Patented formula

The couple’s lawyer Jennie Vickers of Zeopard Law argues enableMe breaks various laws including the Fair Trading Act, by claiming in its fliers and website to have a patented formula, which it doesn’t have.

enableMe withdrew the claim of a patent from its website and other advertising material after being contacted by Consumer.

enableMe also told attendees at its seminars that its formula was developed “in collaboration with a staff member of the Mathematics Department of the University of Auckland”. But the university told Consumer the formula does not have its “imprimatur or endorsement”, and the the work was done in its staff member’s private capacity.

Repay your mortgage faster

When a Consumer researcher phoned enableMe’s free phone number, staff member “Abby” told us the company had an “eight-page calculus formula that reverse engineers what the banks do. It enables you to pay your mortgage much faster.”

Abby said that she had used the system and would pay off her mortgage in 6.5 years, instead of 30. We don’t know how large Abby’s mortgage is. But when we checked out the mortgage repayment calculator on sorted.org.nz we found it would mean increasing monthly payments on a modest $100,000 mortgage at 6.5% from $632.07 per month to $1575.32 – a huge leap for many people.

Doing this would save Abby $80,887 overall in interest payments. Consumer has been telling you how to do this for many years. It’s a good thing to do if you can – but you needn’t pay someone to tell you that. 

Standard advice

A standard internet-based mortgage calculator will show you these benefits even if the output doesn’t look as fancy as enableMe’s paperwork. Or you can ask bank staff or your broker to give you options for paying off your mortgage more quickly, such as increasing monthly payments and/or taking out a revolving credit loan.

Mortgage brokers, says Darren Pratley, chairman of the New Zealand Mortgage Brokers Association (NZMBA), will automatically give advice about reducing a mortgage term and the benefits that can bring.

enableMe stressed at a seminar attended by Consumer that it was not in the banks’ best interests to tell people how to save on their mortgages. But when we did a simple Google search we found pages on lenders’ websites telling customers exactly what to do. We say it is enableMe that doesn’t want customers to know that its formulas are nothing special.