Right ok ive just signed up to noddle and a couple of things have shown up with the welcome account. According to welcome my starting balance on 30/06/03 was £7124 with monthly payments of £170, despite me definately not paying since May 2007 at the latest they have me as upto date up until December 2007- at £170 a month since June 2003 that would mean i had paid £9180 back, yet according to the credit report i still owed £4155! Anyway the account now says settled with a £0 balance and Lowell have not entered anything. I should be getting my Experian report next week so i'll see if thats different. Also the address for the welcome account was wrong, not sure if that matters or not.

I get letters from time to time from 1st credit for an old bank account i had well over 10 years ago chasing me for an amount which was all charges, i assume Lowell are similar to 1st credit so i shall file all their letters in exactly the same place!

OK thats great thanks i'll get onto that and let you know when they get back to me, i'm also getting an up to date credit report to see if Lowell have entered anything.

Hi thanks for the quick reply, i'm not entirely sure when the last payment was made, it definately was no later than May 2007, would i be best contacting Welcome to find out?

Hi everyone first of all i have tried to look through the welcome finance posts but cant find exactly what i'm looking for. I had a loan with welcome many years back (2003) and ive not paid anything since 2007 when i lost my job. Up until then i had paid over £7500 for an initial £5000 loan and i last spoke to them on the phone in 2009 when they said i still owed over £4000. I recently checked my credit report with experian and welcome have entered a 6 evry month for over 5 years (no default entered) up until last month, it now says balance £0 and above it says DEBT ASSIGNED TO CAIS MEMBER. I have now started receiving letters from Lowell Portfolio asking for the £4000. So i need to know firstly if i can do anything about Welcome not defaulting my account thus making it almost SB and secondly can Lowell now start entering things on my credit report. Any advice would be great thanks.

I have to say from my experience the people at the enforcement office in Port Talbot are an absolute joke. They are far too trigger happy when it comes to passing your account to the bailiff and despite both them and the courts insisting that distress warrants cannot be recalled this clearly is not true. It really annoyed me that they wasted time and money pursuing me for what they believed to be £10 - £15 arrears! Nearly as much as the fact private bailiff companies can get away with charging huge fees for simply posting a letter or knocking on your door- why is this allowed to happen??

Ok i went to the court today and thankfully, after a lot of talking, the court has agreed to cancel the distress warrant and allow me to carry on paying £5 a week. At first the fines officer insisted that neither she nor the magistrates had the power to cancel the warrant and that i would have to deal with Excel. I told her that the magistrate previously told me i would face a custodial sentence if i didnt stick to the payment arrangement and after speaking to the clerk in the court they agreed that the warrant shouldnt have been issued. Just shows that you shouldnt just accept the first thing they say and if you keep pushing you can get the right result. I hope this is helpful to anyone else in a similar situation.

Just to add the same magistrate who mentioned the prison sentence also suggested i "go without food" to pay off my fines, thats the kind of people we're dealing with!

Hi i received the court letter yesterday stating a distress warrant had been issued, it was issued on 5th November- i caught up my £10 arrears on 6th November. The original agreement to pay £5 a week was made in february and i have paid every week without fail up until a few weeks back when my partner went in to hospital. In february the magistrate mentioned a 23 day prison sentence if i didnt stick to the arrangement so i would have expected to be summoned back to court rather than have a distress warrant issued.

If i can't get anywhere at the courts, rather than the bailiff breaking in and taking the few things of value and still having hundreds of pounds to pay, if i no longer lived with my partner would the bailiff then have to leave her alone? That is my only concern right now, i don't want her and our 2 small children to have the distress of bailiffs bashing down the door and taking the few things that she owns.

Ok quick update went to the court today and the usher told me there will be a fines officer there on thursday and that i should ask him to be put before the court again to explain my case, hopefully this will get it out of the hands of Excel if he's right.

Ok thanks for the replies, i was looking to speed up the process of having my case sent back to the courts if the bailiff sees i have nothing of real value rather than spend the next 6 months worrying when theres a knock at the door. I guess all my hopes rest on the court office tomorrow, i'll let you know if i get anywhere with them.

Does a bailiff collecting unpaid fines need to make a levy? I was under the impression they had the power to force entry and take goods if i refused them entry, of course i wouldnt refuse entry if my partner had something in writing declaring that all goods belong to her.

Regarding Excel and the distress warrant, there is'nt much in our house of any value and anything we do own belongs to my partner including the car, although she would struggle to prove this due to no longer having receipts. Could she file a statutory declaration to prove ownership of the goods? I have seen a form N245 mentioned on another thread would this work for us?

Thanks i'll go in the morning and hopefully get my case back in the hands of the courts so i can carry on paying. I'll keep you posted once i know more.