Welcome Finance Services review: Scam and cheating! 78

I have arrived at this page whilst looking for a complaints procedure to make a complaint against welcome finance in caerphilly. I totally agree with you, I have a loan, but am in difficulty. The staff make up the rules and move the goal posts for their own ends. I cannot believe how disgracfullyI was just treated. Watch this space!

Just because you have a loan with a company, it doesn't guarantee you another loan. Many finance companies often change their lending criteria in line with the current financial market.

If you are accepted for a loan, then turned down it could be because:

a) you passed the credit score, but they later found out from your wage slip that you could not afford to repay the loan.

b) you gave false information on the credit application.

If you pass a credit score, it doesn't mean you can afford to repay the loan. I have personally had to decline loans for people who passed the credit score. They come in and either do not earn as much as they said, or have WAY too many outgoings to warrant increasing their loan with us.

You simply aren't entitled to any money just because you pass a credit score, and legally, there's nothing you can do about it.

Welcome finance are I'm afraid a Company that prey on people that are in need of a loan or car, who cant get a prime lender, there interest rates are unbelievable and there procedures are just inside the law.
However i and many believe they should be brought in line by the financial ombudsman and in my opinion shut down, we need more credit unions etc with reasonable rates to stop Companies like Welcome operating, in fact i would change there name to unwelcome finance

Over a year ago I recieved a personal loan from welcome finance, by july this year I went to a Debt management company to help me sort out my financial problems, they have made an agreement with welcome to pay off the debt and have been doing so for four months now and yet welcome continue to harass me on my house phone and my mobile, this evening[14th nov] i recieved a phone call from them saying my debt management company had contacted them to ask me to sign a new credit agreement! I immediately phoned my debt management company who informed me this was a downright lie! How much longer will these people be allowed to prey on those less fortunate and worry them to death.

I took out an agreement with welcome over a year ago.i walked away feeling quite good, i got a new astra with only 8000 miles on the clock.immagine my anger when only 3 miles up the road the car broke down(after apparently being checked by one of their Expert mechanics, yeh right.)i called and called as i was continuously having problems with this car, the engine managment light would come on, go off, come on again.the car would come out of gear(automatic by the way)on roundabouts mostb of the time and on motorways(yes really dangerous right).all i was told was NOT OUR PROBLEM.so after a year of constant problems and alot of extra cost i couldnt afford a payment.i sent letters stating i was struggling and again NOT OUR PROBLEM, now im not trying to say they should let me off the payment at this point but the fact that i wasnt sherking them should of stood for something right?NO.
i then sent letters informing them i have moved, 3 in total.never recieved anything off of them.then one day immagine my disbelief when my mother phones me up to say some guy from welcome finance has been calling her home 3-4 times a day.so i wanna get this sorted yeh...i arrange a meeting at my local doss hole of a welcome office, i turn up as arranged and some greasy teenager that looks like he should be working at mc donalds tells me no body is expecting me...anger is by this point starting to build.ok i say can anyone else deal with me as i have just left work early for this, so he sais he will deal with it.hmm maybe this guy is ok i start thinking.once we are discussing matters my oppinion quickly reverts to what i orriginally thought! its quite clear this guy is an utter plonker.any way i sign all the relevent paperwork change of address bank details and suchlike, and am glad i finnaly have this sorted(after 6 months).HOWEVER a week later i recieve a letter at my New address stating they dont have any details of my new address(yes seriously)and are going to wack me with several charges for phone calls etc, so again im fumming, i call them up and explain to some dippy girl that a week ago i sat down with mc donalds boy for over an hour and they still cant get it right"ok then il send the documents out to yopu to sign again"she sais.and have i recieved them...HAVE I F**K.all i can say to people is please please please STAY CLEAR OF WELCOME CAR FINANCE, they are unproffesional and make the rules up as they go along.And to top it off their cars are rubbish bits of crap made to look nice with a bit of polish.i may sound bitter but not all the problems i have had are listed here, they really are in my oppinion con artists and companys like this should be ashamed to opperate this way emmploying idiots.but i suppose its the old saying, PAY PEANUTS AND GET MONKEYS!

