Welcome Finance any dealings???

[TANZARELLI]

You tell um!!

 

Its your timescale not theirs.

[falcon185]

Ditto,

I agree with Tanz, dont let them call the shots, you have a time scale, stick to it, if they default on the time scale it goes to show how unreasonable they are being and will go against them later ;-)

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

 

Bazza

[raaydaar]

Hi all, we had a secured loan with welcome whcih has now been paid off ( 4 years early) following the sale of our house.

Unfortunately I don't have any documentation regarding the original loan however we were told that we had to have PPI in order to get the loan.

 

I take it I need to send of a SAR to Welcome and then get all the info on the account (including charges etc) and then proceed with a claim against them.

 

Plus what exactly am I able to claim for?

[TANZARELLI]

Hi all, we had a secured loan with welcome whcih has now been paid off ( 4 years early) following the sale of our house.

Unfortunately I don't have any documentation regarding the original loan however we were told that we had to have PPI in order to get the loan.

 

I take it I need to send of a S.A.R - (Subject Access Request) to Welcome and then get all the info on the account (including charges etc) and then proceed with a claim against them.

 

Plus what exactly am I able to claim for?

 

If you believe you have been mis-sold your PPI you may be able to claim this back.

 

Have a look at this letter which was posted by LivelyLad (If I remember rightly, I may be wrong and appologies if I am):

 

Amend this letter to suit.

COMPLAINT & Request for return of PPI Insurance & Interest.

 

Dear Sir or Madam,

 

I took out the above loan for £xxxx on xxxx. When I took it out, I signed up for Payment Protection Insurance. I contacted you to cancel the PPI insurance and was told that this was not possible.

 

 

When I took out the loan, I was told that I would not have been given the loan if I did not take PPI. I have since been told that this is not true, and that you are not allowed to make PPI a condition of taking out the loan unless you include the costs of PPI in your quoted loan interest rate, which you did not do. I therefore consider that I have been mis-sold this expensive insurance, which I do not need and which I said that I did not really want.

 

Since this loan was taken out to refinance a high loan etc I feel that in a time of being financially vulnerable I was pressured into taking the loan protection.

 

 

The cost of the Policy was £xxxx plus £xxxxInterest making £xxxx

 

I request a refund of the policy fee plus any interest paid on the fee.

 

I would appreciate a reply to this letter within fourteen days. If you reject this complaint, I would be grateful if you could explain whether you provide an internal appeals process. If you do not, please supply me with a final response letter, so that I can take up the matter with the Financial Ombudsman Service, and if need be make a claim via the small claims court to recover the PPI insurance fee + Interest + costs.

 

Yours faithfully,

__________________

 

Hope this helps.

 

Tanzarelli:)

[sandra05]

Hi everyone

 

Just had a reply from Welcome Finance it has come from Kieran Scothern , Compliance Officer in Nottingham.

 

It goes like

 

I have investigated the issues you have raised and can respond as follows. Fees applied to your account are in line with our standard charges for collecting overdue payments. This is provided for contractually in terms of the agreement signed, and our stanard rate of charges is supplied to customers on taking out their agreement. We do not believe that out charges placed on an overdue debtor are either disproportionate or unreasonable.

 

We note your reliance on Office of Fair Trading (OFT) guidance is in relation to credit card, bank overdraft, store card and mortgage default charges and NOT tjose of a regulated secure loan. The guidance involved the OFT insisting some of the credit card companies reduce their charges to £12. Given that we only charged £5 for each letter and telephone call we are obliged to make, we cannot agree that these charges are disproportionately high. (No mention of why they have charged £20 for a direct debit returned)

 

We do not accept your assertion that out charges could be interpreted as penalties.

 

Mr Richard Middleton has offered to pay you, as a gesture of goodwill, the amount of £70.00 in full and final settlement of this matter. This offer is open and capable of acceptance fro 14 days from the date you receive this letter. If this is not acceptable please return the cheque to me at the above address.

 

I can confirm we will defend any forthcoming claim vigorously, and will seek to recover any potential legal costs.

 

_______________________

 

I am due to file my N1 form tomorrow do I go ahead and has anyone else had a reply.

 

thanks

 

sandra

 

 

 

We do

[carinas]

hi sandra

 

got exactly the same response as you, must be a standard letter.

