Dispute against Penalty Charges & Witholding Payments

[echowitch]

Yesterday I rang Welcome Car Finance's local branch and told them I was placing the account in Dispute and was with-holding payments until I had received a full Statement of Account showing the original amount, all payments made, and charges (i.e. Penalty Charges which Im disputing) and any PPI and Interest. I've told them it is my belief that the account has actually been paid off and all I am paying now is the Penalty Charges (telephone, letter, failed card payments, etc) which are illegal charges.

 

Just had a phonecall from the usual member of Welcome staff who told me I that I still have to make payments as a Solicitor would advise me. She kept banging on about this until I told her I had two friends who were Solicitors which shut her up. (Also me asking her three times "are you going to let me finish talking?" eventually worked.)

 

I've sent a letter to their Customer Relationship Centre in Hessle (last letter I sent there never got a response and I doubt this formal notification of dispute will either.)

 

Just wanting to know if I should remain withholding payments until the dispute is settled or not ?? I've told them I expect the Statement of Account to be sent to me within a week and once I've received it I will review it and action it within 48 hours, which gives me time to go over it and seek any further advice I need.

 

Of course that is IF they send me the Statement of Account. The last time I asked for it I had to ask four times before they finally sent it !!!

 

Oh and I nearly laughed when they told me that they were allowed to add charges as its in their Terms and Conditions lol

[echowitch]

Additional Note:

 

I renegotiated the agreement to make lower payments as I found I was having problems keeping up to date with them. This was several years ago. Last Statement of Account I got showed that they slapped even more interest on for the new agreement. It was "sold" to me on the basis that they were reorganising the remaining debt over a longer period for a lower amount to make it easier for me. What they basically did (I found out later) was made the renegotiated amount in to a new loan with all the interest slapped on top. Not what I wanted or was led to believe !!!

 

Anyway I can challenge that ??

[42man]

Do you know how much potentially they owe you in penalty charges and possibly PPI ?

[echowitch]

The last Statement of Account I got from them claimed that I still owed about £2500 although at the time I said that I was sure that I only had a couple (like 3) more payments to make. That was end of last year. I keep having them ring me needlessly, and then sending me letters telling me they have charged me for the phonecalls and charged me for the letter telling me about the charges for the phonecall.

[echowitch]

Crikey that was quick. The Statement of Account arrived today. Im going to go through it and see what we have and post up later on.

[echowitch]

Quick figures (Im still trying to find the documentation for the previous loan to work out how much interest was added on.)

 

30/12/2003 Modified Disbursement £11365.80

30/06/2009 Current Balance £2288.73

 

And the fee's added on that the Statement shows as totals

Fee Assessment's (no idea what this is) £2.81

Telephone Call Fee's £200

Letter Fee's £100

Capitalisation £405 (anyone care to clear up for me what this is ?)

Debit Card Declined Fee's £55 (their equipment keeps rejecting perfectly good cards the first couple of times)

Ad Hoc Fee's £140 (no explanation as to what these are)

Outside Call Fee's £50 (charged at £25 a time and no explanation)

[The wife]

capitalisation is interest.

 

I would be interested to know what the ad hoc fees are about, I have seen that loads and have yet to find out the reason of them.

 

the definition of ad hoc:A phrase describing something created especially for a particular occasion

 

so what is the occassion? I think these need to be looked into further, surely a charge without proper definition is not legal????

[The wife]

was checking out the OFT website and maybe this isn't relevant but I think to the ad hoc fees it might be especially when there is no resonable explaination for what the fee is:

d. applying unreasonable charges, for example, charges not based on actual

and necessary costs

[echowitch]

I asked Welcome staff before what the Ad Hoc fee's were and none of them knew. Not local branch staff, nor Collections Department staff.

[The wife]

then surely they can't charge them...??? its just a case of we'll add a fee for no reason and the suckers will pay it!!!

[echowitch]

Yep pretty much. But isn't that what all these Penalty Charges anyway. Yet more ways for big corporations to screw the little guy knowing full well he or she won't know any better, and even if they do then they'll just scare them.