I took out a loan with WF and lost my job. I have had hand delivered letters to my home and endless phone calls which I feel are unjust and harrasssing. The weird thing is I told them from the time I would knew I would lose my job that I would find it difficult to pay them the full amount. I did, however, make them an offer, on more than one occasion, to pay what I could afford, and guess what? They refused saying the system could not accept what I offering them. Everyone Ihave spoken to tell me something different each time. I feel bullied and harrassed and worry they will come knocking on my door again. I have complained about their collection procedures but to no avail. I am now going through the Financial Ombudsman because I have also asked them for copies of my contracts to which I get no response! Ridiculous company who make their own rules. It's unlawful because I have checked Consumer Rights on CCA website! What they do is wrong. I have asked to have it escalated to the next department (who WF claim aren't as nice)..When I researched on the internet I was shocked as to how many people have posted complaints about WF! I don't know what to do.

Hello all,

When I carried out a research on the internet on the complaints filed against WF not to my surprise I found many as this site is only 1 of this many I discovered.
Any way, I applied for a loan over the internet on one of these websites and by luck I got a call from WF offering me vehicle finance, now at first I thought no thanks Im ok but then they continued to call me offering me a very good offer on any vehicle i wanted. So I drove down to one of their offices in Feltham near Heathrow airport and after waiting for over 3 hours with a baby 7 months old, some Asian girl who literaly looked like anything else but a proffesional sales person kept going off and coming back with an ammended agreement so she could trick me into purchasing a car. After all that waiting I was determined to drive away with a new car and this is when the problems began. She included Payment protection and a GAP insurance onto the agreement telling me that if my car was ever a total loss, the gap insurance would cover all outstanding finance and that I would not owe a penny more. Although I was hoping and praying that after all this waiting around I would not be in that situation but still agreed to keep the GAP. This is when the problem started when 7 months later I was involved in a terible accident where I was struck from behind and my vehicle was a total WRECK more than a Loss. I got an offer from the third party insurers and the gap made a payment to clear off the outstaindg debt (so I thought) until recently. I kept the wrecked car and managed to get it repaired and had it on the road when recently and arsonist decided to burn my car, so I made a claim to my insurers to pay me the damages and to my surprise I was told by the engineer that I still had a finance debt still outstanding. What I thought so I got on the phoen and called WF. What they told me was disgusting, they insisted that I still owed them almost 5K and that gap had not paid outright. so thinking its the fault of the gap insurers i got on the phone to them and they after many phone calls(very long and costly for that matter) recieved a breakdown and it was then that they told me that they would not pay anything towards the interest on the original outstanding balance. They told me that I should of been told of this which I had no idea of as I was conned into purchasing and paying for a PP and gap. yes i used the gap but i still owed these con artists money still. Im on foot with three kids and laid off from work after taking time off sick for the stress i suffered when both my car and home was set on fire with all three of my children and family were in bed. when i called wf they out me through to the debt collections department and when i asked them why did u not notify me that there was a balance outstanding there excuse was that for some reason becasue my loan with them was passed onto the debt management team they linked the two files together so this si why i did not know until now.
I am in the process of filing a complaint and hope that the case is resolved as i have no job, no money and have to depend on the London transport to travel around with a 2, 10 and 12 year old and make trips every day to mothers home who is disabled so that i could look after her. If there is anyone out there who could offer me advice as to how i could resolve this issue or anyone who has had a similar problem and has managed to sort it out PLEASE HELP!

This is a WARNING for any one purchasing a car with welcome finance dont do it! I am currently in the process of sending my crap car back to wf, after 3 long years of paying a very very high intrest rate on a car that is worth about 3, 000 (overall paymentt after 4yrs is 11, 550). when I bought it, do not under any circumstances get gap insurance or machanical breakdown. When you purchase a car with WF they tell u u have 30 days to cancell your GAP insurance, what they dont tell you is that after the 30 days you cant unless you pay the total amount of a 4 yr policy, I am sending my car back after paying for it for 3 yrs and WF want a further 1, 000 for insurance policies that I have taken out, also they have sent out the RAC to check the vehicle and to which I am awaing for another bill of roughly 1, 000 for wear and tear this company is mickey mouse and if they think they are getting a penny out of me well ill see you in court Crappy Finance!

Please could somebody help, as I really dont know where to turn

Of course its yet again WELCOME Finance and the bully BOYS.

I purchased a car on Hire Purchase from Car Craft in August 2007, I paid a £1000 deposit, and the car itself was £6000, the total value of the agreement a shocking £14809.00 I have maintained all regular payments of £310.41 per month since then to the end of Jan 2009.

My employment ended and I have no further funds to pay for the car, I am aware that I have payment protection but the Guy told me that is for redundancy only. but I have to telephone the insurance on Monday.

