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ADVOCATES WORKING WITH families in mortgage distress have said results from the first two years of the government’s arrears assistance scheme indicate it is not working.
The Abhaile scheme works with borrowers to deliver insolvency arrangements, alternative repayment plans, or other arrangements such as debt-for-equity deals or mortgage-to-rent.
As of July 2018, over 30% of the 11,695 borrowers who engaged with Abhaile for financial advice during the first two years of the scheme either “have a solution in place or on trial, or will have within one year of taking up advice”.
David Hall, CEO of the Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation accused the government of trying to put a positive spin on the figures when the reality is that the scheme “has not worked for 70% of those who engaged”.
“The figure of the 11,000 who engaged blows the bank-lovers and wafflers out of the water with their comments about people who are not willing to engage. This shows a large number of people – desperate people – did engage,” he said.
“But just because they engaged doesn’t mean they got a solution or that they will get one.
The majority of people coming forward through Abhaile don’t have any money, they can’t afford a restructure. What are they going to do with the 70% of people that the scheme can’t help? In any other country, with that level of engagement the government would be sitting down to find out what worked and what didn’t and why can they only help 30%.
Hall said the government should publish more complete data to show how many of these arrangements will keep people in their homes in the longterm.
David Hall / TwitterI feel that all participants involved in the Abhaile scheme should be brought before the public’s accounts committee and I am writing to the committee to request same today. Abhaile, The Insolvency Service , Mabs and Personal Insolvency Practitioners. We need the truth not spin
— David Hall (@davidhall75) January 28, 2019
When it comes to borrowers who have engaged but do not have a solution in place, 53% are still in their homes. Just 16% of borrowers who received advice initially are no longer engaging with the scheme.
Possession proceedings
The main function of the scheme is to provide vouchers to distressed borrowers for a consultation with a financial adviser, personal insolvency practitioner (Pip) or a solicitor.
Abhaile does not provide in-court legal representation, though duty solicitors are available at possession proceedings to speak beforehand with borrowers. They can not, however, speak for the borrower in front of the registrar or judge which means the debtor still has to represent themselves against a lender with a full legal team.
Today the Community Action Network (Can) said the system where people can avail of at most two consultations with a solicitor is “futile against the legal strength of banks and lending institutions”.
“Put simply, Abhaile is not working for people who are trying to hold onto their family homes,” said Cecilia Forrestal of CAN.
It may be well meaning, but by its own admission, its failing 70% of people who turn to it. In reality, Abhaile is largely a tick-boxing exercise – something that government can say it’s doing for people, when in fact, its support can only be minimal and largely ineffective against the legal representation and persistence of banks.
Personal insolvency
One area that the government hailed as a success today is the personal insolvency process, with 95% of arrangements negotiated under the scheme keeping borrowers in their homes.
Abhaile provides for financial advice and negotiation assistance from a personal insolvency practitioner (Pip) and legal aid for a court review if a creditor has refused a reasonable proposal.
In 64% of court review cases legally aided by Abhaile during its second year, the court decided to impose the personal insolvency arrangement proposed by the borrower, which had been rejected by the creditors.
In one case shared in the report today, a separated parent was no longer receiving contributions to the mortgage repayments from their former partner.
The borrower availed of a free consultation with a Pip who proposed a personal insolvency arrangement (PIA) to her creditor.
The requisite proportion of her creditors did not support the arrangement so the Pip applied for a court review on her behalf. A review involves the court evaluating the fairness of the proposal to all.
In this case the court approved the arrangement which resulted in a write down of over €80,000 on the borrower’s mortgage arrears and her other debts were dealt with under the arrangement. The borrower and her children were able to stay in their home.
The reports today also state that 86% of the solutions achieved by dedicated mortgage arrears advisers under the scheme enable borrowers to remain in their homes.
Speaking today as he launched reports, Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan said it is “now delivering real, successful solutions for borrowers struggling to pay their mortgage arrears”.
“I am particularly pleased to see that Abhaile is delivering results even for borrowers in the more challenging levels of arrears, who are those most at risk.
“Abhaile is undoubtedly making an important contribution to the drop in arrears for this worst-affected category and is helping those who fell into arrears due to loss of earnings, illness or family separation.”
