Welcome Finance any dealings???

[soli2006]

Fairclaire - I had much the same problem until recently. I was getting phone calls at home up to 2O times a day. They did start to ring at work a while ago, but luckily I had a good relationship with my then-boss, and he threatened them with all sorts of legal action for harassment, defamation, disclosing personal information to unauthorised people (data protection act i think), etc. It may be worth you having a word with your boss if you can. Harassment of this sort is illegal, against OFT regulations (I believe - no expert, just repeating what i've read on here) & CAN be stopped. I've sent you a letter template via a private message. Worked for me. No calls since I sent it. Welcome rely on bullying, intimidating & harassing people. as soon as you begin to fight back, they don't seem to know what to do or how to react. I know its easy to say as i've had mant sleepless nights worrying about my dealings with Welcome, but try to keep your chin up & take heart in the fact that you are now beginning to have a go back at them. I've found this site - and this particular thread - to be very, very supoortive.

[martinpar]

I was talking to someone who works for Welcome last night. She's only staying until she can find another job that pays as well. Although she only does things by the book she was telling me how most of the senior staff don't care how many laws they break to sell the loan in the first place or chase up missed payments. Apparently, they are only allowed to leave two phone messages in a day but frequently call much more.

 

When they're selling loans, they have to sell the insurance with it at all costs. Apparently, they allow a certain percentage to go through without insurance but after that, if someone says they don't want the insurance they will refuse the loan. This, of course, is illegal or at least against FSA rules.

 

They certainly don't care about Data Protection. She told me about cases she knows of where they have called a relation and told them everything plus embellished it to make it look like they'd end up in prison if someone didn't pay.

 

She did also tell me that Welcome will never take you to court nor, as far as she knows, will they attempt to repossess your property.

[carinas]

In anticipation of my SAR arriving!

 

I'm expecting a pile of badly photocopied nothing, like others on here have stated...

 

I was thinking we should all club together and work out exactly what can be reclaimed:

 

charges for Phone calls

charges for using debit card

charges for letters

infact any charges of this sort!

 

PPI

 

can we then claim back interest on what they have taken?

 

Anyone else care to offer what can be claimed? thought it might help us to all club together!

[Grapes]

I am claiming back the acceptance fee they charged me when they offered us another "advance" on the loan. Charged me £200 plus with the first loan, why did they need to charge another one?

[soli2006]

She did also tell me that Welcome will never take you to court nor, as far as she knows, will they attempt to repossess your property.

 

Well - they have a dca (DLC) onto my case - and they seem wuite happy to take me to court. Its in dispute now whilst i await the rest of my SAR info & also a response to a CCA request i sent yesterday. So, are they changing tack & considering court? Or will they back down as they have only partial paperwork relating to my SAR and (so far) an unsigned, recently made out (or is that made up?) agreement?

[martinpar]

I think they will not carry it through but don't quote me on that.

[martinpar]

And I'm only the messenger remember.

[carinas]

I am claiming back the acceptance fee they charged me when they offered us another "advance" on the loan. Charged me £200 plus with the first loan, why did they need to charge another one?

 

thats a good point i had 2 loans too and probably 2 acceptance fees, must remember to add this on ! I've no doubt they would have!

 

infact i had my original car finance and when i told them i couldn't afford it i have a feeling they refinanced the whole lot and lowered the repayments, so i am paying 2 amounts of interest

[Grapes]

I think that Welcome are aware that they would be on a very sticky wicket in a court room, with the sales methods, insurances and APR etc. Be cheaper if they took me rather than me taking them though!

Anybody understand all the comments about units in the insurance bit?

[LancerQRL]

i vaguely remember when i was stitched up on a personal loan with welcome that each unit cost say £50 and was supposed to provide say £1000 of life cover but of course i seem to remember not being allowed to have just one unit- i,ll wait until my s.a.r comes back then of course all the memories will come flooding back

[falcon185]

Got my S.A.R - (Subject Access Request) back from unWelcome, no apparent narratives with it, I rang them up and said I will send a letter giving them a further 7 days to comply or I report them to the Info comm. Kierans reply?? " Well if your sending it recorded delivery we will have it in a day or two" very condecending manner, like they really give a toss! I am giving them the 7 days to respond but I WILL be reporting them too!!