I recieved a letter from Welcome saying I has missed one payment, I came home and found that the Bully Boys had somehow entered my place of residence how I dont know and let a letter on my front door, asking me to contact them, the letter is dated 26/03/09.

This morning I am scared as I have had banging and banging on my front door, to the point, of where I am so frightened I may have to call the police.

I telephoned WELCOME asked who these guys were he said they were from the collection department, they will hang around and not leave till they take the car away, .The car is parked on a private driveway.

I have missed 1 payment, but the 2nd is going to be missed shortly.

I do believe they need a court order now? as I have paid a 1/3 of the amount.

PLEASE could someone help me...

We purchased a Car from Welcome Finance in Nov 2007 at which time we were told if we were to have the finance we had to take out
Mechanical breakdown cover as we were not taking out any other insurances which we did.
Only to be told after numerous faults and numerous calls to WF (need i say that the warranty never covers anything)our garage would not deal with them when speaking to WF after 7 months advised that we did not have to take this as it was option.(not what we were told at the time of purchasing the car). We are in the process of sending the car back, well what we thought. This company is a complete joke. We have made all 16 payments (242.00 a month) we were meant to but they say we are in arrears by 2 months how can that be if we have made all the payments, So my husband called to say he disagreed with the amount. The following day 4 weeks after they were supposed to have collected the car and still havent we had a phone call saying that we had not called the cancellation department when we clearly had, and that we had called to say we no longer wanted to cancel the car. What a complete joke no one had called. My husband then called the VT desk to sort this out and the lad on the end of the phone said that as we disagreed with the amount he took it upon himself to decide we no longer wanted to cancel the termination of the car)
The car is a complete reck since we have had it and the staff at welcome have not got a clue. We will NOT be paying them a penny more and will gladly see them in court. Today we hae sent a letter by recorded delivery to the cancellation desk and our local office who dont have a clue and if the car is not collected by Monday the car will be personally took down to our local office and left outside. Te longer we have the car the more money thery will want. Something or somebody needs to shut this company down before they ruin anybody elses lives. NO MATTER HW DESPERATE YOU ARE DO NOT GO TO WELCOME FINANCE FOR ANYTHING.

Hi, I have a loan agreement and hire purchase agreement through Welcome Finance. Can someone give me the address that I need to terminate the agreement through? The only address I can find is for the head office. Due to circumstances beyond my control I am having to end both agreements and am wondering, having read the above comments, what is the best way to do this. I have cancelled my card so that no other payments can be taken. The vehicle I want rid of but the problem I have is that it is out of tax as of the end of the April and I was wondering if I sent a letter terminating the contract and asking them to collect the vehicle who is responsible for the car if it has no tax? I have been given another vehicle free of HP and have had to tax it and have no money left to tax my HP car. I am a bit concerned though that Welcome may still be able to take the money from my account and it is obvious that even if you phone they don't take any notice and I cannot afford to be down by £600 just because they are wan***s. I have learnt my lesson from this company and just want rid of them and I plead with anyone even contemplating using this company or any like it - DON'T DO IT - YOU WILL BE IN DEBT FOREVER. I owe between taking a vehicle at £6000 and a loan of £5000 I owe Welcome £29000 for interest etc nearly three times the amount of the loan!

i agree that they are a complete con i applied with them they said i had been accepted all i had to do was send a copy of my drivers lisance and a waged slip and also pay a 1 off payment of £60 i paid this and then i recived an e-mail telling me they were not giving finace out as they had gone bust and if i paid yet another 60 pounds thay would pass my information on to another company but i didn't do this and it took me a good few month to recive my 60 pounds back after sending letter after letter i told them if i did not recive a refund i will take it to tradeing standards thats when i got my money back.

just be awere of this as i went to citerzans advise and was told NEVER PAY AN ADMINISRTION CHARGE AS YOU SHOULD NEVER NEED TO IF THE COMPANY ARE LAGITAMTE.

you really want to know how much of a joke this "so called company" is, well my 8 year old nephews dad died just before christmas and he had quite a big loan and because he was in debt with other companies, WF couldnt get there money back for there loan, so what did they try to do. Yes you guessed it, tried to make my 8 year old nephew to pay for it through his dads ex wife {my sister} benefits for my nephew. now tell me how this company are still trading? JOKE thats what they are. DO NOT USE WELCOME FINANCE FOR ANYTHING YOU WILL ONLY BE WORSE OFF AND REGRET IT.

