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Suffolk Building Society, formerly Ipswich Building Society: Mortgages reviews

Name: Mortgages
Rating: 4.67 (94 reviews)

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4.74

Based on 94 reviews, last reviewed 21st Jan 2025

No new 5 star reviews

in the past 90 days

100% decrease in 1 star reviews

in the past 90 days

88%

Latest highest rating:

5

Suffolk Building Society - Simply.the Best I.was.informed that.my current product was nearing completion. I subsequently spoke to.a mortgage specialist adviser (Maria) who was exceedingly helpf... Read more Reviewed on: 21st January 2025

Latest lowest rating:

1

Beware false promises from this lender! We were pre-approved for a loan, which was a 35% loan to value purchase. With our large down payment and small loan we felt comfortable making an offe... Read more Reviewed on: 12th August 2024

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About this product

Buying a home is an exciting time in anyone’s life, but finding the right mortgage product can be daunting. We collect Suffolk Building Society mortgage reviews to help you make an informed decision when choosing a mortgage lender.

Suffolk Building Society is an independent mutual building society, offering a range of mortgage products. Always be confident with the terms, conditions and interest rates of a product. Consult the lender or an independent advisor if you need help understanding your options.

If you’re considering a mortgage with Suffolk Building Society, check out the reviews on Smart Money People. Read genuine experiences to gain valuable insight into the lender. Find out which mortgage products customers have taken out and how satisfied they have been throughout the term. Learn more about Suffolk Building Society’s customer service and the benefits you can receive as a member. All of this and more can be found in our Suffolk Building Society mortgage reviews.

Did Suffolk Building Society help you purchase your dream home? Share your experience with others by writing an honest Suffolk Building Society mortgage review. Tell us about the application process: did the Society support you throughout it? Did you find the application easy to understand? Has the Society kept you up to date with any important mortgage news or changes? Would you recommend Suffolk Building Society to family and friends? Write a review today. Together, we can help people like you make better financial decisions.

Suffolk Building Society, formerly Ipswich Building Society Mortgages reviews (94)

Review of the Suffolk Building Society, formerly Ipswich Building Society, Mortgages:

Beware false promises from this lender!

We were pre-approved for a loan, which was a 35% loan to value purchase. With our large down payment and small loan we felt comfortable making an offer on a home we liked and expected a fairly simple closing process. Then we were told the parameters of our loan had changed despite already being pre-approved. We agreed to the change, though it put a bit of strain on us. Now, we believed we could proceed, but after foot dragging by the lender, once again they changed the terms, and once again we reluctantly found a way to make it work. And then, after all our capitulations, we found out that our loan was denied on a technicality we had never been made aware of. So we have a contract with no lending secured after weeks thinking that approval was already somewhat assured. We feel deceived and cheated out of precious time which might result in us losing our contract on our purchase and out the fees we incurred from this lender and our solicitors. Reviewed on: 12th August 2024

Reply from Suffolk Building Society, formerly Ipswich Building Society Hi Valerie, we are sorry that our services have not met your expectations. Please can you get in touch with us on [email protected] or 0330 123 0723 so we can discuss the matter further with you. Response date: 19th August 2024

Fantastic service

A fantastic service where I can speak to a real knowledgeable person and can answer my queries in real time. Brilliant. Reviewed on: 17th January 2022

Reply from Suffolk Building Society, formerly Ipswich Building Society Thank you so much for taking the time to leave us a review. We're really delighted to hear such positive feedback about our service. Response date: 21st January 2022

Excellent personal service and rapid response

I phoned expecting to wait for ages to get an answer. Carly responded promptly and passed me on to the Admin Department. The information I needed was sent to me almost immediately and I am now able to resolve a pressing financial issue. Reviewed on: 30th November 2021

Very antiquated

The lender has some niche areas in terms of underwriting but their overall processes are very backward compare to the rest of the mortgage market. Ideally they will look beyond their own world and see what others are doing to help clients. Reviewed on: 19th November 2021

Reply from Suffolk Building Society, formerly Ipswich Building Society Thank you for taking the time to bring your concerns to our attention, I apologise that our services have not met your expectations and would be happy to discuss your comments in more detail if you would like to contact us directly. As part of our recent rebrand to Suffolk Building Society we have begun reviewing our existing processes and internal systems. We will take your feedback into consideration during this process, and anticipate the upcoming changes will provide a much better customer experience and more streamlined process for all involved. Response date: 3rd December 2021

