Bendigo Adelaide Bank
Queja 310566 Detalles

Fairness or Unconscionable act of duplicity? @bendigobank sold our property out from under us. Need justice. #ausbiz http://goo.gl/eS1zcX

My wife and I were longstanding customers of the Bendigo Bank, having borrowed from them in 2002 to buy a property in Ringwood, Victoria.
Our relationship with Bendigo continued without incident until our original business manager left and after a period with no manager, we eventually met our new manager who stepped in and renewed our faith in Bendigo. After becoming familiar with our business and various facilities he proposed that we move all of our loan facilities to Bendigo, which given our great relationship to date we thought would be a good move. Together with our new and proactive manager we worked towards this restructure in a most positive fashion, even extending our overdraft with Bendigo’s consent to commence the subdivision of our family home. Then all of a sudden our facilities were moved to head office and our new manager was no longer allowed to work with us.
In August 2012 our facilities expired and Bendigo advised that they would not be renewing them, even though they had undertaken to do so over the previous 5 years. We were required to refinance right in the middle of a Market Rental Review which was required under the Lease and regulated by the Small Business Commissioner. Every effort we made to refinance was met with a similar response; ‘Until the Rental Review is Determined, a valuation cannot be done’. Bendigo’s response was that it did not believe that to be the case and in any event it was not their problem.
With no notice or warning, the Bendigo took control of our property on 23 October 2012, by appointing two (2) liquidators as “Controllers”.
Bendigo claim to have served a “Notice of Default” seven (7) days before, which we never received.
Bendigo’s Notice – Fairness or Unconscionable Act of Duplicity/Bastardry?
1. Our mortgage required Bendigo to notify us of a default before resorting to taking possession of our property.
2. In a reprehensible display of unfairness, Bendigo “gave” its “Default Notice” by apparently sliding it under the locked door of the tenant’s restaurant, knowing full well that we would not receive it. Bendigo gave the default notice to a third party, who they knew was in the middle of a Rental dispute with us.
3. Bendigo claim that they gave us proper notice and refuse to accept the unfairness and injustice of what has occurred.
4. Bendigo hide behind an unfair, absurd document, which they say allows it to give Notices to the customer’s address shown in the mortgage, lodged at the Land Registry. The Bendigo argue that this is fair notice to its customers, despite:
a. Knowing that its customer had left the mortgage address five years earlier;
b. Knowing that a third and unrelated party would receive the notice, not their customer;
c. Never telling us that we can, and should, amend our address in the mortgage by applying to the Land Registry;
d. Us having notified Bendigo of our new addresses in writing years earlier and having done so, strictly complied with Bendigo’s change of address procedures included in its Terms & Conditions.
Banking Code of Practice
5. Bendigo proudly advertises their voluntary agreement to comply with the Code of Banking Practice.
6. To appreciate our distress, appreciate that Bendigo agreed to certain commitments under the Code, including:



7. Is it Ethical, Fair and Reasonable:
a. for Bendigo to have a mandatory change of address procedure its customers must follow, which procedure says absolutely nothing about the customer being required to formally change the mortgage address kept at the Land Register;
b. for the customer to give Bendigo its new address, 100% in accordance with Bendigo’s procedure;
c. for Bendigo to accept the customer’s new address, send hundreds of letters and statements etc to that new address for over five years and have visited us at that new address on numerous occasion;
d. for the most important notice Bendigo will ever give its customer to then be deliberately left at the customer’s old address shown in the mortgage;
e. for Bendigo not to send/leave that critical notice at one of at least three (3) other addresses where we the customer expressly asked for correspondence to be sent.
Consequences.
8. Bendigo held an auction and sold our property on 31 October 2013 for an amount $80,000.00 under the last highest bid. This is further complicated by cross guarantees and securities against our family home.
9. Earlier last year, the NAB agreed to give us the finance to pay out Bendigo. The only thing stopping the NAB doing so was that Bendigo’s “Controllers” are recorded on our credit file as “External Administrators”, which prevents the NAB from going unconditional. More recently Westpac revisited our application and were hamstrung by the same issue. In short, any chance we had of refinancing the Bendigo debt vanished when Bendigo appointed the Controllers, seven (7) days after leaving the Default Notice at the one place where they knew we would not get it.
10. Bendigo was never at risk of not receiving its money, as there was always a big buffer of equity in the property with an LVR of around 64% and ample income to satisfy the loan. Our entire loan which was originally at 5.71% interest was then dropped into an overdraft and charged at 14.16% with none of the $115,000.00 Rent paid having been credited to the facility. With all of the interest, penalties, Costs and Controller’s fees imposed since October 2012 totalling over $600,000.00 we ended up with an LVR of over 100%.
11. Both the NAB and Westpac had agreed to refinance on completion of the Rental Review, which review was to have been completed by December 2012. Bendigo, through their Solicitors and Controllers influenced and deliberately delayed that independent review until the 8th March 2013, all the while conducting secret discussions with the tenants to restructure the Lease and negotiate for them to purchase the property. If that wasn’t bad enough, when our solicitors and the NAB (through their representatives) made repeated requests for the Bendigo to lift the controllers for long enough for them to step in and refinance the full amount, the Bendigo responded that there was no requirement for them to do so and that they would therefore not do so. This meant that we were frozen out from being able to refinance. Based on earlier unconditional offers to purchase we have lost in excess of $1.4m and an annual income of $115,000.00.