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I’m so sick and tired of all these scams going around.
One of those scam messages came into the message part of one of my bookings, it was under legitimate correspondence from the hotel. I sent an email to booking.com to ask them to warn others etc. and to see if they would have it removed. I haven’t heard anything back from them
@Caroline ORiordan: looks like an inside job! How else would they know both booker and hotel info!
@Sinead D: Probably from a low level employee at the hotel.
@Sinead D: Absolutely, very suss, they had all the details correct, even addressed me by my name.
Happened to my other half, it had all her details, the reference, and the dates she’d booked the hotel. The only thing that was off was the price she’d paid, and that was only off by about €20. The only reason we knew it was a scam was because it went into her junk folder.
Contacted the hotel who confirmed it wasn’t them and contacted booking.com to complain because the level of detail they had meant there had to be a data breach. Their response was pretty much oh it was one of our partners (basically blaming the hotel). Our hotel was in a different country to the one in this story so can’t even say it was the same hotel, clearly some leak on booking.coms side!
@Abi Dennis: Booking.com is now too big for its Boots! Cracks are starting to show
Nothing is safe anymore online.
@Emer Daly: It never was@
@Emer Daly: literally nothing?
This happened to me but luckily I doubted it since it was a Russian address. But how did they send the mail in the app?
@Davy Smith: Booking.com seriously compromised
@Davy Smith: They didn’t. If you were to receive a letter in the post with a printed envelope bearing the White House logo and containing a letter with a fancy White House letterhead apparently signed by Biden would you believe it?
What if the postmark showed it was posted in Cork?
Anyone with a laser printer and some knowledge could send such a letter.
Likewise anyone with a computer and some knowledge can send an email purporting to be from anyone they choose. It’s as simple as typing
From: president@whitehouse.gov
In the right place and knowing how to send an email directly through a relay. I’ve done exactly that as a joke before now, I was of course careful to make it an obvious joke on the first of April.
@Steve O’Hara Smith.: The difference is that the scammers somehow knew that the targeted person had made a booking at that hotel. This information could only come from compromised systems at Booking.com or the hotel..
I also received 3 of this emails, one of the hotels in question sent me an email to alert me of the scam. Nothing from booking.com and when I queried it with them and said id received 3 different emails on future bookings they said they’d get back to me, needless to say, I’m still waiting.
Why should booking.com pay Lee for being slow and making an inept decision clicking on a link that’s clearly a fake site link. I would expect the scam is the hotel staff itself either selling the data to scammers or doing the scamming themselves and nothing to do with the booking.com platform. I would avoid the hotel itself.
@Dave Cummins: it wasn’t just some random email, according to the article it came via the booking.com app, hence booking.com may hold a proportion of responsibility if their app wasn’t secured sufficiently
@Dave Cummins: Wise after the event..surely
It almost certainly did not come from booking.com and certainly not from their app – nothing comes from the app. Faking a from address is very easy for anyone who knows how email works, although these days you have to find an entry point that won’t reject the spoof and is trusted by others, but there are plenty of them.
The only way to check is to view the raw source of the email, or at least all headers, and examine the chain of “Received by” headers identifying the mail transfer agents it has been through, they cannot all be spoofed. Then you have to know what the legitimate chain looks like.
Same happened to a friend three weeks ago also hotel in Milan. Still awaiting a response from booking.com
It’s not from booking.com it’s from booking.complete
@Leonski: Not even that booking.complete(some digits).online.
I can’t see the digits while replying.
Look at the url and it’s a scam. Silly lad.
@B6Tr3OgE: ah come on some ppl wouldn’t know that.
@Emer Daly: How could they not it’s right there in front of them.
@Emer Daly: they’re the ones that get scammed then aren’t they? If Lee is out there he should get in touch with me. I’ve a bridge to sell him!
People in Gaza have no water, food and medication. People from Ukraine are now picking and choosing which country gives better benefits to go to, hardly a behaviour of someone who is surviving and fleeing war. Some people are more important than others. Americans conveniently forgot about Afghanistan , they are forgetting Palestinians now too. Ukrainians are only supported because of the power battle with Russia. No such thing as all human beings equal and worthy of having basic needs covered
Fed up of all the scams.
