A false start

With most companies closed down now for the christmas break we go into standby mode in the office where we sit and wait for callouts - we rarely get any during this ten day period.

The slowdown started on Thursday, the phones hardly rang at all and Ned and Jon had caught up on the outstanding jobs before Wednesday so Thursday was a morning of sitting around watching TV - I told Jon not to come in on Friday unless we rang him, so yesterday morning Ned and I waited in the office until noon and took one call for an order that could be posted after xmas.

Just before noon and with me in the middle of checking my credit rating with Experian Ned waved goodbye and left for the holidays, just seconds after he'd left the office our most important customer, the one who provides us with 40% of our turnover rang with a breakdown in their Bishop Auckland store that they had actually rung in on Thursday - it was then that I realised that we'd sat there all morning and not checked the answerphone messages - there were eight of them.

The hiearchy of the office dictates that Jon gets all the bum jobs, then Ned, and I am there only as a last resort being as I'm supposed to do sales and not service - couldn't get Jon on his mobile, tried Ned within two minutes of him leaving the office and his mobile was switched off too - bas'tads the pair of them.

I had to go.

Its 50 miles each way to Bishop Auckland and the A1 on a holiday getaway day is not the friendliest of motorways, especially in the fog like yesterday - some of the driving that I saw yesterday defies belief and as usual the cliche of it being compulsory to be an arsehole if you drive a BMW lived up to its reality.

But it wasn't just the motorway that was busy, I drove around the store's car park for nearly 30 minutes before nabbed a parking space, did the job quickly, shopped for some cheap wine and beer and eventualy got home at 4.30pm, four hours after I had intended to knock off - I rang Ned to bollack him but he thought it was hilarious, however I will be taking Wednesday off now in compensation - and I haven't told him.
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Took a call on the mobile while I was doing the callout, it was my contact at NatWest Mortgages telling me that he had lodged an apeal with the underwriters to see why they had rejected my application to move my existing debt from the house to the new one that we intend to buy.

Bottom line is that I switched to this current mortgage just twelve months ago when NatWest had a very good fixed rate on offer (4.5%) and I still have 12 months to go on that fixed rate, which is now an even better offer with their NatWest standard rate at 7.1%.

We are moving down to cut costs and so do not need to borrow as much money and at the same time will be paying off a couple of personal and business loans and a credit card, in other words we will start int he new house completely debt free and with a much smaller mortgage -a financial planners dream situation.

When I spoke to the NatWest mortgage advisor he pointed out that if I took out a smaller loan with them then I would have a redemption penalty of approx £1300 to pay, but if I simply switched the whole of the mortgage to the new house then there would be no fees to pay and no redemption - and I'd complete the deal with a shitload of spare cash (about £30,000) which could be used to pay off a lot of the mortgage when the fixed rate deal finished in twelve months time.

Sounds like a great idea, so we went for it.

The NatWest underwriters have declined the application stating "poor credit score".

Experian are the people who handle credit scoring in the UK so I paid my £5 fee and got a 23 page report on my credit status, it lists every credit entry that I have made or obtained for at least fifteen years and summarises with a score out of a possible maximum 1000 - I score 979 and am rated as "Excellent" with the comment that 80% of the population of the Uk score less than me and that someone with such a credit score "should have no problem in obtaining extra credit or in repaying additional loans" - which is nice.

So basically my credit score seems to state that I am an idela candidate to borrow even more money than I already owe - I am asking NatWest to lend me less and the fuckwits will not do that, they seem to be suggesting that they want me to stay at the level of debt that I am at.

It gasp at their fuckwittery.

My NatWest advisor, who I genuinely believe is trying his best for me will ring me on Wednesday, if they still refuse then I have a mortgage deal standing by with the Nationwide - and a "fuck you" letter standing by for NatWest Mortgages together with a "fuck all of your services" series of letters for NatWest Bank, NatWest Insurance and NatWest Pensions - and a letter waiting for the banking ombudsman.

NatWest = Wankers, not Bankers.

This story will run and run, stay tuned.