Claim form received from Welcome Financial and Hegarty LLP - PLEASE HELP!!

[pt2537]

Re: Claim form received from Welcome Financial and Hegarty LLP - PLEASE HELP!!

No,

I would add a further line to that letter.

" I also request that your client agrees to an extension of time for me to file my defence pursuant to CPR Rule 15.5. I am seeking an additional 28 days and if your client agrees, then my defence will be due on.................... If your client refuses to agree to my request for an extension of time i shall have no choice but to make an application to the Court, which will increase costs unnecessarily.

Once i have received confirmation that your client agrees to an extension i will notify the Court in accordance with Rule 15.5"

[eldster11]

Re: Claim form received from Welcome Financial and Hegarty LLP - PLEASE HELP!!

Thank you. All the advice is greatly appreciated. I will write to both Welcome, and Hegarty today. Should I be responding online at this point with an acknowledgement?

[PlanB]

Re: Claim form received from Welcome Financial and Hegarty LLP - PLEASE HELP!!

I would strongly suggest seeking legal assistance with this matter, as the amount claimed is above the £10k small claims threshold, you could even get a CFA (Conditional Fee Agreement). Both Celestine :yo: (the site owner) and PT2537 :yo: work for this firm of consumer credit specialists: http://www.watsonssolicitors.co.uk/contact.html They have successfully won a number of cases for the consumer, :first: including this one, where the defendant is also active on Legal Beagles: http://www.watsonssolicitors.co.uk/santander.html Or PM Cel or PT2537 with a link to this thread. :thumb:

eldster have you seen this post from FP? I was the Defendant in the case quoted and we won thanks to Watsons solicitors. At least ask them to evaluate your case - a PM costs nothing to send :wink:

[eldster11]

Re: Claim form received from Welcome Financial and Hegarty LLP - PLEASE HELP!!

Thank you PlanB. I have sent a PM to both to ask for a quote in taking the case. Everyone tells me that they are the best in the business, so if they can't win it no one can. Thanks

[PlanB]

Re: Claim form received from Welcome Financial and Hegarty LLP - PLEASE HELP!!

Everyone tells me that they are the best in the business, so if they can't win it no one can.

This is true :first:

[IanM]

Re: Claim form received from Welcome Financial and Hegarty LLP - PLEASE HELP!!

no that doesnt happen, if you turn up and try to rely on evidence not disclosed previously, then the Court will throw you out, and if the Court doesnt it would be an appeal point for the opponent

Just checked my old court papers, "will be attending and presenting evidence on the day of the hearing" was written on the application to suspend a possession order, not the original summons, and was accepted by the court as the lender at the time only gave us 2 days before eviction.

The application to suspend hearing ended up being held on the day of the eviction, even though the lender knew we were in the process of obtaining a bridging loan to pay off the arrears and complete some work on our properties at the time, we asked for 4 weeks to complete the loan arrangement and the judge gave us 6 weeks, not for the first or last time either in our case.

[IanM]

Re: Claim form received from Welcome Financial and Hegarty LLP - PLEASE HELP!!

no that doesnt happen, if you turn up and try to rely on evidence not disclosed previously, then the Court will throw you out, and if the Court doesnt it would be an appeal point for the opponent

I'm glad you said that because that just reinforces what I've been saying about SAR requests.

If the lender fails to send everything as requested in a SAR and then turns up in court with any documents that have not been provided as part of the SAR then they will get thrown out which is why it is important for anyone and everyone to compile their paperwork in date order and easily referred to in court when necessary.

[PlanB]

Re: Claim form received from Welcome Financial and Hegarty LLP - PLEASE HELP!!

If the lender fails to send everything as requested in a SAR and then turns up in court with any documents that have not been provided as part of the SAR then they will get thrown out.

Are you sure about that? A lender could respond to a SAR (albeit inadequately) but during the course of legal proceedings (pre-trial) provide more/further papers under Disclosure (to the Defendant), then surely those papers would be admissible in court wouldn't they, as long as they were added to the Trial Bundle :confused2:

Responding to a SAR and complying with Disclosure are two different things. A SAR isn't only used to gather information for legal proceedings.

[pt2537]

Re: Claim form received from Welcome Financial and Hegarty LLP - PLEASE HELP!!

I'm glad you said that because that just reinforces what I've been saying about SAR requests.

If the lender fails to send everything as requested in a SAR and then turns up in court with any documents that have not been provided as part of the SAR then they will get thrown out which is why it is important for anyone and everyone to compile their paperwork in date order and easily referred to in court when necessary.

If the claim falls into the Fast Track then there will be discovery.


A party has an ongoing duty to disclose documents that are in its possession, and documents as t hey fall into the parties possession so they frankly cannot turn up at trial and hi jack you.

However, i do not use DSARs to get disclosure, if i am entitled to see a document, and the claimant refuses i generally apply to the Court for an order compelling them to disclose

[IanM]

Re: Claim form received from Welcome Financial and Hegarty LLP - PLEASE HELP!!

If the claim falls into the Fast Track then there will be discovery.


