Oh this b astards are sharks. I had them over a barrel when they decided to breach DPA. The jokers.

Anyone reading this.... STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY.

If you can't afford it outright or are getting turned down for credit... it's for a REASON. Don't use these idiots under ANY circumstances!!!!

Hi Richy,

I think you need to get the debt corrected to the right amount (the 2000 removed) and see then what your repayment plan will be.

You should also get a copy of your credit record from Experian etc to see how this may have been affected.

Alternative financing is now probably not an option.

What advice are you looking for? About their handling of the situation, your debt or?

Sparky.

thanks for reply, We had to speak to a manager regarding the bank charge that i mentioned before when we told him that 'fred' dealt with it he rolled his eyes and said oh yes well ill get that sorted for you, and he did.

When we were at welcome to query the statement showing we owed too much, we asked the welcome employee for advice his answer was "well i work for welcome so all i can advise you to do is pay the money!". Its this that makes me think an outside advisor would be best but we need someone who has the power to investigate this properly and someone who isnt in a biased position.....but who?.

Hi Richy,

Does 'Fred' have a manager?

Maybe it is time that you escalated this, possibly in writing to someone far more senior. If you are in their office and can see him, just get more demanding (but being polite and assertive, not aggressive or rude) to see his boss, or the most senior person that is available.

If you are able to find out the complaints procedure and follow this, possibly copying the Chief Exec, and see if this gets sorted for you any quicker, and it shows that you have tried to handle it before involving the FSA / FOS etc.

HTH

Sparky.

thanks for your reply, theres something not right with it, on 2 ocassions weve asked to speak to him the first time the reception said hes seeing another customer and another time they just said hes busy but he was walking round the office because we could see him. We requested the agreements 3 times now and still not had them. We were told that £2000 would be removed because they didnt know why it had been added in the first place, yet its still the same balance as before we know this because we asked for the balance the last time we spoke on the phone to them. Things just dont add up.

Richy

Do you think Fred was dodgy and doing anything which is possibly fraudulent. Has Fred now left the company?

If I were in your shoes, I would go to CAB again and get some legal advice. I think the office of Welcome that dealt with you needs to be investigated. You should perhaps contact the FSA for some advice aswell http://www.moneymadeclear.fsa.gov.uk/

I would never advise anyone to go anywhere near Welcome, you would have seen the comments online. I would rather have an old banger.

Huckster

This could be a long post by the time ive explained everything but ill try and keep it short. Approx 3 year ago my partner got a ford fiesta on a 03 plate from welcome finance, at first everything was ok and we had no problems, however my partner lost her job and making the payments started to prove difficult (forgot to mention that the amount of finance was around £13000). So after making a few short payments we knew it was gonna become a problem if we didnt get help and decided to go to citizens advice for help. They seemed like they could help and they made us an appointment with a proper financial advisor for the very next day. When we got home welcome finance rang and queried the short payments this is when my partner explained about struggling to pay and that we'd beeen to C.A.B for advice. The welcome employee(ill call him fred as ill have to refer to this employee more than once) said that they can help if we'd go down to the office, so the very next day instead of going to C.A.B we went to welcome. The visit seemed to go ok fred said he could reduce the payments by half on the car and the loan (which i havent mentioned as we dont have any problems regarding the loan account) because we were actually in credit on both accounts, this proves how well we'd payed until then, fred also said that no interest would be added because of us being in credit. At the time we needed to hurry because we had another appointment elsewhere, so fred said sign these (blank) agreements and ill fill the rest in and post yours to you, It was only because of us being in a rush and the trust we had in him that we agreed to this.

We carried on making payments as agreed although admittedly we did make the odd short payment but we still made a good effort to pay. Sometime at the end of last year we received a statement from welcome stating that we still owed them around £11000 on the car account, the loan account seemed about right. We were baffled as to why the car account was still so high, so we queried this at welcome when we had to go and reclaim a bank charge back because fred had tried to take more money out of the bank than was agreed on a late payment we made. (hope you understood that). We asked for a copy of the agreement we'd previously made with fred because we still hadnt received it in the post.

A different employee of welcome was dealing with us at this time and as soon as we asked for the said agreement he started to claim he couldnt get his hands on it as it had been sent to head office and would be filed away and that he would get it later and send us a copy ( we still havent received this agreement to date). We are now at the stage where we havent made any payments for a while and about a month ago another employee of welcome got in touch with us (fred hasnt dealt with anything on our account since the signing of the blank agreements and everytime we asked for him he was unavailable and still is) this latest welcome fiend explained that he was the last person we'd deal with from welcome before the case went to court and they made arrangements to get the car back. We explained to him what had happened with fred and that we were concerned that the balance on the car account didnt add up. He said if we agreed to start making payments agan he would look into it. The next day he rang back and said that mysteriously (and he didnt know why) around £2000 had been added to the account and that if we agreed to make payments he would get this removed from the balance, we agreed as we just want this out of the way now. Then funnily enough a completely diferent welcome employee rang and started to query our payments and when theyd be made etc this one was a woman who seemed to have an attitude, my partner explained that it had already been dealt with and the system should of been updated so that all welcome employees who looked our case up knew at what stage it was at. she claimed the system hadnt been updated and that the balance didnt show the £2000 had came off even after we'd agreed to the new payments with them, However she rang us on a number that we'd only just gave them as my partners phone had broken so i had to give them mine.

I hope this post was easy to understand as we just dont know where we stand and what to do next any help/advice would be greatly appreciated