 

just plotting my response

[soli2006]

Certainly from the correspondence I've received so far in response to both my SAR & my CCA, it looks very much as if Welcome don't have any answers so simply try to bluff as best they can. All the letters they've sent me have failed to provide adequate information & I think they just don't have the expertise to deal with this type of thing. The letter to Sandra looks like another example of that.

[LancerQRL]

i too recieved a letter from mr scothern confirming they do not have any ppi details and my insurances were adminstered by direct group- i suppose that technically welcome cannot prove they actually paid for the insurance cover.

[Grapes]

We have the same letter, same author!

[LancerQRL]

i think that after years of welcome calling the shots they do not know what to do when the tables are turned- its great!!!

[soli2006]

i too recieved a letter from mr scothern confirming they do not have any ppi details and my insurances were adminstered by direct group- i suppose that technically welcome cannot prove they actually paid for the insurance cover.

 

To say they have nothing is a nonsense - they must be paying the money we pay in premiums to somewhere. And if they arent, then its theft or fraud. So either they have the info & they are refusing to release it (why would they do that?) or they simply collect 'premiums' each month & pocket them as extra 'profit'.

[sandra05]

Hi there - hope you all had a good christmas.

 

I have sent them them following letter by email and by recorded delivery but heard nothing has yet.

Dear Mr Scothern,

I am in receipt of your letter dated 21.12.06 and note its contents. As regard to paragraph relying on OT and charges are only directed to credit cards and banks. If you check with your legal department you will find this is not the case. As a gesture of goodwill I have held back the N1 form until the 29.12.06 to give you time to reflect on this. I will also be making a complaint to FLA Finance and Leasing Association. The address is Imperial House, 15-19 Kingsway, London WC2B 6UN. website www.fla.org.uk which you are members off.

.

Below is a letter which was hand delivered to your Falkirk branch on 21.12.06 and I am awaiting a reply

 

I am in receipt of your letter of 18th December and note the contents.

I will accept the sum offered of £70.00 only as part settlement and on the clear understanding that I will pursue recovery of the remainder, with a County Court claim if necessary.

 

I am of the opinion the law is clear on liquidated damages. Regardless of any agreement that I may have signed, the payment of excessive damages will be interpreted as a penalty and therefore the charges you imposed will be unenforceable and should I be forced to litigate, judgment granted in my favour.

 

The fact that your fees do not differ significantly from those charged by other companies operating within the Financial Services industry is entirely redundant.

 

Charges are not legally enforceable if they are penalties. Penalty clauses in contracts in English (and Scottish) law for breach of contract are not legal if the penalty exceeds the actual cost of the breach of either party. The law relating to penalties has been established through case law. The cases date back to the nineteenth century and the courts have been consistent in the way that they have ruled on penalty clauses

 

I will not correspond further with you on this matter and my next communication, should I not receive full payment, will be with your legal department.

 

 

Hope you all have a good new year.

 

sandra

[LancerQRL]

got yet another reply from my local branch manager requesting proof that they mis-sold the ppi, actually i asked them to prove they did not mis-sell it to me, but then again i have no proof they actually covered me anyway!!

[soli2006]

got yet another reply from my local branch manager requesting proof that they mis-sold the ppi, actually i asked them to prove they did not mis-sell it to me, but then again i have no proof they actually covered me anyway!!

 

i'm of the same opinion as you Lancer - that they have to prove they actuallt covered me. Them saying they have NO records relating to PPI sets alarm bells ringing & suggests (to me anyway, cynic that I am) that they never actally covered me. Nothing would surprise me frankly with these people.

[Smoothy]

I must be one of the very few that has successfully claimed PPI from welcome. My policy was with Direct and the first 2 application forms never arrived so i hassled welcome and got directs number. Eventually got it sorted and made a claim. LancerQRL if you want directs details let me know.

 

Smoothy

[LancerQRL]

smoothy it would be great if you could supply a telephone number for direct- who did you claim the ppi back from? welcome or direct?

[iwannabedebtfree]

i sent my letter off this morning asking welcome to refund or try to prove that they didnt mis-sell. have Welcome come out fighting? or just have new methods of avoiding the situation?

