Welcome finance

[Elwinston28]

Hi my husband took out a small loan with welcome in 2004. He defaulted not long after, before we met. Last year, completely out of the blue, we received a claim form from Northampton cc stating a solicitor was pursuing the debt and applying for a ccj. We completed the claim form, the ccj was awarded regardless of the information we provided and the repayments the court stated we must pay are higher than we can afford. We are however paying as they then sought an attachment of earnings and we don't want my husbands employer informed.


I suppose my main question is should they have been able to pursue this through he Courts as it was over 6 years old and we had not received any correspondence from welcome in that time?
secondly, do I have grounds to apply to have the judgement set aside?

[Elwinston28]

Re: Welcome finance

I know some have replied to this on another thread. So far I think I have established that the debt originates from 2004, and we have had no contact from welcome finance since, until a letter came out of the blue from a company called IND, then a claim form for Northampton county court. I completed the claim form, they awarded the ccj at a repayment higher than we can afford. An attachment of earnings was then sought from our local county court. We have since been paying as we don't want my husbands employer to know about this. I did not inform the company that this debt was statute barred as I didnt know what that was until today.

Do we have any grounds to appeal against this judgement, or to have it set aside?
If so, how do we go about this? Is it through form N244??
thanks
emma

[Kafka]

Re: Welcome finance

If you already have a thread for this case then all of the posts should be there. Anyone advising needs to see all of the information and advice already posted and they can't do that confidently if it keeps getting broken up on different threads.

[Elwinston28]

Re: Welcome finance

If you already have a thread for this case then all of the posts should be there. Anyone advising needs to see all of the information and advice already posted and they can't do that confidently if it keeps getting broken up on different threads.

I unintentionally took over someone else's thread as the topic was similar, I didn't realise I should start my own until someone kindly pointed this out. So I started a new one. Sorry didnt mean to cause problems/confusion.

[Kafka]

Re: Welcome finance

I think you already have your own thread don't you?

[Elwinston28]

Re: Welcome finance

Yes but that's a different issue for a secured loan of my own. This one relates to an old personal loan of my husbands that popped up from nowhere last year.

[Kafka]

Re: Welcome finance

OK - thanks for clarifying.

You should have defended this on the grounds that it was statute barred. What defence did you put in against the claim?

Why did the Court set repayment at more than you could afford?

In all cases, you need to provide a timeline of events through the history of the account. As it is, we know nothing about the payment history, thevalidity of thecredit agreement, the default process, charges added on to the account and so on. For the best advice you must provide all the information.

[Elwinston28]

Re: Welcome finance

I didn't know about statute barred until i thought about researching this today. This loan was taken out before I met my husband but he says he didn't pay more than 2 payments, judging by the amount they have claimed that sounds about right. We have periodically checked our credit reports over the last few years as we have experienced financial difficulties due to unemployment, and this loan has never been on my husbands report. He says he had completely forgotten about it. When the first letter came from IND we ignored it as we thought it was someone trying their luck. I completed the claim form explaining the issues we have had over last few years with our finances. I completed the income expenditure and offered £50 a month. The court then requested £130 and this is the quantity on the attachment of earnings which is currently suspended as we are paying by direct debit. We never received an explanation from the court for setting it at higher than we requested.

My father in law was able to dig out the original credit agreement, dated 14/04/04. It is very basic, it says its a personal loan agreement regulated by the CCA 1974, it has personal details section, loan details and payments, data protection and customers declaration. It is then signed by my husband and the agent for welcome.


We/my husband has never received a default notice, or anything else from them between the original agreement and the letter from IND the middle of last year.


Does this help?

[Kafka]

Re: Welcome finance

As this is his account he needs to send a Subject Access Request to Welcome with £10 and they are obliged to provide ALL the personal data that they hold on him. That should provide interesting info and copies of any Default Notice and so on. It will also reveal the statements and its likely that they added on lots of bogus charges. Without all the data you can't assess how strong your case for setaside might be.

It is possible to get a CCJ set aside if there is a very strong case, but in reality its very hard after its been obtained and you needed to have defended it at the time. The combination of being statute barred and possible other issues like flaws of process may yet provide a route, but you will need very good advice to push this or it can backfire. Challenging the repayment amount is easier and you can apply to the court for a Variation Order to do this, but I suggest that first you need to get the data so you can assess what scope you have for challenging the whole CCJ.

[Elwinston28]

Re: Welcome finance

That's great thank you, from what you have said I am guessing there will be a lot of charges as the originall loan was for £1600 and we are now repaying £3700, although the interest rate is high aswell. Will start with subject access request and take it from there, if we can dispute the amount that would be something. I am more than happy to pay what we owe but don't like being ripped off!!

thanks again.

[Kafka]

Re: Welcome finance

SAR needs to follow the standard request and go to the Data Controller. There will be guidance here somewhere but I can't link it as I'm not a regular here. Hope someone else can help.

[Elwinston28]

Re: Welcome finance

SAR needs to follow the standard request and go to the Data Controller. There will be guidance here somewhere but I can't link it as I'm not a regular here. Hope someone else can help.

Thank you, have managed to find details for welcome data controller and a standard SAR, will send that off this week and see how we get on.

thanks again for your help
Emma

[Kafka]

Re: Welcome finance

They have 40 days to reply and you just need to wait, but Welcome are not good with paperwork and don't like obeying the law. Usually SARs to them produce some most interesting results.

In the meantime you might like to read extensively about other Welcome cases and you'll find lots of them here and anywhere else that deals with consumer issues!

[Elwinston28]

Re: Welcome finance

Hi. We received a response from welcome to our SAR and the letter says they have no record of an account with my husband. Yet we are paying a company called IND £130 a month for a ccj awarded by Northampton county court, and we have a suspended attachment of earnings from our local county court. How is this possible???