Welcome Finance Charges

[debbiereilly]

Hello everyone, new to this site but could do with some advice!

The nightmare of "Welcome Finance!!"

I took out a loan in December 2007 for £1500, including interest the total to repay should have been £2256.00 giving them £756 interest then adding on there standard fee of £75 for taking the loan initially.

I made 6 months of payments to the loan and unfortunatly got made redundant, from then I was in and out of employment for just under a year working with various temp agencys so as you can imagine this made it difficult to pay the normal £94 per month instalments and interest just kept going up and up.... I always stayed in contact making them aware my predicament! And finally spoke to a gentelman called Alex who told me that the balance was now sitting at £2743 and that no further interest of charge ould be added on deflated by the situation I started making regular payments from March 2009 of £33 per month which was all I could afford at the time and did this until May 2010 where I raised it to £50 per month and have been paying this every month since and have never missed a payment. April 2012 Welcome refunded me PPI froma previous load of £461 to off set the balance of the current loan leaving me with a balance of £527 on the 27th April 2012. I called and made a chunk payment of £100 when I has extra funds in May and have paid £300 in payment since.

I called then last week pressuming my balance was sitting at £127 I WAS WRONG!!!!

After a long heated discussion I was told that they had added a charge to my account in July 2012 of £45 when I asked what that was for they told me it was an old charge not added to my account from 2008!! (3 years ago!!) and since July 2012 they have been charging me for hacving this charge on my account plus interest and I didnt even know about it and they refused to remove it! Now I have had enough gloves are off!

Points:

1. I totaled up all elements of there stements and they have charged me £890 for Calls and visits?? thing about this is the address in the agreement is totally wrong which I told them about! when it was initally set up the sales person came to my flat and on the original loan agreement was my parents home address, I have copies of lease etc. to prove i was not living there at the time of the loan! £10 per call and £25 visit no one ever visited me to my knowledge how do I prove it.
2. Charged me £300 in ad hoc fees??? I dont even know what ad hoc fees is ?

So basically since I took this loan of £1500 i am expected to pay £3500 back that cant be right!???

A little help please this feels like a hole i am never getting out of, I just want it over but where to start!?

[dogtired]

Re: Welcome Finance Charges

Hope some one can advise, do NOT speak to them any more on the phone, it only encourages them.
You must be aware that they themselves are now only collecting on what they can.
Did you do the PPI by your self or via the FOS?
There are several members here with a lot of experience with this company, I would not say that I was but used to the tricks and the charges that they add.

[dogtired]

Re: Welcome Finance Charges

:bump::bump: Please

[debbiereilly]

Re: Welcome Finance Charges

What I am wondering now is should I cancel my direct debit and not give them any more money as I think they have more than had enough? My only problem here is that I have worked very hard for the past 3 years to try and acheive good credit, this is the only thing that is hanging over my head! If I stop and put the account in to querydo they have the right to provide details to equifax etc. that i missed a payment or do they have to wait until we reach a mutual agreement?

Also they have never ameneded the amount on my creidt file, it still says I owe them £758 which I do not and this figure has remained the same on my file for 6 months? they have not been providing correct information.

Also yes it was to FSO who contacted me and told me I was due a refund, I provided them with the details and they dealt with everything, was I right to do this?

Thanks
Debbie

[dogtired]

Re: Welcome Finance Charges

Bumping again for you as every one is different, I am four years into a dispute with them and almost four years since i paid them.

[seduraed]

Re: Welcome Finance Charges

You might be able to getthe ad hoc fees cancelled. These used to be added on every time there was an intervention or a broken arrangemetn . So if mr customer says i'll pay £xx friday and doesn't and welcome have to call back then there is a fee added . If you have moved there may be a tracing dfee added to the account . If yopu had PPi try to claim against it . I worked for welcome some years ago during teh pariod you are talkuinhg about . Some of the PPi claims paid out . You will need the original letter of redundancy and nee to ben out of work continuously for a month to be eligible . If you have taken temporary work then you cannot claim I aslso believe that if you change employer the PPi is invalid . You may be better going down the route of a miselling cliam .

Did you miss two consectutiver payments? If so unless the account has been defaulted and frozen returning to your normal payments willll never allow you to clear the loan . Thiss used to be Welcome policy .

[debbiereilly]

Re: Welcome Finance Charges

Thanks Seduraed

I get what you are saying about ad hoc fees but they were adding £10 on every 2- 3 days at one pont which is a bit random no pattern to them it seems.

I never moved anywhere, when the original loan was taken out the person selling me this loan knew who I was and put my parents address on the agreement, I was not even living there at the time and its not where he came to provide me with the agreement either, i have leases etc. which confirm that.

When I pointed this out he said that the change would be made (obviously it wasnt) and as a nieve teen i took it on the chin, then the call charges and supposed visits started but by this point my parents had moved, i had told them that i was inbetween addresses which i was, I was travelling to where ever work was week here. 2 weeks there etc.

I received PPI back from a previous loan from them which FSO contacted me about telling me I was entitled to, this balance was then removed from the current loan amount (this one i did not take out PPI on)

Even when they took off the PPI the value they were returning to my credit file has always remained the same and they never amend it one month to the next which is also strange.

Even when i call them they tell me a different value to what they have submitted? I dont understand it at all.

[vickydumbell]

Re: Welcome Finance Charges

Have you sent them an SAR request yet