Just When We Thought It Was Safe...

So there we were, moving towards completion of our house purchase, the contracts signed and a date set, when <3 received a phonecall from our solicitor saying that the bank wasn't happy with the arrangements for our mortgage.

This story goes back to early January, when we met with our Personal Financial Mangler and went through all the paperwork for the mortgage application and the various other things euphemistically described as Financial Products that we were buying (insurance, income protection...). Ms. Mangler set up direct debit mandates for us, filling in the appropriate forms from some plasticwear provided by <3. We signed on the assorted dotted lines, shook hands and went away, somewhat shellshocked.

Since then, we have had a series of letters from various different bank departments, each wanting us to sign a new direct debit mandate as there was, apparently, something wrong with the original forms (which, you will remember, were filled in on our behalf by an officer of the bank).

Here is where I could go off on a rant about large organisations with customer relationship management systems which are so disjointed that each of the company's many tentacles has no idea what the others are up to. I won't. Much.

Now, back to the start of the story, and it turns out that yet more DD mandates are required. <3 extended a lunch break and went to our branch of the bank, handed over completed forms and was assured that everything was now OK.

Come the day of completion, we receive a phonecall from the branch to say that everything was definitely still hunky-dory and the mortgage funds would be drawn down forthwith.

We twiddled our thumbs and drank tea until lunchtime, when the solicitor phoned to let us know that the bank's head office were still refusing to release the funds as they had not received authorisation from the branch -- and he had been unable to reach someone at the branch.

Remember what I was saying about tentacles?

So we tore into town and burst into the bank with fury before us and all hell at our backs (<3 is magnificent when enraged) and demanded to speak to someone in charge (our normal policy of being nice to the poor saps at the first point of contact had, to our shame, gone out of the window). A manager-type woman came to see us and assured us that she had just spoken with head office to authorise the payment and, yes, she would be happy to phone our solicitor to inform him of this.

Shortly thereafter, we had another call from the solicitor to confirm that the mortgage was indeed about to be drawn down, but it would be a few hours before this would be complete. As this would probably delay the completion of the house purchase until the following week, he told us that his firm would pay for the house and reimburse itself from the mortgage funds later in the day.

So, thanks to a solicitor who acted above and beyond the call of duty (and who we will happily recommend to anyone buying a house in the area) and despite shoddy service from the bank (who I doubt we will be buying further "financial services" from), we are now home owners. And thanks to the efforts of many friends over the last couple of weeks, we have decorated a couple of rooms and moved almost all our worldly belongings in.

A brief epilogue:

A couple of days ago we received another letter from the bank requesting a freshly completed direct debit mandate.