[echowitch]

I did some checking.....as they add interest on at the start of the loan to cover their costs, then Capitalisation is clearly interest on top of the Penalty Charges. In fact it event shows up on the Statement of Account after each Penalty Charge entry, thus making it also illegal, right ???

 

So deducting the penalty charges from the current balance.....

 

£2288.73 - £952.81 = £1335.92 remaining (I'll only have 7 more payments to make)

 

I am wondering though if I should look in to whether they mis-sold the loan to me. As the original loan (which I thought this was the original loan until I checked my credit file last year and discovered it was a second loan) was reorganised to lower the payments and pay it over a longer period as I couldn't make the original payments. I didn't realise that it was a brand new loan with more interest added on top, and certainly no one at Welcome told me anything about it being a new loan or interest being added on top. Anything I can do about that ???

[The wife]

echowitch, they seem to be in the habit of informing people of something and not being totally honest about it or the further ramifications involved.

 

maybe its just my logic but if a loan is re-written why wouldn't it keep the same account number when in effect all you are doing is changing the payment terms...or maybe there is some weird logic that i can't fathom on that...or its a legal thing.

 

I still think the ad hoc fee's need further investigation as to how ligitimate they really are...a fee without purpose that seems unreasonably high for its designated "lack" of purpose.

[echowitch]

I asked them a few days ago to send me copies of both agreements so I can look at them. This being my new account manager who has said she'll even waive the £1 charge (hah they tried to tell me its £10 yeah right). Incidentally my previous account manager who I last spoke to (i.e. had a blazing argument with on the phone) last week apparently is no longer there. No idea if she's been given the sack or as seems to be the case with incompetent staff at Welcome, promoted.

 

If she has been sacked because of her argument with me on the phone that would be the third person I've managed to get fired. (Two were from DCA's that I lodged formal complaints against the members of staff who were incredibly rude and offensive......I used to train Customer Service Agents so I have high standards for CS staff.)

[The wife]

i would love to know what you said/did to get them sacked and how you proved their offensive behaviour

[echowitch]

Easy, they were DCA's and I made a reasonable offer of payment and they tried to make me pay way more than I could afford. They got argumentative, demanding, and offensive (telling me I was lying, and they'd "get me" and similar comments.) I had their names anyway but as all the calls were recorded all I had to do was ring back, demand to speak to a Supervisor/Manager and lodge the complaint. In fact in both cases when speaking to the rude member of staff that would later be sacked I demanded that they pass me to their supervisor and they refused. One of them flatly refused for nearly 5 minutes and then hung up calling me a very rude word. Simple case of Gross Misconduct and they are out the door within the hour

[brassed-off-2]

I asked Welcome staff before what the Ad Hoc fee's were and none of them knew. Not local branch staff, nor Collections Department staff.

 

Has anyone actually asked the question of who applies the ad-hoc fees to the account, because surely they aren't just system generated will-nilly...or are they?...from going through my statements i think the odd £5.00 ad-hoc fee is added when a card payment is made, so surely the staff member has generated it...

i used to work for a tour operator and before the systems were upgraded we used to have to manually apply the credit card charge manually etc..

 

b-o-2

[echowitch]

Still no copies of my CCA's arrived yet. The monthly paydate came and I rang the branch and told them I was withholding payment as I still consider the account to be in dispute as they have failed to provide me with the CCA as per their requirements under the Consumer Credit Act 1974

[echowitch]

The local branch told me they sent me copies......yeah right !!

[The wife]

thats odd i thought it would be compliance who sent the CCA!! maybe again thats me being too logical...however it makes more sense that the local branch who hold the original copies would have to send it off!

 

brain not working today

[echowitch]

Well the original branch was Aldershot but for us now its Reading. From what I've been told though all the documents are held with Head Office AKA Muppet Central.

[echowitch]

I got a reply from Compliance today who sent me the below lovely letter lol Funny that the branch claim to have sent it out already and have re-requested it for free and yet Compliance demand money.