Interesting! My partner also spoke to Welcome today and the guy He spoke to seemed to be a bit cagier about the whole matter. He said it was a financial decision the company had come to and that they obviously wouldn't be making an announcement. He did however confirm that it applied to all Welcome customers with an active account. He had originally called to follow up some complaints I'd made months ago. The Welcome guy basically said that we were never going to get the answers to the questions I'm asking (agreement flaws, fee/ interest queries, default queries) and that We should just take it to the FOS and get the ball rolling. I think there is a lot going on at Welcome at the moment. The burden of their bad credit reporting seems to be done with for their current customers but don't forget this doesn't erase the debt. They can and will try to chase it.

I logged on here to search this very subject! I have ongoing disputes with Welcome regarding my partners account and received a long awaited letter from them just today. One of the paragraphs reads 'I can confirm that Welcome Finance no longer reports the status of active accounts to the credit reference agencies; this will be of benefit to you as it will show no adverse history' Very interesting. I was wondering if this applied to only him but it would appear to affect maybe everyone with an active account. Why would they do this? It's normally extremely hardwork to get this kind of data changed as they're legally entitled to be able to report it and like that it's detrimental to your financial situation. Payback for them if you don't pay for whatever reasons. It's a secured loan with payments made only a few months ago so even stranger I think. Really strange behaviour from Welcome but GREAT news for their long suffering customers. Check your credit files guys!!

Thanks for the response Major Player. I am in the fortunate position with Welcome where the payments are totally up-to-date - none have been missed. My concerns regarding forcing the sale of a jointly owned property on the basis of a 'single' loan were purely hypothetical, thankfully! When rehashing our finances, my other half informed me of this loan from Welcome. I don't recall ever having signed anything in relation to this and it's only his name on the agreement. There was no legal charge paperwork in the response that I had from the SAR, but there is a legal charge on our property. I would assume they would have needed clearance from my mortgage provider for this to happen - should they have any paperwork relating to this request from Welcome? This may be an avenue to go down. I know this loan needs to be paid back as OH had the money, but I begrudge us having to pay it back at such a high interest rate and would like to negotiate on this as much as possible! We've already paid back nearly £8K on the original £15K loan and there is still over £15K remaining. I'd like to sell our car and give them the other £7K and not have anything to do with them again. In an ideal world.............

Hi Gullible, Interesting to see that I'm not the only one involved in a secured loan being dealt with in this manner. I have yet to hear from Welcome about the points I raised in my letter to them - I've chased them up this week. My problem is that how can the person that has not signed for a secured loan on a jointly owned property still be liable for the debt when they have never signed for it on the application. Therefore, if the named person on the loan stopped paying for any reason, could they really force the sale of a property that is also owned by someone else? I don't see how. The one that didn't sign the forms wouldn't have agreed to the interest rates or anything. I know that If I had seen the paperwork prior to my partner signing, I never would have gone ahead with it no matter how desparate we were at the time. I don't think Welcome will accept the arguments, but I'm going to keep pushing the matter!

Last time of asking I promise! Can anyone in the know please have a look at my attached agreement/ statements and advise whether everything seems to be ok? I have now raised the other points I had mentioned with Welcome and are now waiting for a response but ideally, I would like to be able to query as much as possible to be able to argue the interest rates etc and try and agree a more favourable repayment plan. Many thanks.

Bump! Can anyone confirm whether the interest calculaion are correct? I can olny get to Welcome's figures by using an interest rate of 22.2 - the one on their statement, but the rate on the agreement is 24.6%. Does this matter? Many thanks,

Thanks all for your comments. Even you High Court Enforcer - you've just proven to many people what they already thought - bailiffs are patronising, deluded bullies. Very helpful on a 'I beat the bailiffs' thread. I hope you're very 'prowd' The bailiff I was dealing with appeared to be very uneducated - was it you? Your comments really don't affect me - if I 'avoided' paying council tax for six years as you've suggested then the liability orders for each one would have been ALOT higher than £300 - £400. Wouldn't they? I'm also not too concerned about anyone 'reading' this online. If the matter was taken any further by particular people, I'd have alot more mud to throw then them. Realy, what would they do. NOTHING I'm sure. I agree that anyone currently dealing with ANY bailiff firm needs to make sure that all is as it should be with regards to charges etc. The screenshot that I received was just a copy of a simple database detailing the dates the account was allocated, the date fees were added, the date visits took place etc. It should be easy enough to check that everything tallies and I'd be more than willing to help any of you that receive one.

You guys are GOOD! I can see this being very helpful for people.

I think you're right Beyondhope - I'm not very good at navigating this site yet. You prompted me in your earlier Welcome post to spread my experience around a little bit. See, you've done ANOTHER good deed for the day! Bless you.

