Welbeck Group-‘You’ll Never Get Past Security…..”

July 3, 2009 in The Welbeck Group, Welbeck Group cold calling
Tags: Blog defamation, blog defamation suits, defamation suit, Greg Knight, new media defamation suit, welbeck finance, Welbeck Group, welbeck group complaints, welbeck group reviews, welbeck wealth, welbeck wealth reviews

or How I Got my (some) Money Back From Welbeck Wealth

When I get out of the lift at Welbeck’s there’s no one at the reception desk. There’s a sign saying ring the bell for service, kind of like a nasty seaside b & b. Is it a sign of the times that Welbeck can no longer afford a receptionist?

So I ring the bell and a tidy pleasant young man attends to me. Such a difference between this young man and the Cathy Booth person who hung up on me  yesterday, or the Greg Knight person who won’t reply to mail.

I tell the tidy pleasant young my name and that I’m here to pick up a cheque from a Cathy Booth.
He tells me to take a seat while he goes to find it.
But I don’t sit.
Instead I go and stand near the window and stare into a glass cabinet, a bad-taste prism-shaped kind of thing, something like Superman might have kept his razor and shaving cream in in his bathroom back on Krypton.
It’s all erect and angular, a testosterone tower of photographs of men in suits smiling at the camera and giving each other trophies for golf and fishing and making lots of money and other important stuff.
There are no women in the photos in the Krypton Kabinet.

And interestingly, no awards for customer service.

There are a couple of those ugly cut glass trophies with the name Greg Knight on them and I start looking at name badges pinned to the mens’ suits in the photos. The name badges are too tiny to see any names but I think I know which one is Greg Knight. I think it’s the one with the wide head who smiles out of many of the shots while other men  shake his hand and give him trophies.
He’s looks like a man who might recite sections of Ricky Gervais dvds at barbecues.

On the wall to the right of the cabinet is a framed pale green certificate that proclaims Welbeck Wealth participate in a thing called a fair treatment of customers scheme. Or something like that.
It seems it’s a kind of organisation in which companies get together and agree to treat their customers in a nice and fair manner.
I think Welbeck might have to remove their certificate unless there’s a section for companies who withhold monies owed, hang up on their clients, ignore them and then threaten that security won’t allow them in their offices to collect their money.

There’s not much to look at after that so I sit down in a chair and look at a woman who’s also waiting there until I’m distracted by a man ferreting through some draws at the reception desk (ferrets ferret, right?). I recognise the man from the testosterone tower of awards; it’s him himself, the trophy winning Greg Knight.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Greg Knight, ‘we can’t seem to find your cheque,’

If you’ve come across this while looking for reviews of Welbecks, then the fact that they’ve lost a cheque they wrote less than 24 hours ago should be review enough. What kind of place is this? I wouldn’t trust them to get my clothes off the line and put them in the right drawers let alone organise my finances.

I smile up at that wide head of his and think about where Waterstones is so I can get the ingredients for the placard I’ll make if they try to send me away without the 8000 pounds they owe.
‘Amazing isn’t it,’ I say to the woman waiting here with me who I’d been looking at earlier, ‘how difficult it is to get them to find the money when they owe you it,’
She smiles and says really and asks me what was happening.
It looks like she’s a potential client and I’m thrilled and almost dribbling at the thought that I might be able to lose Welbeck a client right here and now in their very own offices.
‘They’ve owed my partner 8000 pounds for 6 months and have ignored phone calls and letters threatening them with solicitors so as a last resort I’ve come down here to try to get it myself. And now they’re pretending they’ve lost it,’
The woman gets one of those ‘Oh my God’ frowns on her face.
‘Yes, and yesterday Cathy Booth hung up on me. They are so unprofessional. I threatened to come down here with a placard and protest on the footpath outside if I didn’t get my money back and they told me I’d never get past security. They have caused my partner such stress over the last 6 months.’
‘Well what reason did they have for not giving you the money?’ she asks.
‘Cash flow problems they told me.’ I say. What do you call that final thrust of the sword when a bull is felled in a fight? My internal crowd is on it’s feet, cheering me.

Cathy Booth was not only unprofessional but perhaps foolish to tell me that ‘Cash Flow Problems’, amongst many others, was the reason Welbeck Wealth couldn’t give the money back.
I’m happy now though that I can ‘share it with the group’ so to speak.
‘Oh my God, really? That’s reeeeeally interesting,’ says the woman.
‘Are you dealing with that Cathy Booth or Greg Knight?’ I ask her.
‘Yes, one of them,’ she says and just then a small woman with long dark hair comes out to greet her and sees us talking.
The woman gets up to leave and thanks me for the information.
I say good luck, you’ll need it.
As they walk off I hear the small dark haired woman ask if the other woman if we know each other.
‘No, we just got chatting while we were waiting.’ she says and I sit there and wait until Greg Knight brings me over a cheque for 6000 pounds and I leave.

————————————————————————-

I’m sure if the woman mentions what I told her the small dark haired woman will have some story different to mine. But the story, for anyone else thinking of dealing with Welbeck Wealth, is that they owed money and didn’t want to, or even worse for a company that is supposed to offer financial advice of all kinds, COULDN’T give back.

Rather than go down the costly time consuming avenue of ‘legal action’ I decided to shame/frighten them into action.
I told Cathy Booth I would ‘slate’ Welbeck Wealth all over the internet, that I would post this story to every financial forum I could find, I told her I would parade out the front of their offices with a placard every day until they gave me the money back.
And I told her I’d spoken to a journalist who was interested in the story. What I didn’t say was that it was my partners son who was of course interested in the story from a personal view point, but told me journalists are wary of being used to settle disputes.

For 6 months Welbeck Wealth behaved appallingly, ignoring phone calls, emails, letters and then eventually lying about a finders fee and deducting 2000 pounds from the 8000 pounds owed. They simply did not want to give the money back and in the end found some way to hang on to a bit of it.

I know for a fact my partner is not the only person in this position. There are other clients, or perhaps former clients of Welbeck Wealth who are owed money. I don’t know the sums, I just know they’re owed.

Welbeck should not have treated my partner in this manner. Powerless to do anything else, I resorted to threatening them with…well, this kind of internet publicity. I’m going to keep this blog up for the same length of time it took to get the money back from them.

But if Welbeck Wealth want me to take it down, it’ll cost them 1% of …no, wait, 3% of 210 thousand pounds.