds. I have a lot of equity (we bought young) so I applied.
And this is why I post!!! What a hoo har! It’s all administered via the UC portal and I started the claim the moment I was eligible which was last November. But since then I’ve had 17 different journal entries which have included “don’t know where to find this form.” And “form sent to lender” 6 times. My lender is very good customer service-wise and assured me they’d sent the forms back AND sent proof AND sent me copies.
Nothing happened. Nothing. So I made a formal complaint and a young person I’ll call Eoin got stuck in and chased it, but at every call asked was I happy to mark the complaint as completed. So I said No.
I was told to go down to the job centre with the proof from the mortgage company that they had signed off on a second charge and then it turns out that The System doesn’t allow for attachments. Or screeen shots. Or direct email.
The job centre manager and his close colleague were total stars and kept on looking at ways to upload the document that THEIR system was blocking. They were ace and so patient.
And then Eoin from Complaints received it all and BANG!!!! They paid off (as it happened in my case) the entire back claim which works out at 3% of my total borrowing. Gone, in back payments. And they also now pay the equivalent of a third of my mortgage payment monthly. I can either continue to pay my usual amount or drop it and divert it else
where.
Here is the thing though. My patient job center manager said that in all his years and all the cases he’s handled in my Home Counties town, he has seen ONE other SMI case go through. The rest fall at various hurdles, mostly because people either don’t understand it or run out of steam. 😥