Hi All I am in urgent need of advice as i need to remove my head from that all too comfortable sand and try to sort this out. In 2004 I took a loan from welcome finance. £1500 over a 2 year period. I paid back £40 a week for just over a year and was offered a £500 top up loan which i took. I then continued to pay £40 a week for almost a year never missing a payment.I then decided to buy a car with them, the finance working out at £8000 (for a 5 grand car) over 4 years, which along with my other loan i paid at just over 40 per week. So in total £80 a week. For the next 6 months i never missed or was late with a payment. That is until, i was unfortunate enough to be made redundant from my job. I had no payment protection on the car, but i did have it on the loan. I contacted welcome and expleined my situation and that i would not be able to pay anything for a period while i was seeking a new job, and also enquired about my p.p.i. I was advised that if i was only going to be out of work for a month or so, it was not worth claiming it. I considerd this, and decided ok, i will see how my job hunt goes for a while. 3 months later, i eventually a job i was happy with and contacted welcome asking to restart payments. I explained that i was just getting abck on my feet and could not offer any lump sum catch up payment but could however begin immeidiate weekly payments again. They didnt listen, and pressured me into agreeing to make a lump some payment which subsiquently i could not pay. I then called again, stating the same thing... i wanted to re-start weekly payments. Again, they didnt listen and tried to get me to make a large lump sum catch up payment. Again, i could not make the payment. Eventually, after going backwards and forward like this for some months, they send a collection agency round at 0230 in the morning to repo the car. I was not home that night, so they took the car, complete with my passport and other personal belongings which were in there. When i called to ask for my personal effects back they refused to send them and told me i would have to travel 100 miles to go and collect them. I lost the ability to cope with the situation and have had no contact with them for approx 2 years. I have now discovered that the 2 accounts stand at £5000 each and still show on my credit file as in the red with late payments( not defaulted) and have receved a letter staing that global debt recovery now owns the debt. But more interestingly, my credit file is showing 3 new accounts opened by welcome in the last month, all for a few hundred pounds over 6 months and a year, all payments up to date but i have no idea what they are!!! I am planning to contact them for full account staements but what would really be the best course of action to take with these guys. also is it illegal to open 3 new accounts in my name that i know nothing about. i dont think it is id theft as im sure they would not entertain the idea of somone with my name opening such accounts.

Hi Everyone As a newbie i thought i would begin by discussing my ongoing hell with the payday loan trap, what i plan to do about it, and with any luck get the opinion of others. After all, thats why we are all here i guess.Anyway, about 5 months ago, my salary at work went from being a weekly paid event, into a monthly paid one. This was fine, i thought i might find it better to be paid once a month, pay all my bills on payday, and then i know whats left is mine to do as i please.The only problem i could see was that i needed to get through the next 4 weeks on one weeks wage before the new monthly scheme kicked in. Enter my first payday loan. Great help for a couple of weeks, then i wished i had taken just a touch more as i was already running low and i still had 2 weeks to go until payday. Enter loan number 2!!When i eventually got to payday, i had to pay of the loans plus the interest which again left me a little worried about how i was gonna make it to payday again.5 months later, of taking out more and more loans just to keep paying the interest and rolling things over am now up to 7 diffent loans totalling 1.5x my monthly salary.I am very aware that this ridiculous situation is entirely my fault, and have realsised that just to pay the interest alone for all these loans would leave me short enough to need to try and take another one!!!I have decided that the only thing i can possibly do, is cancel the direct debits, report my debit card lost and get a new one. I will then be back in control of whats going out of my bank, and i can then contact each lender, and discuss setting up a payment plan.If anyone can add to this or give me a pointer that would be great.This trap is far to easy to fall into if you find yourself a little short one month and could potentially take a year or so to get back on track.