I stupidly, stupidly, stupidly took out a loan with Welcome Finance for a car that I had to buy due to a recent back operation... It was cost £7, 000... I traded in my old car which was worth £1, 400, therefore I was only taking £5, 600 across finance... I had paid off over £4, 000 of this agreement and then due to unforeseen unemployment I missed a payment... Welcome Finance rang me and said they could help me by re-financing my loan for the car and I would have smaller payments for three months... what a mistake! In total I will end up paying over £15, 000 for a car that is now off the road and I still owe the 'daylight robbers' over £7, 000. Oh yeah, as for the three months, it was complete lies - it's over 7 years!
If you are considering taking a loan with these cowboys - DON'T!

I have never had a loan with Welcome FInance but did have one with Watson Finance in Scotland ( who may have been taken over by Welcome ). Anyway, my credit file now shows that I defaulted on 2 small loans which is lies. They were 3 month loans which they say I defaulted on a year later - how does this work? Anyway, I am having difficulty getting these lies off my credit file. Can anyone help? I have written to WF twice and NO REPLY. I am thinking of going to Financial Ombudsman or getting a solicitor but, will have to pay heavy, Small price to clear my name. Can anyone suggest how I can get a response from Welcome Finance?

took a car loan out with wf 25 months ago and was told by the sales manager in south shields that if i wanted to hand the car back after 2 years i could and i wouldnt owe any money as there was enough capital left in the car to pay the rest of the loan off, i now can not afford to keep the car anymore it is £312 per month i have wrote three letters to w f and no reply, i have have just sent another letter by reg post and still no reply my husband rang 4 time and the phone was hung up on him he finally got to speak to someone on friday, he told them what the manager said to him in south shields, and the person from wf told my husband that south shields branch has now closed down and they have no record of what he told us and informed us we have to pay the 48 payments and we cant send the car back we are worried sick went to the CAB and they told me to get in touch with consumer direct i have just e mailed them and waiting for a reply KEEP AWAY FROM WELCOME FINANCE (has anyone out there been told the same as me please let me know if you have as i am taking this further the more info the better i can fight them ) WATCH THIS SPACE

this company is disgrace! we took finances with them to pay for our windows 5years ago. been paying weekly on time, never missed a payment.We believed we signed the loan for 5 years and this would finish april this year. Paying weekly meant the loan would be paid of earlier as there is 12 months in year/48weeks/ but we paid 52x a year. WF stopped taking payments in january 2009 and we thought great this one is over with, we can breathe better.WRONG! mid june 2009 we get phone call of them-''you owe us £2500!'' we could not understand why but it took a month to get some answer, they stopedd taking payments in jan because we were ahead with payments but never told us. We changed bank in april and all inactive direct debits were canceled. We keep getting pathetic answers, if we ask for writen answer we waiting weeks, copy of our contract which they send was a screen print from their pc printed on half of A4 paper, where u cant see what it says...We took it to citizen advice bureau, they had a look at it and said our loan is for 10 years! we didnt sign this, why would we? paying them back twice the amount we borowed?on top of everything there is a red strike on our credit report saying we owe them for last 4 months! they didnt tell us bout this till mid june and we paid end of june 1 months instalement. They dont care what you tell them all we get is-YOU SIGNED IT, YOU PAY! lies lies lies.DO NOT USE THEM. we are currently complaining to financial ombudsman, hoping for some good news!

Can any 1 help!?!

Took a loan out with welcome 2 years ago, my final payment is due July 29th 2009. Had a telephone call this morning stating that I have still got 18 months of £163 a month to pay them. They are a nightmare, the same lady from the Cardiff branch brings me to tears every month, I have huge amounts of interest and charges put on as well in 1 day they charged me 8 £10 payments for phone calls. I don’t know which way to turn, I am a young girl who was stupid and naive to take out this loan, I have now lost my car due to the money I owe welcome, To think of paying them another 18months is hell in my book. Also they told me the reason why I owe so much is because I missed 3 payments, I missed these payments as I was laid of, My loan agreement has Payment protection insurance that I am 100% adamant that I didn’t tick that box, but it appears to have a tick on it, if I have paid for PPI why didn’t they help me when I was laid of?!

Any advice would be great

If this loan was taken out before April 2007 then you can possibly get the loan written off completely and even get money back... especially if you have payment protection. Call Citizens Advice immediately and state your case... don't give those thieving cowboys one more penny... What are they going to do? take your car off you? They can't cause you don't have it...
Call Citizens Advice Pronto!

i recently contacted a company in which any loans taken out before april 07, could be written off, i have had a loans with wf for over 10years, and this company said that uptill april 07 there loan agreements where more than likely outwith the law. they are bully boys nothing more than loan sharks. i am interested to know if anyone else has contacted the fos however in order to involve them you need to write your complaint to the company they are allowed i think a total of 6months to get back to you and only then will the FOS take your complaint on board. the are nothing short of cowboys who prey on people hitting hard times but when times get hard with them they force and bully you.

