Welcome Finance (now with Wescot)

charlie84

Hi all, hope you all well.

I'm afraid I could do with some more advice.

Back in 03/04 my hubby (wasn't married then) took out a secured loan with welcome finance for £20K. The property he took the secured loan out on was his and in his sole name. He paid every month without delay never missing a payment.

In late 04/early 05 he re-mortgaged the property, welcome finance postponed the deeds so he could re-mortgage again never missing a monthly payment.

On the 31 July 2007 the house was sold (this was the completion date) the solictor had all the details for Welcome finance and gave all the equity to them over £7k (not sure of the exact figure but could find out) Out of the sale he had nothing every penny went to Welcome as thats what he asked for. This went through with no problems at all.

The solictior at the time said they had the settlement figure for Welcome finance and that the equity covered this apart from £230.

When the house was sold the solicitor sent us a letter saying welcome finance would be in touch at our new address for the remaining £230, which they did and we paid. When he re-mortgaged he didn't sign anything for Welcome finace to postpone the deeds and hasn't signed anything to date.

Out of the blue this morning we got a letter from Wescot credit services saying that their latest enquiries confirmed we are still resident at the address they are writing to us at and that Welcome finance have instructed them to collect the balance of £30,210.88 within the next 10 days as the balance hasn't been paid off and is now outstanding, almost 4 years later after the house was sold.

We are extremley worried now as He has no paperwork (apart from the small handwritten note of the bottom of the solictiors paperwork saying Welcome will be in touch for the remaining balance, which we paid)
We have our house up for sale and are worried they may try and go for a restriction.

Any advice or help?

charlie84

bumping back onto page 1

fermi

Have you talked to the solicitors?

charlie84

No they are no longer in business, tried to track them down this afternoon

charlie84

bumping back to page 1

GeorgeUK

Might be worth sending a subject access request to Welcome Finance (SAR - cost £10)

charlie84

sorry to sound dumb but whats on of those? and how do I do that?

GeorgeUK

Under the Data Protection Act, you are allowed to request a copy of all data held on your by a company. There is a maximum fee of £10 for this. They should provide you with all data they hold including payment details and correspondence. Hopefully this will include correspondence to your solicitor so you can sort out what's happened.

Do you know what bank was involved in the transfer of monies for the house sale? You may be able to get some details from them about what has happpened and where the money went. (i would request data before sending a SAR for this)

This is a version of a SAR for requesting credit agreement data. You will hopefully be able to amend it to suit your needs. You could just ask for all data, but it is best to be specific so that nothing is overlooked. I would request data for anything connected to the address of the property and that was sent to or received from your solicitors.

Data Protection Act 1998
Subject Access Request

Dear Sir/Madam

ACCOUNT NUMBER: xxxxxxxxx (or multiple numbers if more than one account)

Under the Data Protection Act 1984 and 1998, and including the right of subject access under these acts, I hereby request that you supply me with any and all historical data in your possession which relates to me and am entitled to under section 7(1) of the Act. This includes in particular, but is not limited to, the following:-

1. The original signed, executed credit agreement and any terms and conditions that applied to the account at the time of default and at the time the account was opened.
2. Transcriptions of all telephone conversations recorded and any notes made in relation to telephone conversations by your company.
3. Where there has been any event in my account history over this period which has required manual intervention by any person, I require disclosure of any indication or notes which have either caused or resulted in that manual intervention, or other evidence of that manual intervention in relation to my account.
4. True copies of any notice of assignment and/or default notice or enforcement notice that you have sent me, with a copy of any proof of postage that you hold.
5. Documents relating to any insurance added to the account, including the insurance contract and terms and conditions, date it was added and deleted (if applicable).
6. Details of any collection charges added to the account; specifically, the date it was levied, the amount of the charge, a detailed financial breakdown of how the charge was calculated, and what the charge covers.
7. Specific details of the fees/charges levied by any other agency in respect of this account and a detailed breakdown of said fees/charges and what each charge relates to and on what date said fees/charges were levied.
8. A genuine copy of any notice of fair use of my data as required by the Data Protection Act 1998.
9. A list of third party agencies to whom you have disclosed my personal data and a summary of the nature of the information you have disclosed.
10. Copies of statements for the entire duration of the credit agreement or details of all account transactions.

I enclose the statutory maximum fee of £10. This fee is to be used solely for the purposes of supplying the Subject Access Request. You have 40 days in which to comply.
If there is specific information which you require in order to satisfy yourself as to my identity, please let me know by return. However, please note that the above address is the one which you normally use to communicate my private business to me and which you have hitherto found to be acceptable.

Yours faithfully,

charlie84

Thank you I will get onto this tonight. My hubby can't remember what bank it was with, think it was Halifax but not sure