Nottingham benefits landlord Mick Roberts is fuming after being left with bad credit due to computer errors on his Barclays’ mortgage payments.
After years of struggling with call centres and going through complaints procedures, he took his protest to a Barclays branch and threatened to superglue himself to the counter until it sorted out his problems.
Roberts (pictured) blames the bank’s faulty Trinity System which he says doesn’t recognise over-payments. It has sometimes lost them, paid the capital but no interest, or paid the interest and no capital, he tells LandlordZONE.
“With one mortgage, I’ve had a balance in January of £50,000 and have overpaid every month but ended up with a balance of £52,000 a year later.”
Other payments don’t even get registered, most recently last December. As a result, Barclays had erroneously put a bad credit note against his file which meant Roberts was refused good low-rate fixed mortgages in 2021.
He’s even had bailiffs trying to repossess goods for alleged defaults. “These mortgages will now cost me £25,000 more on a product transfer as no other lender will take me,” he says.
After his protest, Barclays removed the bad credit note from his file.
Standards
A spokesman tells LandlordZONE: “We accept that on this occasion the service our customer received fell below our usual high standards.
“Appropriate steps have been taken to ensure the information held by the credit reference agencies is now accurate for our customer. As soon as we are alerted to any discrepancy we will work swiftly to review and resolve the situation.”
However, Roberts says the whole experience has made him ill and he’s not convinced that the problems won’t happen again.
It was no comfort when he complained to the Financial Conduct Authority which helpfully referred him to the Samaritans.
“It’s been horrendous,” he says. “But I can’t believe that with 10,000 similar accounts, other people haven’t been similarly affected. Landlords with Barclays BTL mortgages should carefully scrutinise their statements.”