My payment to Welcome was due on the 28th July. As I had not made it by the end of the day (as I was in a meeting) when I got home some disgusting woman from Welcome Finance was on my doorstep. I will be taking out a complaint as no where did I read that these people would come to my door just because by the end of my payment due date my payment had not been made!

I need some help!

I took out a loan of £2500 with WF in Oct 2007, I then STUPIDLY topped it up twice, one with £800 in August 08, once with £700 in March 09.
Since october 2007 they reckon I have only paid £40 off the total loan of £2500! so my new total left to pay is £5238, of which I am paying back £253 per month for 3 years, that totals to £9133! I dont understand how?
I rang them today and they just baffled me on the phone :(

Can this be right? Im struggling to pay £253 per month and wish I hadnt of been so stupid.

I didnt take out PPI on the £2500, or the £800, but was charged it from August 2008. I have my signed docs, and I def didnt sign for it until they "persuaded" me in March 09.

Im so confused with it all, I dont know if I have a cause to complain or to go to Citizens advice or not?

Argh! I wish I had never heard of WF!

I have had a loan with Welcome for 2 years. ( 1 year left to go ...thank god ). I paid my monthly payment in May 2008. In May 2009 they sent me a statement showing my payment credited in May 08 but then debited in May 09. When i asked about this they said the cheque had bounced. I have given them my bank statements, a copy of the paid cheque and a letter from the bank manager informing them that the cheque was met. They will not credit my account with the £405 and i have now had to put this to the Financial Ombudsmen. I have sent over 10 letters and made umpteen phone calls and never once had a reply. They should be struck off.

I took a loan out with Welcome Finance, when I lost my job, they were a nightmare. They wanted to call at my home to collect payment, I informed them that I had sent a payment, but someone turned up at my door anyway. I am now paying the loan through a court order as they put a charge on our property, however I intend to make a complaint against them, as I received a statement recently and could not believe that every month they are charging me capitalisation fees of sometimes 1000 pounds, they need to be stopped from fleecing innocent people

WF are crap. There PPI covers nothing. Oh and the department to handle the comaplaints about PPI is "Welcomes own company". Welcome said the PPI we took out was not valid when my wife lost her Job so we started to get behind. Now we will never py the loan back as we are only paying interest. we offered to increase the payments (by half!) but it will still take 25 years (instead of 7!) to clear the loan.

DO NOT EVER GO WITH WELCOME FINANCE.

They need to be closed down as they are using loop holes in the law to rip the public off!

I find it odd that the Cardiff branch with whom I took a loan out with 6 years ago for £3000 all of a sudden had all it's staff replaced by ten year olds!

Also my parents whom were going through some money difficulties late last year decided to take out a loan with them for ten thousand as time went on their situation got worse and they had difficulties in repaying it they were then informed (a woman from the cardiff branch) that if they didnt keep up with repayments the house would be repossesd by them, I find this strange as the loan is not on the house, when I pointed this out to my parents they requested from w/f a copy of the contract, it took 4 months worth of phone calls to them and a number of visits to there office in cardiff to get it, when they did get it the contract was wrong and even though the contract was in both my parents names only one of them has sighned it and besides that the contract was an old one their new one which by the way was a new one due to being miss sold ppi (say no more on that subject!) is missing!
It has been the worsed couple of months of there lives w/f knowing that my father was working away at the time have phoned my mother constantly harrassing her and bullying her (a woman from the cardiff branch ) trying to get her to make payments that she can not afford even though they are now back up 2date!
My parents have now told w/f cardiff branch that they will only speak to head office.

My loan has now been taken over by debt managment, the first 2 months of this and w/f would not stop phoning me even though I had requested the speak to my debt managment company in the end I phoned my debt managment company to contact them and explain to them that they were no longer allowed to contact me only through debt managment.