Customer care

Found staff-especially Mr. Paul Blaking - very helpful and patient in our dealings. Reviewed on: 28th September 2021

Ipswich-so easy to do business with

I needed money to purchase a dream motorhome. Rang Ipswich, thinking this is going to be difficult, but they agreed in principal very quickly. Money arrived on time and what’s more so much cheaper than a bank! Thank you Ipswich ! Reviewed on: 17th September 2021

Lack of customer service

Unable to provide accurate information or clear updates. Chose as local but shall stick with a bigger mortgage provider. Reviewed on: 11th September 2021

Reply from Suffolk Building Society, formerly Ipswich Building Society Thank you for providing us with your feedback and we are sorry our usual high standards fell short for your mortgage enquiry. We are currently experiencing a high volume of enquiries and appointments, which, sadly, have clearly impacted our ability to give you the service we strive for. Your feedback is incredibly useful as it helps us to monitor our service standards and, having fallen short of expectations, we will review this and act accordingly. Thank you once again. Response date: 14th September 2021

Avoid at all costs!!

reviews IBS As it says on the title, avoid IBS! Having had a mortgage with the society for close to 5 years, they have outrageously high early repayment charges( much higher than any other lender). Poor customer service, no customer loyalty. Archaic in lending- no opportunity to speak with someone at any senior level, if you request a call back with senior management they will forward messages on. Highly judgemental organisation that needs to move to the 21st century. So pleased to have left them and have always advised family and friends to AVOID! Reviewed on: 16th August 2021

Reply from Suffolk Building Society, formerly Ipswich Building Society Thank you for your review of our mortgages. We are sorry to read you have been unhappy with our service and in particular our Early Repayment Charge. All of the fees and charges relating to our mortgages are displayed upfront and listed in the individual ESIS document, so we are sorry that you feel unhappy with those charged on redemption of your mortgage. In relation to your comment about being unable to speak with a member of our senior management team we apologise for not being able to meet this request – we will take this feedback on board and are committed to improving service standards for our members. Once again thank you for your feedback and we apologise we did not meet your expectations. Response date: 24th August 2021

Helpful, professional and a good mortgage deal

It is very easy to contact Ipswich Building society and to speak to an advisor. I received good advice and I am very happy with my mortgage. Everything was set up with the minimum of fuss. Reviewed on: 15th July 2021

Got there in the end

Overall our experience wasn't a possitive one. From a Feb 2021 engagement we ended up with a July 2021 completion. Whilst I was always able to contact the IBS team, I had to work hard to chase these communications/milestones and never felt an urgency to IBS driving these outcomes. Every time a response was made to IBS, it was subjected to a 10 working day turnaround time; this increased to 12 days towards the end of our processing. This heavily impacted the overall timetable significantly. As a self build mortgage, our engagement continues. We will draw down funds against our build milestones so this has to be an effective and timely process. Thus far, it hasn't. I find myself having to think 6 weeks ahead from the imperative date of stage funds reciept to work back factoring in IBS lead times and any additional lead time associated to instructing a revaluation of the property. This shouldn't be the norm; I've created a workaround. I understand very well the impact of remote working over the past 16 months. I understand how this can impact on day to day processes but I could not tell my Customers that their requests are sublect to a 2+ week delay. Are further resource is needed to meet your demand?. It cannot be purely attributed to the pandemic therefore perhaps internal procedures or a triage function is required to route work to the right teams at the right time. Reviewed on: 14th July 2021

Reply from Suffolk Building Society, formerly Ipswich Building Society Thank you for providing your feedback which is greatly appreciated and has been passed on to the relevant departments at the Society. I’m sorry that your application wasn’t processed efficiently and for the amount of time it has taken to get through to completion. We have recently received unprecedented application volumes due partly to the stamp duty deadline and unfortunately as a result, our usual service standards slipped below the level we aim to provide our customers with. The Society are committed to making improvements to ensure that this doesn’t happen again, as a result we have made investment within our underwriting department with further staff resource now in place and a significant IT system upgrade in the works. Thank you once again for your feedback and I wish you well with your self build project. Response date: 26th July 2021

Mortgage

You had to find a lot of paperwork, funny how we passed the credit check, but failed the ID check as we didn't have enough check points, like loans, debts, credit cards, HP's. And the time limit on the Mortgage was very tight to the move date, which was brought forward to accommodate the application expiry date. (Maybe we applied too early, but it was after we sold and the chain was complete). Reviewed on: 14th July 2021

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