A party has an ongoing duty to disclose documents that are in its possession, and documents as t hey fall into the parties possession so they frankly cannot turn up at trial and hi jack you.

However, i do not use DSARs to get disclosure, if i am entitled to see a document, and the claimant refuses i generally apply to the Court for an order compelling them to disclose

I don't disagree with what you say is the correct way to obtain paperwork but the lender has already hi jacked the OP with the amount of the claim and has given them 14 days to respond before a court hearing.

The OP doesn't have any paperwork relating to the loan and has suspicions about the amount owed, and believes it should be less, and needs all of the paperwork from the SAR to create their own ledger to work out what they think they should have owed to what they are being told they owe now. There may well be fees or charges that have been unfairly added to the amount claimed that could be disputed before going to court to get the end amount reduced.

I don't think the OP would know what documents to ask for under disclosure so wouldn't be able to present a competent defence but by submitting a SAR that gives them an extra 40 days plus any extra requested to go through the papers so they can get the help they need.

There is also the issue of the original loan with only 2 years left being converted into a 10 year loan when 5 years would have been sufficient to pay off the remaining balance of the original loan.

[eldster11]

Re: Claim form received from Welcome Financial and Hegarty LLP - PLEASE HELP!!

Hi everyone. Long delay in updating this but I finaly received today some further information from an IND group (Not who I wrote to, but information received none the less.)
They have sent me a copy of my credit agreement, and a statement of account.
As I suspected, the agreement sent is actually not the original agreement signed, but is for the re-written loan, taken some two years after the original. The header at the top of the page states "Amendment to a hire purchase agreement regulated under the consumer credit act" which supports this. The original agreement has however, not been sent.
This re-written agreement includes no insurances of any kind, however, I believe PPI and gap insurance were included on the original agreement and the cost of these written into the amount they wrote this new agreement for.
I'm not very happy with the way welcome dealt with this at the time, I was incredibly young, and naive and believed they were doing me a favour by reducing the payment, and didn't at the time twig that halving the monthly payment should not mean paying the debt over ten years rather than the 2 years I had left.
As stated I don't have a copy of the original agreement signed in 2006, but have received a copy of the amended agreement signed in 2008. Somehow they have took the entire amount left on the original agreement (including all insurances, and interest) and given this as the total cash price. They have then added c£4k in interest to this agreement over the 10 year period. They have then added a further c£2.5k interest to the court claim as interest since default, even though the original agreement was due to run until 2018.
I am now at a point where I need to prepare my defence, and would greatly appreciate any help anyone can offer me here.
I think I should be going along the lines of unfair interest charges, hidden PPI charges, and a lack of an original credit agreement but have no legal knowledge here and all advice will be greatfully received.
Thanks.
Chris.

[FlamingParrot]

Re: Claim form received from Welcome Financial and Hegarty LLP - PLEASE HELP!!

Hi everyone. Long delay in updating this but I finaly received today some further information from an IND group (Not who I wrote to, but information received none the less.)
They have sent me a copy of my credit agreement, and a statement of account.
As I suspected, the agreement sent is actually not the original agreement signed, but is for the re-written loan, taken some two years after the original. The header at the top of the page states "Amendment to a hire purchase agreement regulated under the consumer credit act" which supports this. The original agreement has however, not been sent.
This re-written agreement includes no insurances of any kind, however, I believe PPI and gap insurance were included on the original agreement and the cost of these written into the amount they wrote this new agreement for.
I'm not very happy with the way welcome dealt with this at the time, I was incredibly young, and naive and believed they were doing me a favour by reducing the payment, and didn't at the time twig that halving the monthly payment should not mean paying the debt over ten years rather than the 2 years I had left.
As stated I don't have a copy of the original agreement signed in 2006, but have received a copy of the amended agreement signed in 2008. Somehow they have took the entire amount left on the original agreement (including all insurances, and interest) and given this as the total cash price. They have then added c£4k in interest to this agreement over the 10 year period. They have then added a further c£2.5k interest to the court claim as interest since default, even though the original agreement was due to run until 2018.
I am now at a point where I need to prepare my defence, and would greatly appreciate any help anyone can offer me here.
I think I should be going along the lines of unfair interest charges, hidden PPI charges, and a lack of an original credit agreement but have no legal knowledge here and all advice will be greatfully received.
Thanks.
Chris.

There are a couple of people here who are consumer credit specialists, one of them is pt2537, :yo: the other is Celestine, :yo: the site owner. They both work for this firm: http://www.watsonssolicitors.co.uk/contact.html :first: and they have successfully defended a number of cases for the consumer, including this rather well known one, where the defendant is also a member here (PlanB): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17670803

I would suggest getting in touch with them. :thumb:

I hope you are still within the timelines to acknowledge the claim and state your intention to defend... :confused2:

[eldster11]

Re: Claim form received from Welcome Financial and Hegarty LLP - PLEASE HELP!!

Thanks FlamingParrot. Acknowledement was done a couple of weeks ago, and have about 5 days left to enter my defence. Will message both again and hope they come back to me with something. Thanks again