I ###ING HATE THIS COMPANY GET THEM SHUT DOWN QUICKLY PLEASE MR OMBUDSMAN

I completely agree Dave.. they have made so much money from people that they are not entitled to... bullies!

hey guys, i too am having trouble after getting a car from wf. I lost my job about a year ago and couldnt pay the £460 a month payment, so anyway i missed a few and after a few months and endless letters i got a new job but with less pay and simply couldnt afford the re-payments. They agreeded they would clear my old debt and start again with new credit for the same car, this is only £60 a week, which i can afford but this is over 1oyrs! Ok i guess i will have to deal with that but i recently recieved a letter from them, i guess its a yearly statment saying i have 9 years left and owe...£260000! 26 grand on a car that is barley worth 3k! Hustled i know. its came to my attention that in the new contract i have no re-payment protection or gap insurance. So if anything happened to my car i would be liable to pay over 2o grand back for no car. Does anyone know what i can do to get insurance or where i can get gap cover from to insure such a large amout of shortfall.

Thank you,

John

I took a loan out with welcome of £2000 5 years ago when I was 18 very naive and in desperate need of money. The man was all friendly and I was just so releived to get the money. 3 years later I was certain I should of paid it back, I went to the offices to be told I had so far repaid £4500, then given the bombshell I still had £4500 left to pay! I broke down in tears and the same previously charming man sat and stared at me blankly. I discovered I had apparently taken out TWO life cover policies?! When I questioned this I was told they usually recommend you only take one but I chose to take two?!WHY? And also payment protection cover costing £2000 (on a £2000 loan) again WHY on earth would I willingly do that! He smugly reminded me I had signed the contract so that was that.
Since then and alot of tears and stress later I tried to get advanced money management to deal with it as I was sick of speaking to the smug man at welcome who has ruined 5 years of my life. Surprise surprise they told me they were goverment funded which was a lie so welcome had not received the payments I had given them so when I got suspicious of advanced money managements unproffessional manner and investigated I found out welcome had not been paid and nothing had been done to write off my debt etc etc (things they had promised). Now I am in the situation where I made a deal with a welcome official in Plymouth (who so far seems nice...) to pay £40 a month towards the £4500 STILL outstanding and when half has been paid the other half will be written off. I however am finding it very difficult to get this in writing. Not to mention feeling very mislead and deceived by everybody but am terrified not to pay as my credit is already ruined and I will have a breakdown if I think about this mess any more. They confuse and break you down until you have no energy to fight back.

I too am paying off a car with welcome finance that I purchased in april 2006, the value of the car was 7, 000 pound and when my credit agreement arrived the total cost was 17, 000 pound, I was dumbstruck, I had some problems with my employment on a temporary basis and was receiving calls from welcome Finance demanding payments and adding intrest, they made me fell rearly ill with their bulling ways.
I am still paying this car to date and its now anly valued at 2, 500 and yet I still owe over 11.000 and have no idea how to get out of this mess, I hate what they are doing to people its a terrible company, the other week they phoned me asking if I could up the payment to another 100 pound a month, I tol;d them they were the worst company I had ever dealt with and to leave me alone, cant we all take them to court I hate them, bevmeade@live.co.uk, contact me if anyone knows of ant sugesstions.

I brought my first car thorugh welcome in 2005 for an extortianate 349 per month-car worth 5500- finance being 16k roughly! I traded in with them for a zafira just under 2yrs later. I now had a 7k car and 17k to pay at 367 per month.

My car was stolen in july 2007. my gap and car insurance paid out 10k which was asked for by welcome and settled as far i was concerned.

In feb this year i started to get letters from them. On calling them they claimed we owed another 3k which hadnt been covered! U WHAT? why we asked when it was settled. They didnt really know- so we said whatever! Moved house in sept and they got in touch again within a week of us moving there (think other tenant gave our new address) now letter claims we owe 5k! rang them- they said we owe it cos gap paid too early and my insurance took 7m to pay out.

Got advice from CAB- they told them to sort it out as it was clearly an admin error. Husband rang them 1wk later to see progress now claims money is because negative equity from 1st car was rolled into 2nd agreement and wasnt covered by gap! havent got any paperwork anymore so asked gap what going on. they told me that 1000 was negative equity in agreement that couldnt be covered. So why in summer were they asking for 3k and now 5k. But apparantly if we pay NOW we can pay 1600 and it be cleared.