Thanks Dibbo. I feel VERY strongly about bailiffs and the advantage they take of people that are obviously in very precarious financial positions, or like myself, just find it difficult to make regualr monthly payments. As my partner is self employed in the building trade income has/ and always will vary on a month to month basis. I know we have to pay Council Tax (even though I don't agree with it) but cannot always afford to pay the full month they are expecting Rundle and Co imparticular seem to be very keen to put charges on all accounts - particulary if they know you are about to pay them off. This happened to me a couple of times. I'd give them the ate on which I'd make the payment and they would add made up levies and van fees the day before just to 'get them in'. My accounts were consistently dealt with in such ways that I can now see that this is how they operate. As my abusive bailiff told me 'Do you think we do this for nothing?'. LOL. yes mate, you did collect for nothing in the end!

Hi All, I just wanted to give you all some hope that you can take on the bailiffs and WIN! My 2008/2009 council tax bill of £378 was passed onto Rundle and Co earlier this year even though I made sooooooo many attempts to try and make an arrangement direct with the council - not interested unless I paid the amount in full. I had been 'bitten' numerous times by Rundle and Co over the years due to Council tax arrears - I've always made consistent payments to the Council just never as much as they wanted! Basically, I realised that the amount owing just seemed to go up and up without any formal notification of charges etc being made available. Given that this seemed to be the case for the last six years of council tax, I ended up sending them an SAR. I received a response within the 40 day time frame but it just consisted of a copy of all of their general threatening correspondance that they send out and a list put onto a word document of all of the charges that had been incurred for each account - no dates of charges mind you, just a list. I wrote back to them advising that I wanted actual screen prints of my account - this seems to be key - I would imagine they fob off lots of people with manual lists. When I received the list and compared the charges against what they are legally able to charge I found many discrepancies. Things to look out for are as follows:- 1) Check when 1st and 2nd visit fees are charged. I found that on all of my six accounts, these visit fees had been added to the account as soon as a bailiff was allocated to it regardless of whether a bailiff had made a visit or not. They were also just lumper together as visit fees making them look as though I'd been charges 1st and 2nd visit fees on the same day. This is a NO NO - they cannot charge for two visits on the same day. Each visit by the bailiff should be recorded so you'll be able to see when you were cahrged and when the visits took place - if they ever did! 2) I had paid levy and van fees on the accounts without knowing about them. For most of the accounts there was no proof that a levy had even taken place. I've never let bailiffs inside my house. If they can't prove what was levied it doesn't stand. On the more recent occasions, they levied on random cars on the street and charged me for them. If you don't own the car this autmatically makes the levy invalid. I was also 'lucky' enough to have had an abusive bailiff who called me a thief etc for not paying council tax and took it straight to my Council. They stuck up for the bailiff firm at first but as I began highlighting the charges added to my account etc they began to see my side of the story - I think they were quite embarrased that I had caught them all out. In all I was refunded over £800 of charges over six accounts on my first request - no need for threats of courts. If they haven't followed legislation, they are in the wrong. If anyone wants any queries/ advice, please let me know and I will do my best to assist. The bailiff company swore me to secrecy on their 'goodwill gesture of a refund, but screw 'em!

You are very good Beyondhope about helping people out just for the good of it. I take my hat off to you! Very helpful for people, thanks!

Hi Ria, I don't have much advise at this time, but I would say you've done everything right so far - sending off the SAR is key. I would say that there's not too much advice anyone can give until you have the results of your SAR. It's what you get sent that is interesting as this SHOULD give you copies of everything that's held on file for you - agreements, application forms, statements, default charges etc. What are your current positons with concerns to the SAR for Welcome and the CCA to Blackhorse? When you have had a response to your reqests from these companies, it's probably worth starting a thread for each one to get the most help from the knowledgeable posters of this site. As far as Welcome is concerned, your CCA should provide you with all the charges information you need to make a claim. I would then assume it;s a case of listimg these charges in a letter to Welcome and asking for reimbursement. I'm sure there'll be better people to help you every step of the way. I currently have a thread going for my queries against Welcome, but I'm not really getting much feedback unfortunately. However, I think it's because my query is more 'knowledge specific' whereas many people on here have experience with SAR'S and CCA's. Good luck on your journey - you're sure to have a'crazy' one withnWelcome based on some of the threads on here. On a more positive note, the PPI reclaiming seems to be pretty straightforward at the moment. Once your SAR advises you of what you've paid, ask for it back. Did you request that you have PPI cover, or was it one of the 'rules' of obtaining the loan?

Well, just to update, I have now queried the above points with Welcome and will await their (no doubt) convulted response! If possible, would any knowledgeable person be able to have a quick look at the agreement/ statements that I posted up and advise me of whether they think the interest/ repayment calculations are correct? My untrained eye believes them to be, apart from the charging interest on the acceptance fee/ broker fee. Any advice anyone can offer will be much appreciated. Many thanks

Many thanks for your input Major Player. I definitely didn't sign a legal charge and one wasn't included in the SAR response. There is a registered charge against my property though so I kind of thought all was not as it should be. This will be my main argument for Welcome to rethink their extortinate interest rate. I'm aware this will be a frustrating few months with Welcome but I'm in for the long haul hopefully. If you don't ask (many times!) you don't get, right?!