welcome finance RIP OFF???

cragdoo

I too was stung by Welcome Finance ...long winded story but ...

thought I'd share my experience , in the hope it will dissuade anyone from following a similar path to me


In 1996 I split with my then wife and my daughter , not an easy time , and made all the more harder by my money situation. I moved back into the flat I owned at the time , money was tight but luckily I had a lodger who 'helped' with the mortgage and the bills. When i had to kick him out for missing rent/bill payments money was tight for a good few months , so tight that I could not afford to pay the mortgage and maintenace for my daughter. It got to the stage where I was getting threats from my ex-wife about the CSA , so to stop this I looked for a quick fix . At the time the only option to me , due to a bad credit rating , was to take a payday loan from a finance company ( if you want to know which company , pm/email me ). I initially took the £500 cash 'loan' and managed to settle things with my ex .

Things eventually went bad again , and I approached the loan company again to see if the could help me , after all the had no qualms helping me out before. I was told to apply for a secured loan , being desperate and rather niave I did. I appplied for a loan of £3000 , as this would help me to clear some existing debt and also help re-decorated my flat. I eventually got the loan , and stupidly never read the small print and I don't think I even looked at the various admin fees etc on the loan acceptance form ,all i was interested in was the bottom line and how much money I would receive. Now the next 3-4 months were pretty bad for me , I lost my mother to cancer and reached a low point , and I foolishly thought that blowing £3000 on anything and everything would help me through this bad spell . WRONG!

About 6-7 months afer the £3000 ran out , I was in another pickle , so i popped in to the loan company again and asked for help. They offered a 'Top-Up loan' of £1000 . Again niavley I thought all they would do is add £1000 to the existing loan I had . NOPE ! What they did was to arrange another loan to pay of the existing loan plus £1000 . So in actuall fact i was taking out another secured loan to pay back the orginal £3000 plus penalty fee for early repayment and another load of admin/payment protection fees !! Over the next 2 years I was to take out another 2 'Top-Up' loans of £1000 to help me out of a couple of sticky situations with bills/debts etc. I saw no harm it as the nice people at the loan company were more than happy to arrange these top up loans , and at no time did they ever say , wait can you really afford this ?

So all in all I'm sure the final loan I ended up taking out was for in the region of around £5500/£6000 !! GASP SHOCK HORROR I hear you cry , but alas my tale of woe does not end there !! Oh no , fast forward to 2005 , I had met someone else , moved in to her house , had a cracking wee boy and life was looking pretty damn sweet. The flat I had secured the loans on had sat empty for about 50-60% of the last 2-3 years , so I decide time to get rid of it . I bought it back in 1992 for £30,000 and an evaluation in 2005 had put in the region of £42,000 - £47,000. Result I would be able to sell the flat , pay off all my existing debts and still have a nice little cash nest to put aside. WRONG DIDDLY WRONG WRONG WRONG. The flat was put on the market and it was sold for £46,000 , sweet , I calculated that minus the motagage/solicitors fees and other debts I would have around £12,500 to play with . So I sat down with my solicitor and went through all the legal stuff , when he informs me that the secured loan against the flat would need to be paid off. So I phoned the loan company and asked them to forward payment details .Imagine my shock and horror when the presented a bill for just over £9,000 to my solicitor !!!! needless to say I had to pay this off and take the hit. Leaving me with just over £3,000 off my orginal £16,000 !!

After the initial shock , I sat down and did a rough calculation , and worked out that I had actually repaid the loan company in excess of £27,500 back ,£9,000 final payment and about £18,500 (7 years @ £150/month and 2 years @ £250/month) , and I had only actually received just over £6000 in hard cash from them , not a bad llittle number!

So please be warned , do not end up a mug like me , read the small print , take the time to go over all those little numbers in any agreement as they really do have some kind of meaning