They have recorded 17 missed payments on my credit record- although all my payments had been up to date AND IT TOOK THEM 18 months to get in touch to claim we owed money! After a very long call with branch manager she said that interest was put on at beginning of agreement so we need to pay 5k if we werent going to pay 1600 this month! So 1000 rolled over from old car then got 4k added to it in interest. They have had 21k out of myself and my insurances, want a further 5k- and have the first car in their possession (likely sold on too) so all in all they think they will have 26 k and the car, and we get landed with a 5000 bill and NO CAR...

we have contacted financial ombudsman and we are awaiting paperwork from welcome. theyhave 8wks to reply to them. On monday we asked for copy of credit agreement to be sent and this still hasnt appeared. SURPRISE SURPRISE

WELCOME FINANCE are a bunch of ### preying on people who already have had enough financial troubles.

Can someone help me? I took out a loan with the "Welcome sharks" for £5000, 7 years that was due to end Dec 2010. To my surprise i recently received a statement from them stating i still owe £5555 with a settlement balance of nearly £10000 if i was to settle today!

When i called them and asked how a loan balance of £5555 plus monthly interest at APR 24% can be settled, they simply said that they recently increased their interest rates so it turns out an 8 year term is going to be doubled to 16 years, can on earth can be. If this loan was not secured to my property i would have stopped paying and let them take me to court but i'm stuck with them!

Does anyone know what i can do to get out of these sharks teeth? Please advise, dealing with Welcome Finance is worse than dealing with the DEVIL!

i took a loan out with welcome fiance nealy 3 years go for 3, 000 and have paid back 6.000 the cheek of them still saying i owe them over 2.000 left to pay them which is lies i have stopped paying them because i have seeked legal advice and they have said ive paid my loan back now and way over i got conned by welcome they are a stupid company and more needs to be done to stop this company they consitanly ring me bout 10 times a week this is a harrasment

My ex took out a loan with welcome almost 3 years ago. It was a sole loan, my name was never on it because I refused to accept the rate of interest and wasn't that desperate. Anyway, he lost his job last year, and since then they have constantly harassed me! They were calling several times a day at one point, turning up at the door, even when I was heavily pregnant with my 3rd child. I have told them repeatedly that he's not living here and we are not together but they continue to send letters to my address every week threatening legal action against him. I've emailed them 3 times in the last month but the letters keep coming. My ex is now declaring himself bankrupt because they are never happy with whatever arrangement he makes, and he's sick of them driving me up the wall. All that for what was a £1000 loan to begin with. They are a bunch of ignorant cowboys. No credit for me thank. They've put me off for life!

My name is nigel and i have had a vauxhall agauila 1.2 from welcome and an estate car before that. ...
I went in there with my own car right from the start which was a gey vauhall astra 1.4. It was on its last legs. My friend went through this wf website and i thought ok lets go up there and c what they r made of.
Friendly staff...offered cups of tea while we waited all afternoon for an answer to what car i was even going to get...luckily it was my day off. so nothing ventured by sitting there anyway apart from listening to other people saying what their experience was with wf since they had been with them, that included one taking a car back that wasnt even road worthy and they only had it a couple of hours!

Anyway, cutting to the chase, i half way paid up for the focus estate that i orignally had from them and they were offering a car with cheaper repayments. Anyway, i had signed the agreement like they get u 2 do before u get 2 c the vehicle u get 2 choose and said choose what u want. There were a couple i looked at that were reasonable to me to afford but they ummed and arhed and had basically made up their minds what u r going to get anyway!

So the 1.2 is what i landed up with and had no choice. Gets down to the roundabout and it ws starting to rain. There was a squeak on the windscreen wipers and the gears werent going in properly and before we even left the place the seatbelts werent buckling up properly in the backseat...

As time goes along the starter motor and th clutch have to b replaced at the cost of £1, 000 out of good old dads pocket cos welcome wouldnt cough up and i couldnt afford that sort of money being as i lwas already paying for repyments on the car and everything else.
I was even already suffering not being able to keep up repayments by this time cos my hours were all over the place at work. They asked me for 5 different quotes and i said hanging on a minute, i have bought the flippin car off y let alone paid ure bloody bill for which it shouldnt have happened in the first place and i am certainly not ure bloody PA!

the next thing was, i had an accident 2 my pasengers side due to an emergency stop. I was supposedly at fault for this as well and to this day since 25th october 2009 when the accident occured i am still paying for a car i havent got and it has been scrapped and also insurance with tesco's till april even though i am now with the AA for a car i made myself skint for a month to buy second hand with ebay seller...I am looking for ways myself to look up this GAP insurance buisness. If anyone finds a way to take these monkeys 2 the cleaners then let me know and i will b happy to oblige...[protected].

The site clearly says nearly 250% apr, you all got what you asked for. Welcome finance makes it very clear the amount you repay is 2.5X what you borrow. I keep getting letters to an old tenant for 3 years now, (unintentionally opened first letter) I've phoned, (guy does not live here) sent letters back "not known at this address" they still come.

