All seems to have gone pear shaped

Well done Mark,

U made it at last. Now sit back and enjoy .

Hi Mark

I'm glad to see that you are complaining. What justification has the manager given for not giving you any compensation?  As a general rule in Spain most complaint procedures are done at a local level and I'm surprised that the manager seems to be steam rollering you.  If you don't mind me asking what is the name of the company that we are referring to here.  At least we could name and shame them on here. 

If it was me I would ask the manger what is my next step if you are not going to redress my complaint, hopefully if the manager knows you are not letting the company in which he represents off he will probably then help you.

However Spain is similar to most countries with large companies thinking they can get away with anything they want.

Good Luck

All establishments have a complaints book. This is an official complaint form you fill in but I beleive it does have to be in spanish! Then take it to the local consumer office and it will get followed through.

Its quite a severe penalty if found guilty and by threateneing it you may find they prefer to settle out of court as it were!

Tha manager hasn't given us any justification, they just haven't bothered responding full stop whichI think is pretty poor, even by Spanish standards. The name of the company is GE, didn't really want to pan them before, but now they are fair game. I must confess that we had doubts at the outset about using tem as we had problems in the UK with GE failoing to comply to the Data Protection Act and we had to take them through the Information Commissioners office to get a result!! What have we let ourselves in for!!!!

I am not sure where the company office is, whether it is Barcelona or Madrid. Either way it is a long journey to travel to fill in a complaints book, especially in Spanish! I will keep hammering them for the time being as I have several contact names. If I have heard nothing by new year,I shall have to ask our solicitor the best way to proceed.

Mark

Thanks Rixxy, i'll give that a go.

Mark

I think I will wait to the new year as I received an email tonight. We had to pay the builders cancellation in the end and wait for proof the builder to paid it off, but they have refunded that money to us today, which is a a start:

I have been supervising your case at a distance in past few days through Jill, as I have been travelling on business.
 
I was sorry to hear the issues you had experienced, the main reason being the misunderstanding which Jill has already clarified below, originating the resulting delays, for which  I apologise.
 
As for the builders mortgage fee of 975€, I have requested a transfer be made to your account with this amount as soon as possible, hoping in this way to compensate on any inconveniences or delays. This transfer was issued this morning and we will provide you with the statement as soon as we have this.
 
Hoping to have calrified any pending items I take the opportunity to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year.

It seems though she thinks that by returning our money to us, that is the matter closed. I have spoken with our solicitor who has said that they should not be charging us any arrangement fee after the balls up they made of the whole thing.

Will have to see what the New Year brings.

Mark

Something that has not been mentioned in all this is that the only person who seems up for a mortage on this particular deal is the developer. Has the penny not dropped yet?

Since the Developer is on the hook here, the fact that they are prepared to give you a mortgage is no consolation to me. The fact that no one else will and the valuation is under question in teh first place would have given me the willies. No one else concerned, or have I got hold of the wrong end of the stick here?

I'd be sorely tempted to pull out if you can, and buy it or something better for half the price next year, it going to get soooo much worse. Rent and enjoy Spain in teh meantime, its not like your not spoilt for choice, there are millions of these things desperatly looking for a sucker, sorry buyer.

No, the completion is over and done with now. The valuation was the only issue, not that the builders were the only ones to give a mortgage. The mortgage is not provided by a normal bank, but an American finance house whose terms suited us. The valuation came in low as the builders would not provide information of local valuers and therefore one was "plucked" from obscurity.

I am not naive enough now to think that this was necessarily a bad thing, we have a smaller mortgage. Some of the people on this forum have had multiple valuations on the same property with varying results!! It is not an exact science in Spain as it is in the UK, so wild variances look to be common. Now we have bought and are out here, we can see that the prices are still in the right area of where we wanted to be, so are happy.

Mark

Thought I would resurrect the thread as the complaint is still ongoing. GE gave me an email address to send my complaint to. The address bounced!! I then was given another address which I requested read replies from. I received around 20 read replies, but not one answer to my question asking for a postal address!! Eventually the GE Money Compliance Manager answered with the details, he also gave a link here detailing the complaints procedure (if anyone can give me a Noddy translation that would be great. I tried Babelfish, but the translation is literal) and stating that I should receive a formal response within 60 days of receipt. I have since emailed this person again asking iwhat was happening with the complaint to be told tersely:

 "Your formal complaint was received  at the address you mentioned below on the 30th of January. If you have not received any feed back about the reception it is because you did not ask for it to your Post Service. We do not give any  acknowledge receipt  directly to the customer."

Great!! Let's keep up the good customer service then guys .

Anyway, he did say that I should expect a response no later than 30th March, which is rolling closer and also mentioned "we have a strong ombudsman  process", so my next question is. How do you contact the ombudsman? Or is that information in the document I can't translate very well?

Many thanks

Mark

I have had my reply from GE to my formal complaint which is basically "tough luck, take it further but we won't be doing anything". I believe the next step is to contact the ombudsman, but I have been given no information by GE how to do this, in fact they state I have the right to refer my complaint to the Bank of Spai, but again, no address supplied.

On another note, some 3 months after completion, Key Mare have failed to redeem the builders mortgage on the property which means that we now have a GE mortgage and the outstanding builders mortgage!! Let's hope an email to my solicitor can sort this what is becoming a very messy purchase out!!

Mark

Hi Mark,

How was this allowed to go through Notary with a builders mortgaged still attached amazes me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Generally ruling states that the mortgage must be cleared before you sign and the cerificate attached to the back of the deeds to prove it.

I have only had this happen once or at least they tried it,we waited for 5 hours in the notary for the bank manager to turn up and prove it was cleared,pain in the arse but a lot better than the problems it can cause after the fact.....

This is the annoying thing Georgia. Our solicitor refused to sign any purchase contract with the builders as the cancellation fee was included in it. As a result, we went to notary with just the provisional purchase contract (signed during the trip) and Key Mare were supposed to have the money with them to pay off the mortgage and also the €975 cancellation fee. The building society have also given me a copy of the Modelo N00 and Modelo 600, plus a copy of the Registrado de la Propiedad de Vera. I can see that BBVA are Not Numero 1, but also GE are Nota Numero 1.

Very anoying this has become apparent at the weekend . I thought our solicitor had been on the ball, but obviously something slipped during the process.

Mark

Hi Mark,

Ummmmmmmm,it seems that the solicitor may have been going for an easy life as its always the first thing that should be addressed.

Good luck with getting it rectified.

Hi Mark

That happened to us. Our solicitor fought hard and long with the Halifax and they would not budge. There was nothing we could do but we were assured by the Halifax that this was normal and that we would be reimbursed for cancellation of builders mortgage within 3 months. I asked them and our solicitor to draw up a clause in the contract to guarantee that this would be paid but they refused. Our solicitor was going crazy!!!! We DID get reimbursed after 2 months.

Well, I can sigh with a little relief. Our solicitor has confirmed to us that the builders mortgage was settled at the notary and is stated in the deeds. what he has said though is that Key Mare may not have presented to the land registry yet, for whatever reason.

Personally I think the bank are trying to justify not compensating us in any way for their crap service throughout by saying they have the cancellation fee outstanding after all this time, therefore it was gracious of them to let us have it repaid early!

Mark

As if by magic . An email appears in my inbox from the solicitor with a copy of the Informacion Registral for our property. It shows no builders mortgage . I am now even more of the opinion that GE have tried to mislead my Wife and I over the cancellation fee. All more ammunition for the complaint to the Bank of Spain.

Mark