As a mortgage broker dealing entirely with people with problems in obtaining a mortgage (no broker fee's charged by the way)I have been very happy to receive enquiries from readers of this web site who have used your email link. My method of dealing with the enquiries has been to send them details of how to get to my web site which contains a web enquiry form among other things. Just recently (the last few days) the enquiry from your site has been in the form that enquirers are asking what I need to know in order to provide a mortgage quote and saying that they don't want to fill in an enquiry form. I honestly can't see the difference in filling in an enquiry form compared to answering a lot of detailed questions sent out within a long email message. I'm quite happy to go along with it - but what is the point? By the way, I like your site (made a modest contribution to it myself some time ago and I see it is still there) - keep up the good work.

-- Dan O'Connell (mortgageman1@mortgageman.co.uk), August 16, 1999

Answers

Oh! Thanks for letting me know who you are and for querying the question email. I've done it because a reader forwarded me some of the replies from a number of brokers and I was concerned by the responses. Two things concerned me: one was the rudeness of some of the replies, the other was that it costs customers more to fill in web forms than it does to answer email questions, which they can do off-line. Part of the reasononing behind the service is to save readers the cost of having to sit on the phone while they fill out multiple web forms for different brokers.

I had considered the prospect that this would put brokers to more trouble but offset this with the thought that brokers could create a template set of questions that they could email to subsequent readers who use the service.

I'd be interested in your thoughts on this, the whole service is evolving based on what each party says. One day I will charge brokers for it too, as it is one of the ways in which I hope I can make the site self-sustaining and add more services. Some of the services I have planned are quite exciting and I plan to let borkers on the list know about them first.

I'm flattered that you like the site. I'm always open to comments about it. I also appreciated the copy you sent, as I'm sure do readers.

Lee

-- Lee (repossession@bigfoot.com), August 16, 1999.