Welcome Finance - do i have a case for complaint ?

waveydave

Hi All,

quick run down on the background first.

took out a Welcome Finance loan for 15k, secured on the house.
struggled to pay, was told by local office that we could have a payment holiday and pay the extra few months we missed at the end of the term.
2 yrs later was contacted by head office as we were seriously behind on payments, was told welcome finance dont do payment holidays, never had etc - obviously a ploy / lie from the local branch.
made an arrangement to pay extra to get the arrears payed off - stuck to this religously and, well not missed a payment in 5 years.
Last year we were contacted by Welcome to say if you pay X extra a month you can reduce the loan term by X months saving you X pounds. Great we thought but on further examination there seemed to be an oddity with the account whereby regardless of how much we paid on it it would never be paid off.
to cut a long story short the upshot was that nobody at welcome knew why or how the loan could never be paid off so after 6 months of endless phone calls questoning it we decided to cancel direct debit - Funnily enough within 2 weeks they had come back to us with an explanation of what the problem with teh account was - Essentialy, allthough the extra we paid every month to cover the arrears covered x amount each month more interest was added on - So, from what i understand unless we pay about £2000 in a lump sum to cover a load of interest we will pay for ever and a day and the loan will never end.

There is more - charges over the years for letters, charges for home visits that didnt happen, charges for phone calls that were essentialy to say "dont forget your DD is due at the end of the month" etc.

Im not sure if ve explaned my situation well above so please ask questions and ill try and make it more clear - Essentially what i need to know is do i have a legitimate cause for complaint (and how do i go about complaining) ? Can i get this interest written off legaly as it seems to have been added "underhand" and any advice ?

Cheers

waveydave

Nobody got any suggestions or help ?

Bravehearted_2

What exactly are uou asking? There is no question here.

You were seriously behind on arrears and unless you have paid all the arrears and then some - in theory, you will always be behind.

If you cant answer the questionnof whether you've caught up to the arrears with a yes, them this situation is the outcome.

As for the charges, well those would be in the agreement that missing payments etc will cause charges. You could probably fight for the home visit charges that never happened.

IMO not a wise choice to secure 15k on your home and then default.

waveydave

Bravehearted wrote: »

What exactly are uou asking? There is no question here.

You were seriously behind on arrears and unless you have paid all the arrears and then some - in theory, you will always be behind.

If you cant answer the questionnof whether you've caught up to the arrears with a yes, them this situation is the outcome.

As for the charges, well those would be in the agreement that missing payments etc will cause charges. You could probably fight for the home visit charges that never happened.

IMO not a wise choice to secure 15k on your home and then default.

Thing is we were led to believe we werent defaulting - a payment holiday is a different thing to a default isnt it ?

That is my main cause for concern / annoyance - yes you can argue that if we hadnt of taken the payment holiday we wouldnt of been in this situation but had we been reliably informed by welcome and not lied to then we wouldnt of defaulted.

As for your opinion of it not being wise to secure 15k on your home and then default, many thanks, i needed a ticking off and nod of disaproval :think:


to clear up what ive posted in the OP:

when i say "we struggled to pay" I mean exactly that - i dont mean we didnt pay and i dont mean we defaulted on payment - I mean wife was very ill and we struggled to pay for a few months whilst wages were down and money was stretched.

nottoolate

yes. you have very good grounds to complain http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumer/complaints.htm

waveydave

Oh and if anybody needs a black and white question so as to answer - this is it :

Should i pay a lump sum with no questions asked to cover the extra interest ?

Should offer to over pay each month to try and bring down the extra interest ( though my understanding of this is the interest will never dissapear this way as each month more will go on) ?

or should i argue the toss with them as i feel we have been led down the garden path somewhat with the payment holidays that have got us into this mess.?

Thanks

[Deleted User]

If you ever think you have even a small complaint, go for it! See what happens, obviously only when it costs you 0.00 or very little! :-)