It wouldnt have hurt to actually start action on the narratives straight after my phone call. What arrogance!!! But we are dealing with dross, I almost forgot that for a moment!

[martinpar]

Years ago, when I had a business loan with Lloyds they add units of insurance. One unit was £1000. ie for a 5k loan you got 5 units of insurance. I settled the loan early and thought no more about it until about a year ago when I got a letter from Lloyds saying they have reviewed old accounts and discovered that they hadn't refunded me the premiums for the insurance, so I got a nice windfall of nearly £500 for Christmas. I hadn't been with Lloyds for several years at that time. Can't somehow imagine Welcome doing that.

[Grapes]

Spent sometime today going thru the drivel they sent me and there are some gems hidden in the turds:D

Like the form that says we dont want insurance and signed but we somehow seem to have it!

Had a letter from Welcome saying they DID NOT advise us they could offer a remortagage thru Dail4aLoan, then written in their own paperwork is the fact they are going to offer a remortgage thru Dial4aLOan ah its a fine life!

We have six units of every kind of insurance applied, what does that mean???

And I think the Mortgage Indemnity insurance they applied (£1100!!!!) is ripe for the picking as well, particularly as we knew nothing about it!

Amazing arent they....

[fairclaire]

thanks to everyone who replied to my post. I will be sending my SAR and CCA to welcome by the end of the week. are there any particular templates i should use for the requests? Not being lazy...honest! there's just so much info on here i get a bit lost sometimes.

 

As for them phoning me at work...I don't think I could approach my boss about the phonecalls. He's not an approachable kind of guy...very old school and would definately frown on my debt probs. I also work for the government who might take a dim view of my situation. We have all sorts of rules about that sort of thing.

 

Having said that it won't stop me asking them to stop 'hassling' me at work...speaking to colleagues etc..i'll give it a go anyway and keep you all posted.

 

One other thing. As I am now paying reduced monthly payments by debit card do I keep paying these for now until the SAR etc arrives? What would happen anyway if when they phoned for authorisation and i said no? what's to stop them taking a payment anyway?

 

any thoughts?

[martinpar]

One other thing. As I am now paying reduced monthly payments by debit card do I keep paying these for now until the S.A.R - (Subject Access Request) etc arrives? What would happen anyway if when they phoned for authorisation and i said no? what's to stop them taking a payment anyway?

 

Legally they can't but that's not the sort of thing to stop Welcome. Best is to ask for a replacement card. The old details will then be no use to them.

[sandra05]

Hi everyone just reading through all the forums about welcome.

I took out a loan with them in April 2002 and advised that I did not need their insurance policy's but was told this was a must. Also they put a mortgage indeminity in at £1100. Plus a couple of other charges on the account which I refused.

 

Loan was £10,000 over 120 months. I was told we were covered for insurance and all the legal advise etc. Well I lost my job in 2004 and tried to make a claim and was advised my husband was covered but I was not and I was not entitled to legal support either. (With luck I had free legal cover with house insurance).

 

Anyway I paid this loan off on 08.06.06 with a loan taken out with a high street lended and after 4 years of paying £280 a month my final settlement figure was £17637.69 which I think it totally day light robbery.

 

I requested a list of transaction on this account on 16.11.06 and received this letter on 24.11.06 not bad.

 

In the letter is Disbursal of fees £1314.00, insurance Premiums advanced £2942.11, loan to customer £10,000.

 

I did get an insurance rebate a big £59.93 but they have charged me Penalty fees £1440.09 would this be for clearing the loan off early and if so can I reclaim this fee and the insurance.

 

Ohh when I was given a settlement date to pay by my new lender had the cheque there and was sending it round to them but they advised no one would be in the office to accept it. My new lender asked if they faxed a copy as this was the settle by date before more interest charges were incurred they said no. So Welcome charged me £279.28 interest for 1 day.

 

So they are in it just to get as much money out of us as they can.

 

Good luck everyone.

[soli2006]

I lost my job in 2004 and tried to make a claim and was advised my husband was covered but I was not and I was not entitled to legal support either.

 

So they are in it just to get as much money out of us as they can.

 

 

The exact same thing happened to me - lost my job in 2005 only to be told that I wasn't covered - just my partner. And when i dug further into it, i discovered that he was effectively not covered either as he was self employed - a fact they were well aware of when we took out the loan. And, like you, we were told in no uncertain terms that if we didn't have the PPI, we wouldn't get the loan.

