MSE News: 'Stigma' stops payday loan complaints, Ombudsman says

I am one of the successful complainers in the Ombudsman statistics, and the guy I dealt with there was very efficient & helpful - but the whole process is loaded in the payday lenders favour - my complaint was that they charged me £60 of fees for them not being able to take a payment from my account, when I was able to demonstrate the funds were there and available, and that they were wrong to treat it as me defaulting on a payment (I'm not convinced they tried to take payment, but if they did, any error was between the bank and them, not to do with me). I had to wait 8 weeks after the initial complaint before the Ombudsman would look at it, then it took a couple of months to go through the Ombudsman process- then when the Ombudsman awarded me £50 compensation in addition to the refund of the £60, the lenders appealed & I was told it would take another 2-3 months to wait for a result and receive any payments due to me, so I just took my £60 refund and left it at that. All in it was 4 months from the charges being unfairly (yes, you defenders of payday lenders, unfairly) taken from my account to the time they were returned to me.