Wonga Please help???

dazza12 wrote: »

Their landline telephone number is 0871 288 5704. Yes it does cost 10p a minute, this is hardly a scam when 1000s of companies get away with using 0871 numbers. My bank and ISP insist on using 0871 and 0844 numbers and often have me holding for a long time.

I've used the company in the past, and probably will again. I'm not up to my eyeballs in debt (in fact owe about a tenth of what I did 5 years ago), but occasionally I've needed to use them when a car repair has occurred the wrong side of payday. I've been fully aware of their terms, and also know how misleading APR can be when applied to short term loans. For instance, they don't want to lend to you for a year, so why would a yearly calculation be appropriate? A separate calculation is needed for these types of loans (and also for overdrafts, bank charges etc) so a proper comparison can be made.

My own situation is that I needed £250 for 14 days. Paid it off on payday and that was that. A few months later came home to find water all over the floor. I couldn't afford to buy a washing machine so checked out Wonga again - this time borrowed £400 initially for 14 days again but paid this off within 5 days - if I remember correctly paid only £25 in charges. That's less that what my bank would have charged me if I'd gone over my limit.

It's not intended to be used by those people robbing Peter to pay Paul, or who are at the point of desperation. As they credit check, it's likely such people will be filtered out at application stage.

They do allow you to settle at any point during the loan. Most of their competitors insist on the loan being fixed so at least you can reduce any interest charges if you've got funds before the collection date.

It could be argued that I could use my credit card to do exactly the same thing. Although I've got a credit card, I use this for petrol and other work expenses, and get this repaid by my employer at the end of the month. My limit on this is low, this was requested by me - the last time I had a huge limit on my credit card was when I got into trouble (every purchase was justified as an 'emergency'). I'm not going there again so requested a low limit.

I know that this sounds like I'm a Wonga employee, but I'm not. I agree that some people should avoid such companies like the plague, their problems will not be solved by this company but will compound them. However, for people like me it's worked.