[LancerQRL]

i dont think the branch manager i am dealing with can get his head around the situation and is shirking my original request of 'can i have a refund or not' he spent the first fourteen days trying to ring an old telephone number rather than write to me

although interestingly he did eventually write and stated that all calls to and from the office are recorded- i have now asked mr scothern to supply any recordings as part of my s.a.r.- he did not seem to realise that all data really does mean all data.

[soli2006]

I'm just about to renew correspondence to get what I believe is ALL the info in response to my SAR - namely details of my PPI (at least a policy number as i intend to check that the PPI actually exists & that payments have been made) and also evidence of manual intervention as i do not consider a typewritten list of alleged telephone calls, letters & home visits (i've had one letter ever, and never had a home visit) as proof of anything. As far as i'm concerned its up to them to prove such events occurred, not up to me to prove they didn't. So, i will be asking for copies of the alleged letters, dates, times & duration of calls (available from their bills i would imagine) together with transcripts of the alleged calls, and whatever proof they can supply of the non-existent home visits. I'm also hanging out for a SIGNED copy of the alleged agrement in response to my CCA. Seems to me that Welcome are used to shouting 'jump' and people simply ask 'how high' and they have neither the expertise or competence to cope with official & legally binding requests. In short, they are bullies who rely on the ignorance of the vast majority of the public (i include myself in that until recently). The fight goes on - roll on 2007!

[sandra05]

Hi everyone

 

Its a shame Kieran Scothern it based down south or we could have arranged to meet him as a group.

 

It would have been nice to see the expression on his face. Even to wish him a happy new year and let him know we will not be giving up.

 

[sandra05]

Hi soli2006

 

It is interesting that once I send my request in the SAR and only got a basic charge list back until I requested a refund. Then my branch manager sat down and wrote what every transaction was for. This is where they went wrong it says there was charges for none collection via debit card (£5) but unknow to him I have every bank statement and a diary of the dates the debit card payment was to come off and did come of so they are basically lying when they said the DD card failed. I have it in black and white that it did not. I am keeping this one to myself until Kieran Scothern comes back to me or when I file my N1 form. I missed the court on Friday.

 

Roll on next wednesday.

[LancerQRL]

you would have to get past the security first- i am fairly local- and ruddington hq isn't that impressive anyway

[Smoothy]

smoothy it would be great if you could supply a telephone number for direct- who did you claim the ppi back from? welcome or direct?

 

Well....I first contacted my local (un)Welcome office and asked for a claim form, they said they'd send it. A week later I recalled them saying form hadn't been received and again they said they'd post one. 2 weeks after the initial request and no sight of a form I called the office again and (without making myself known) I asked who PPI is done through. They gave me a number and I called that explaining to the helpful lady the situation.

 

Eventually 4 weeks after my initial request, I received a claim form, but by this time (un)Welcome had started calling about a missing payment. Basically, after a lengthy conversation (lucky I log all calls!) he relented and said he'd wait till they receive notification from Direct.

 

Eventually, after submitting the claim form and all relevant documentation they wanted, I received a letter from Direct saying they would cover the payments backdated to my first original request for claim. So jobdone!

 

 

The address for Direct is

 

Direct Group

Welcome creditor administration

Direct House

White Rose Way

Doncaster

South Yorks

DN4 5NU

 

Telephone 01302 380343

 

There is an 0870 number but I dont think you want that!!!

 

Smoothy

[carinas]

I am in receipt of your letter dated 21.12.06 and note its contents. As regard to paragraph relying on OT and charges are only directed to credit cards and banks. If you check with your legal department you will find this is not the case.

sandra

 

Sandra - Is this correct this is not the case, as i cant find any details as to if they are covered by this or not?

[sandra05]

Hi Carinas

 

Hope you had a good new year.

 

I have read through a lot of sites here and a lot of them state that it is not only banks and credit cards.

 

There is a lot reclaimed for charges on missed mortgage payments charges, charges for finance on cars, loans so there is no reason why Welcome is any different. I did find one on Halifax disputing this as well that it only applied for bank charges but this was disputed by the claimant and they won. I just cannot find it again as there is so many to go through but I will keep looking.

 

I am awaiting Welcome to call me back apparantly Kieran Scothern is in a meeting.