We took a loan out with wellcome finance in june 2003, i have missed 4 months of payments, 2 months due to husband being off sick, and i admit to forgetting to post the claim form for the insurance. Anyway, on 21 January 2004, husband was dismissed from work, he has got to go to an appeal hearing with the managind director of the firm, but he has cancelled it, so now i am waiting for them to arrange another date themselves. I explained all this to wellcome, and they wanted £288 for january's payment, i told them i could get it to them within 2 weeks, (this was on 29th jan)they said head office needed it by 11am on 30 jan 2004, told them i couldn't get it to them that quick, and this afternoon, the rang to say they want to make an appt for a rep to come round to value the house for reposession! what are my rights regarding this, as i owe the halifax more than them in mortgage arrears, can wellcome take it all the way, or can i take it to court and get a suspended repo order on the house like i have in the past with the halifax??? any help greatly appreciated, thanks Jane.

-- Jane (andyandjane2001@yahoo.co.uk), February 03, 2004

Answers

Was the loan secured on the house? I used to have a car loan via them but it was unsecured. I too lost my job ... all this was prior to having my house repossessed but I went to Citizens Advice Bureau who negotiated payments to Wellcome Finance of £1 per month. If you don`t get some advice or send them nothing, they may well attempt to take you to court for recovery. Go see CAB :)

I know absolutely nothing about what a repo order is, sorry!

-- Mark Robinson (hey_lender_justify_it@hotmail.com), February 03, 2004.

Hiya Thanks for the reply, a repo order is a reposession order! but i know sometimes you can get it suspended, as long as you make the agreed payments, thanks for the advice anyway, i will set the ball rolling tomorrow to see what can be done to stop it happening, as i have made a propsal of payment, which obviously they don't want to know about, but how can they go for reposession for £10-000 when my mortgage is £30-000? i would've thought that the halifax would've stopped wellcome going for the reposession.

-- Jane (andyandjane2001@yahoo.co.uk), February 03, 2004.

Yes, sorry, i forgot, the loan is secured on the house, and we have another one with the black horse, who are fine about the missed 2 payments, so really the wellcome should have not give us a loan as it would be a 3rd charge

-- Jane (andyandjane2001@yahoo.co.uk), February 03, 2004.

Hi there

I have come across a number of Welcome secured agreements over the last year or so that do not comply with the Consumer Credit Act formal requirements and are, as a result, totally unenforceable.

I will try to summarise in a nutshell, although it is a complicated bit of law.

All fixed-sum CCA agreements must contain a term stating the 'amount of credit'. The amount of credit must not contain any charges which are 'credit charges' under the Act and its regulations. If credit charges are included in the 'amount of credit', the figure is wrong and incorrectly stated.

In some Welcome secured agreements, there is no term using the words 'amount of credit' - instead the phrase used is 'total amount of loan'. This is probably allowed.

In these agreements the 'total amount of loan' includes 'acceptance fees' and 'MIG fees'. These are charges for credit.

Where, as above, these charges are incorrectly included in/aggregated into the 'amount of credit' or the 'total amount of loan', the amount is mistated and wrong.

This means that the agreement lacks what the Act calls a 'prescribed term', and the result is that the agreement is totally unenforceable under s127(3) CCA.

In these cases, there is a defence to any claim brought by the lender. If the lender doesn't take proceedings, a borrower can apply to court for a declaration of unenforceability (s142 CCA) (legal help is needed for this).

In both of these situations, where the agreement held to be enforceable, so is the security. The lender must release the security and remove any land registry entry.

I hope this makes some sense - it's technical stuff.

All Welcome unsecured agreements that I have seen are correctly drawn up and enforceable, except for a single one that I came across last week.

Also, I have recently seen a Welcome secured agreement dating from mid 2003 that is correctly drawn up and set out, and therefore enforceable, but I don't know if all local offices use the same standard documentation.

Look out for 'accepatnce' fees and 'MIG fees' that come above 'total amount of loan' in the box containing all the figures, and are added into it.

Any queries, please email me or post.

All the best

Guy

-- Guy Skipwith (guy@skipwith107.freeserve.co.uk), February 03, 2004.

This is a ? for Guy Skipwith,can you tell me please do you regularly work with the victims of repo.If you do can you tell me with regards to your earlier posting what does a victim do if they have not got a copy of the original cca.

In my case the agreement was more than 17 yrs ago and stupidly I mislaid the agreement.In order to enforce debts do lenders have to provide a copy of the agreement.I was not advised by the C.A.B. at the time of repo to have agreement checked,infact they said ther was no point fighting it.It left a massive shortfall in terms of the actual mortgage. If the secured loan was now revealed to have been uneforcable where would that put me,I presume that I could not be persued for the shortfall relating to the secured loan,but would I have a case against them.

Interestingly I remember a conversation with amember of their sraff who said that it should never have been repoed and the person responsible had left their job just before the were sacked.At the time I was so shell shocked that I did not ask why.

Did this sort of thing happen to others too?I am so sorry to hear that people are still under threat of losing their homes for relatively small sums today.Please be strong Jane and fight them,I hope your loan is unenforceable.Regards from one who has been there.

-- Jack (jrw2901@aol.com), February 04, 2004.