Booking.com owe the customer nothing, if he’s going to get anything back it’ll be through the bank.
The link is fairly obviously fake. Cancelled is spelt wrong. There is so much information out there to help people prevent been scammed, I genuinely don’t get how people get screwed over by something like this which is far from the best attempt I’ve seen
There is an app called Scamadviser I recommend you all look at it. Possibly one of the best tools for checking scam sites.. while they look OK thus helps big time..
Claiic spelling error should have alerted the person,, “canceled”
@Sinead D: Hew know right goud Ingrish!?
The scammers are thinking of new scams every day.
@Emer Daly: yes but that’s an old and very obvious scam – why would they need new scams when there are still people who will fall for that one?
Should’ve know better. Clear scam link to be fair..
If this happens to anyone they are protected under the Payment Services Directive 2. Get in touch with your bank and ask to raise a chargeback. It will take a week or two but you will get your money back.
To process a debit/credit card payment someone needs to get approved by a credit card processing company (Stripe/Braintree/PayPal) and this is their liability. The processer will either recover the funds or it is their loss that they will have to stomach.
In short your bank will do all the work. Just get in touch and ask to raise a chargeback.
@Keith Crowe: Booking.com took an additional €50 from my bank account without my permission and PTSB say they can do nothing?
@Rose Sheridan: call PTSB again (sounds like someone just said what they needed to say to get you off the phone). Ask for the visa/MasterCard department and say you want to raise a chargeback due to an unauthorized charge on your card. You are covered under PSD2.
You may be asked for some proof etc, in particular that you have tried to resolve it directly with the merchant.
As background I have worked for Braintree and PayPal (both card processors).
@Keith Crowe: Thanks Keith..good advice
Lee can’t expect a refund, if he was a victim of a fraudster. Checking the email address is the only way to ensure you are not being directed to a fake website. A web address with extra words or digits after the Company name, should raise suspicions.
@Patrick MC Dermott: Checking the email address tells you NOTHING. From addresses are trivially easy to spoof.
the last couple of reservations iv made through booking . com the owner has contacted me and we agreed to cancel the reservation pay cash on arrival at a slight price drop on my end
cut out the middle , was going to say man but ill probably get deleted, middle person.
@John Duggan: risky thing as you have no proof it will be there and vacant when you arrive?
@Rose Sheridan: yes I was thinking the same thing good luck with that approach – leaves him wide open to being scammed for full amount.
Booking.com has gone down hill a lot. They were very good but not anymore. Not even competitive
The biggest issue is the IT departments of a lot of companies are not willing to keep up to date on the latest ways to prevent scams. Also theres no real monitoring to see if state or private companies who hold peoples information are adhering to the latest security and prevention. Its not gonna stop these scammers but I think a fair portion of the issues with online scamming is companies being over confident or almost arrogant around how secure they are
Pay cash over counter…the way to book.
Booking.com is a terrible website. Surely someone can do better.
@John Doyle: You are free to try.
@John Doyle: exactly John! What dya think Paddy Cosgrave is out of a job?
Fob off by booking.com. if this was a phishing email then how did it know the person, hotel and date. Booking.com was hacked.
Setting any from address you like on an email is trivially easy, it’s nothing but a header field in the email. Doing this does not require compromising the account being spoofed only the knowledge to compose an SMTP message. Booking.com are almost certainly correct when they say that their site has not been compromised.
The from address in an email is not something that can be trusted to mean anything.
Likewise those scam emails claiming to have videos of you watching porn and ‘prove’ their access to your systems by appearing to come from your own email address are incredibly easy to generate and prove NOTHING.
The email came from booking.complete, a clever if obvious scam in hindsight.
It has got to the stage when we have to scrutinise every email for these kinds of variants.
@John Mulligan: it didn’t, it came from noreply @ booking. com and then brought him directly to the app with all the previous communications from the hotel.
There’s are tons of reddit threads on this happening to many many people and you can see from other commenters here too that assumed once they were in the app it would be secure and legit,it wasn’t and that’s not the fault of the customer in my opinion.
The link was not from booking.com it was from booking.complete4685.online which is a completely different website. Nothing to do with booking.com or their employees.
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