Am I right to be really annoyed at this - mortgage payment and credit file issue

[hipflasker]

Hi,

We pay our mortgage by direct debit each month. Never missed a payment in 19 years. Last month on 30th December I noticed that there wasn't enough money in our account to cover the payment. Our annual car insurance had come out and I had forgotten. This meant that there wasn't enough money in the account for the mortgage payment and it was reversed.

I contacted the bank immediately via their webchat facility and apologised. I have another account with them with money in it. The member of staff transferred the money from this account to my mortgage account so that the payment was made. The member of staff told that as the payment had been received on the due date there would be no issue, but that I might just receive a few automated messages as the system sends these out automatically.

I asked if there would be any adverse impact on my credit file and I was told that this was very unlikely as I had paid on the day the mortgage payment was due. The member of staff also said that if this did happen it would be reversed as I had paid on time.

A week later I was still getting alerts telling me we were in arrears. I called the bank and they apologised. They confirmed that there were no arrears and that they had raised a request for this to all be sorted. I was given £25 as an apology.

This morning we both had alerts from our Credit file app telling is that a late mortgage payment has been logged on our credit files. I am so angry about this. I have called and the lady at the bank has apologised and told me that this shouldn't have happened. Apparently someone at the bank raised the request for anything adverse to be removed from our credit files on 7th January. The lady explained that she could not understand why this had not been done. She put me on hold whilst she spoke to the relevant team. She returned to tell me that she had contacted the relevant team and they would action this on Monday, but that it could take 8 weeks to sort out. I don't get this. It took them 20 days to log the ( incorrect) late payment, but it'll take 8 weeks to remove it?

I feel like this is a piss take! AIBU?

Agree with this poster, the bank will have a specific definition of late. In some cases it may be that if you're making a manual payment it must clear with the bank on the due date which yours may or may not have. Others may state it must be made before 2pm to be considered on time for example.

The 8 week thing is because the credit agencies can take ages to update reports
It likely won't be 8 weeks and will be much sooner but it's out of the control of the bank as to how quickly it is amended

The bank confirmed that it wasn't late as it was made on the due date. This is my issue - the bank have never disputed that it was on time, however I have been bombarded with arrears alerts and now the late payment marker on my credit file

Is the mortgage with the same bank as your current account?

Yes it is. This made it easy to just move the money across to make the payment

That's good then, there's only one bank involved so no question about who has to put in the request to remove the incorrect information from your credit report. They'll sort it, don't worry

I assume it will update on both of our credit reports, even though I am the one who has lodged the complaint? - it's a joint mortgage

The information sent to the credit agencies will be automated so somewhere in their system it thinks, or thought, that the payment was late. I think that's worth looking at rather than a customer advisor on the phone simply looking at the date and saying it must have been on time.

But surely you’d expect the staff to give accurate info??

Do you work in this field @Owly11?
I don't, so don't know the bank rules. It would seem incredibly harsh for this to count as a "late" payment, given it was made on the due date and the bank employee OP spoke to told them it would not be treated as a late payment. I do see your point about the admin, but curious if this is your area of expertise as you seem to be so certain OP is in the wrong?

You’re right, unless a condition of the mortgage is that payments are made by direct debit. It’s a while since I’ve had one, so can’t be sure, but I think that was the case for the last mortgage I had. If that’s the case, then their system is correct because you didn’t make the payment on time using the right method, as DD payments are usually taken in the early hours. So now manual intervention is needed to correct the system. If your mortgage doesn’t require payment by direct debit then ignore the above :)

Manual intervention will sort it out though, and shouldn’t really take 8 weeks in this day and age though, so you’re right to be annoyed at that. But, you can’t be surprised that if you didn’t meet your obligation is what is an automated process then the process has played out the way it has I don’t think.

It's been a few years since I worked in this area but it would take weeks for corrections to show on bureau data due to how the filings are made and then each bureau will have their own process for updating it, so I'm not surprised they're telling you 8 weeks (I expect it's "up to" 8 weeks).

Halifax??

Similar happened to me years ago, just without the credit file thing (at least to my knowledge). I had a letter telling me they were charging me a fee for going over my overdraft. I logged into my online banking and it all looked OK, so I called them.

Their system showed my standing orders going into my account on the 2nd, instead of the 1st (both days were week days and the SO was set up to go in on the first every month, so there's no reason it should have been late - there was plenty of money in the account it came from as I'd just been paid). Also, on my internet banking it showed the SO's going through on the first as normal and the account never being in overdraft.

I argued this case repeatedly and the advisor on the end of the phone just wouldn't accept it wasn't my fault. After a lengthy argument about it she said (stroppily) "I've taken the charge off your account but when you get your printed bank statement through you'll see that the SO didn't go in until the 2nd and you were in fact overdrawn on the 1st"

When my bank statement came through, it didn't show any overdraft or late payment of standing orders. I wish I had the advisor's name and number to phone them back up with an "I told you so" but alas I did not!

I agree you shouldn't be in this position, but I think you've unfortunately now got to wait to let them rectify it. If you tried to contact the regulator they'll just tell you to wait until the bank completes it's review in its timeframe.