George got in touch after asking his mortgage lender for a payment holiday, and noticed that the lender had spelt his name wrong in some of their correspondence to him.
What happened
George lost his job and couldn’t pay his mortgage. He asked his lender for help. The lender arranged a three-month payment holiday for George, and later altered his mortgage so he only needed to make payments of interest. George didn’t think this was enough and was worried he might not find a new job and wanted a payment holiday until he was working again.
George also pointed out that the lender had spelt his name wrong in some of its correspondence with him. This annoyed him as he thought it showed a lack of attention to his problems. The lender apologised and corrected its records.
What we said
We thought the lender had tried to help George while he looked for a new job, and we were satisfied that it had done enough to support George while he was experiencing some financial difficulty. So we didn’t recommend it needed to do more in this respect.
We acknowledged that there had been a small administrative error that was corrected quickly, and we understood that the overall situation would have been stressful for George. But as the impact of the mistake was minimal, corrected quickly and had no effect on the other support the lender had put in place for George, we thought an apology was enough. So we didn’t tell the lender to take any further action.