 

Welcome are legalised loan-sharks. They prey on the most vulnerable members of society (Shoppacheck doorstep loans for example), and people down on their luck (like most of us with bad credit ratings for whatever reason). Then they bleed them dry. One of the things that amazes me is that i still get flyers through the post offering me loans! And so long as there are people in difficulty - which there always will be - they'll continue to flourish. Makes me so MAD!!! Determined to keep fighting out of sheer bloody mindedness now.

[carinas]

Fair Claire i have stopped my direct debit payments and have only recieved one letter to which i replied that the account was in dispute until they provided my SAR. That seemed to have kept them away an i have recieved no phone calls or letters. Next time they call tell them no they cant have the money, and do try to get a new card to stop them taking the money unauthorised.

[carinas]

ok guys, just had a chat with my friendly welcome finance branch! they rung to ask why had i stopped my direct debits. I sadi that i was disputing the amount owed to them and that i had applied to head office with my SAR. He said that he had a copy of that and what information was i looking for? I said i will be disputing charges and that i require all information they hold about me and my account as per the SAR. he said he will send me a statement of my account to get the ball rolling and i did remind him i need agreements and PPi agreements and he said these will come from the compliance department. He said statements will arrive tomorrow so i will be interested to see what happens then!

[soli2006]

ok guys, just had a chat with my friendly welcome finance branch! they rung to ask why had i stopped my direct debits. I sadi that i was disputing the amount owed to them and that i had applied to head office with my S.A.R - (Subject Access Request). He said that he had a copy of that and what information was i looking for? I said i will be disputing charges and that i require all information they hold about me and my account as per the S.A.R - (Subject Access Request). he said he will send me a statement of my account to get the ball rolling and i did remind him i need agreements and PPi agreements and he said these will come from the compliance department. He said statements will arrive tomorrow so i will be interested to see what happens then!

 

The statement is the easy bit - they just print that from the computer. As for the rest! I got nothing. No PPI info, nothing. Good luck!

 

A friendly Welcome finance branch? Is there such a thing? Once you've signed on the dotted line, they treat us, the customers, like dirt.

[jcasey2408]

Fairclaire, i was in the same position as you where WF had my card details and they would constantly ring me to authorise the payment. I told them that i would not authorise the payment which stumped then a little. I sent a stop harrasing me via telephone letter which can be found in the templates section and i also found this somewhere on here for if they tried to push me and carry on phoning-

 

"I am now taping the rest of this conversation: (Pause for effect) and I am putting you on notice that I intend reporting you to Trading Standards and The Office of Fair Trading, under Section 40 of The Administration of Justice Act 1970, for Harassment. Furthermore, I will from this point on, only communicate with you in writing and if I receive one more telephone call from you or your organisation, I will see that you face criminal proceedings under Section 2 of The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 - and before you say anything further, you may be interested to know that your consumer credit license will not protect you from prosecution. Are we now absolutely clear on this matter?"

 

So far they have recieved all my letters and i havent had a single phone call from them so i havent had to use it, but it could help you if they persist in ringing you before they recieve the letter.

[fairclaire]

Thanks for that. I will be applying to the bank for a new card but can't do this for a week or so as it's payday tomorrow. I will also be requesting that they don't call me at work anymore backed up by the harassment by telephone letter. Luckily for me they don't have my home or mobile numbers as I've moved and changed them since taking out the loan

 

My SAR and CCA requests are almost ready to go too so will be contiuing to watch this thread with interest and keep you all posted.

 

Thanks again for all the very useful advice

[LancerQRL]

just ploughing through all my paperwork to do with a car loan from welcome, as i am already chasing them for ppi- but i have realised that when they defaulted me -and terminated the agreement. i had no refund of the outstanding interest as they pile it all on at the start of the loan! and the balance just comes down from the total amount including interest- have i had a mental block or surely there should be no interest charged after an agreement is terminated ,as we have no contract. so should the interest due after this time have been reduced off the amount?

[carinas]

no Soli i was being funny!

 

statements never arrived today, suprise suprise!

[falcon185]

C'mon Soli you should have seen that one a mile away ;-) Its called Wit and if wit was s**t Welcome would be constipated