Opened one today (didn’t look at name) says they will come round my house to take this guy to court if he doesn’t pay around £1500 in 14 days yada yada, they have been sending them for 3 years and clearly don’t believe me when I explained he moved and is gone.

Here’s the thing though, after all the threatening letters no body has ever turned up looking for him, and if they did I just shut the door, I don’t have to explain to some 3 rate extortionist that I'm not the guy who they want, neither do you, think about it.

If they can’t find a guy who simply moved house, then return the letters “not known at address” “person moved” what ever you say they cant prove anything and after 6 years the debt is gone according to the law, you wont be hiding for 6 years they will literally just keep sending the same crap to your house, if you save their phone numbers and never answer the door you can avoid them and trust me they will not find you ( I’ve told them many times this guy hasn’t been here for at least 3 years and they just have no other information to go on, so they send the letters and I send back.

I never taking a loan from WF, but I have done this on another company that after I paid off my catalogue bits I was charged interest, which I never paid. I then moved and only got a few hundred calls which I ignored and a few months later they didn’t even bother to try to find me, bear in mind this was not a loan, however they still wanted the money and had no way to find it, it was under a hundred pounds.

They may come to your home like anyone may, (they cant do anything but knock) it’s your house and you can open the door to whoever you like. If they had any legal course to open your door or take you to court for a few hundred pounds they wouldn’t bother with anything else. (you’d be in court) LOL They sure wouldn’t waste time writing letters and making pointless threats and phone calls.

Remember they are just trying as hard as possible to scare you into paying, because taking you to court is a lengthy, expensive and time consuming for THEM.

after having problems with this company/i described them earlier/ and the nonstopping phone calls and werbal abuse from their employees i sent my complain to FINANCIAL OMBUDSMAN and also few letters to WF and stopped any payments untill i get result from FO. also wrote to watchdog so please ppl do the same.The more people complaints to ombudsman and wathdog the sooner our disputes will be resolved and more people will be avare not to deal with this bunch of liers and cheaters.Do not comuunicate via phones only letters and if you do send tem do so via recordered post.this letter helped me to stop phone calls:
Dear sirs,

I am writing to express my serious concerns regarding the telephone calls that I have received from your company.

I am now formally requesting that all further correspondence from any department be made in writing only.

I demand that these phone calls stop immediately. I am familiar with the Protection from Harassment Act 1970 and I believe your harassment places you in breach of these acts.

If you continue to call, you will also be in breach of the Wireless Telegraphy Act (1949) and, as such, I will report you to both Trading Standards and The Office of Fair Trading.

Take further note that continued telephone calls after the receipt of a request not to call may constitute a criminal offence under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003.

You will be deemed to have been served notice of my request and I will deem it served by **/**/20**, I am advising you that any calls received after this date will be recorded with the intention of them being used as evidence.

THan i sent another one stating that no payment will be made untill ombudsman made a finnall desicion on my case and also told them that i contcted watchdog. I have now had ''peace'' for more than 5wks. I have also heard that they tend to ''borrow'' your signature so any letters i send only has printed name and no signature. I do hope i have helped someone.

To MrsAngry1,

You are an absolute credit to us mere normal individuals that have been bullied and harrassed by these group of ###s called Welcome Finance. I will certainly be taking your advice nad acting upon it... do you mind if I use some of your wording for my letter?
Thank you again!

I took a loan out with Welcome Finance for £3000 in 2007. I then had severe post natal depression and was unable to work or pay it off. I then received a bill for £6000 - which they say was the amount including interest HAD I of paid the whole bill.
In April 2009 I filed for bankruptcy - Welcome Finance were on the bankruptcy and were duly notified by my Official Receiver that I was bankrupt, and that I owed nothing.

In December 2009 I decided I needed to sort out my credit file and paperwork, and "get my life back on track" - only to discover that Welcome Finance ignored the Official Receiver, and have on my credit file that I owe them £120000! 4 times the amount I borrowed only 2 and a half years ago. They also claim that I am not bankrupt - depsite the whole going to court, official receivers and bankruptcy petition stamped by the judge!

This company is working wholly OUTSIDE the law now. It is an offence to do what they are doing, and despite my Official Receivers writing to them again in December, they are still posting my credit file with defaults, and increasing the amount I owe them!

Steer Clear of Welcome Finance - there is ALWAYS another solution to your problems