Report Abuse

“strange,confusing,poor service (equity release)”

written by peony on 25/06/2016

My husband and I decided to apply to Saga for Equity Release. We have spent most of our savings updating our home and required a bit more money to complete the home improvements, and pay off a relatively small debt. We had calculated this would make us better off as we would have spare money to save up as well as paying off some or all of the interest of any equity release loan. Getting the home improvements done would make our lives easier now and we could enjoy our home with everything completed.

On contacting Saga, they made an appointment with a 'financial advisor'. This 'advisor' turned out to be a broker. The advisor spent the a chunk of the appointment firstly going through the key facts of their service, then secondly spent the rest of the appointment time going through details of our monthly expenditure and our income.

We have lived this far without any help with budgeting and we found it demeaning. The person then said we had plenty of money over each month to use for home improvements! We had calculated that our budget does not allow for saving up this amount of money, it would take a few years. We were puzzled, thinking we had made an error with our budget, but when we received their written report through the post found the person had added up our expenditure and income incorrectly.

At no time were we given any information about any products and we have just been left with no suggestions as to what to do next or what is the next stage. As we were not given information about particular products, we cannot apply for one! The person's 'advice' is to apply in two years to apply for the maximum money out of our home. There was no reason given for this and this money is double the amount we had stated we required.
We were very disappointed with Saga as it was such a poor service, if you can call it a service at all, not being given any information about any products. The whole thing has been a very strange experience. We have now contacted another firm who said they do not require details of income as equity release is based entirely on the value of your property.