Banks have included clauses (which, although legal, were not sufficiently explained to consumers; there was a lack of information and transparency . In addition, they were imposed by the bank, and the consumer was not given the option to choose. From these abusive practices, an avalanche of lawsuits began before the Courts to claim for overpayments and the elimination of these abusive clauses in mortgages.
Article 82 of the General Law for the Defense of Consumers and Users defines malaysian phone numbers abusive clauses as those stipulations that have not been negotiated individually and all those practices that are not expressly consented to, go against good faith and cause an imbalance between the parties in terms of rights and obligations.
Floor and ceiling clause
These are the most controversial and well-known. There has been an avalanche of lawsuits to claim the amounts unduly paid to the point that Courts have had to be specialised to deal exclusively with these cases. These clauses provide that even if the interest rate is above a certain threshold (ceiling) or below (floor), the consumer will continue to pay minimum interest equivalent to that threshold and in the case of floor clauses a lower rate will not be applied.
Consumers signed mortgages with a variable interest rate, but without knowing it, a fixed interest rate was applied to them. In 2013, the Supreme Court considered them abusive but only with retroactive effect until the date on which the sentence was issued. The Court of Justice of the European Union in December 2016 issued a sentence where it recognized the retroactivity of the floor clauses from the moment of signing the deed. This is how we saw it in the post « the retroactivity of the floor clauses ».
Mortgage expenses
Following the floor clauses, numerous claims for mortgage expenses began to arrive at the Courts, since mortgage loans contained clauses that obliged the consumer to pay the costs of formalising the mortgage.
Article 89 of the General Law for the Protection of Consumers and Users also defines as abusive clauses those that make the consumer bear the costs derived from the preparation of the qualification that by its nature corresponds to the entrepreneur. Also those that impose the payment of taxes in which the passive subject is the entrepreneur.