Wonga - Please avoid this company!!

chrisb1983

Ok guys, please bare with me because I think it would help if I told the whole story from the begininning on this one:

I applied for a “quick fix” loan to get me to payday as I need to pay off a bill that fell before I got paid. The loan amount was £130 and the total amount payable was £152.79, this was over a 2 week period (I know this method of borrowing is expensive but I could afford to do it).

Anyway, it got to my payday, and I assumed Wongas money had been taken out, the reason I thought this was because I used Wonga 2 months earlier and it was simply taken from my bank using their automated system. However 2 weeks after my payday I was talking to a friend about Wonga and how it worked, and I show him the website. I logged into my account and to my horror the loan had not been paid back, and instead I was confronted by a figure that was more than the original amount I had to repay £170! I frantically phoned my bank to see how much was left in my account by this time, I did not have enough to clear the balance, So I paid £100 to them. I tried to phone them the next day but couldn’t get through, I did this for 3 days on my lunch they never answered the phone once in those 3 half an hour blocks.

Today I had a day off from work, so I was determined to get hold of them, which I finally did, but it was their “overflow team” or some non-sense, I told them what had occurred and the guy on the phone clearly couldn’t care at all, but he said he would pass my details onto “wonga”, which was a bit strange since that’s who I thought I was talking to anyway!!???

About two hours ago I received 2 emails from Wonga completely contradicting each other please read them, and take note of the times they were sent as well as the content....

Sent: 08 March 2010 16:50:30
Hi,
This is to confirm that you are currently on a payment arrangement and the your next due date
is the 11 March 2010 total due £80.55 and can be viewed by accessing your account at [REMOVED] where a new option is now available as" repayment arrangement".

You can extend, pay, view your balance or pay a part of your balance at anytime by logging into your
account at [REMOVED]

Regards,
Wonga Collections Department
0844 842 9109

Sent: 08 March 2010 16:45:02
Hi Chris,
Thankyou for the part payment this email confirms that your loan has been extended. Your new repayment date is 11 Mar 2010 when we will be collecting £91.23 from your debit card. A £18.50 charge has been added to your balance for this transaction. Please be aware that interest will continue to accrue on your outstanding balance until you have repaid your loan in full.
The customer service team
0871 288 5704

So within 5 minutes the money that they want from me has changed by £11? This just proves they are incompetent rip off merchants, the FSA, OFT and BBC’s watchdog need to be told about these con men.

Beast

Let's be honest - 'Wonga' doesn't exactly scream credibility does it?

chrisb1983

The name of the company isn't really important, the fact that they are ripping people off is the issue here.

Enfieldian

Sounds like you need to keep track of your finances better, to be honest.

chrisb1983

Perhaps I am a little disorganised and naive when it comes to my money, but the point in my post is that Wonga have clearly not collected the money purposely so they can try to justify adding more money on to the debt

benoit

Who was it that only 'assumed' they took thier money, but didn't actually check to make sure? You've shot yourself in the foot basically.

immoral_angeluk

I can't see why the FSA etc would be interested, you didn't repay the debt on time so they are entitled to charge you extra, the terms should be set out in their terms and conditions, if not, then you may have a case to argue to the FSA but you'd have to put in a formal complaint to 'wonga' first.

tummy6

FSA would be interested because Treating Customer's Fair princples. One of them is the product should operate as excepted. If the payday loan was automatically taken out on the first instance and the communication was exactly the same, it is expected that this would occur on the second instance. You might want to write a FOS compliant, with the assistance of the CAB, to this effect. If you actually selected a different repayment options at the time of the payday loan, then you really have no defense.

Wanton

Can I just check, you say when you checked your bank account there wasn't enough money in there to make the payment? If so then perhaps Wonga tried to take the payment but couldn't because of a lack of funds.

woody01

chrisb1983 wrote: »

The name of the company isn't really important, the fact that they are ripping people off is the issue here.

How are they 'rippinig you off'?
You owed them the money, and it didn't get paid.

Surely you can see it is your responsibility to ensure these things are paid on time.

Also, if you were that short of funds when realising it hadn't gone, how did you assume that it had been paid?
If you only have a limited amount in your bank at any time, you would surely notice that you overspent.

chrisb1983 wrote: »

Perhaps I am a little disorganised and naive when it comes to my money, but the point in my post is that Wonga have clearly not collected the money purposely so they can try to justify adding more money on to the debt

- Being naive with money is no defence to not paying and suggesting you are being ripped off.
- I doubt this was on purpose, and even if it was, it is your job to look after your finances, and not some loan company that borders on extortion.

cockywatchman

I had a wonga loan my debit card broke so I ordered another then I got a call saying payment wont go through etc etc so I checked my account and there was plenty in there, I told them be a couple of days before i get my new card.

So when it arrived i logged on my account to find they stiffed me for another £60 for a couple of days being late, so I paid and thought that was it.

I check my credit file every month but callcredit I don't really pay that much attention to, I was horrified when I got my report in late february to see that my account was 3mths late for £21, interestingly they had no updated my account at all for previous two months.

I rang them saying at the worst I was one week late and I paid it in full, they had a manager call me back and he said I can see u paid it off etc etc he would refer it to their credit reference dept.

I checked it callcredit other day and still few weeks later nothing had changed.

I have reported it to callcredit now hoping they can sort it out, but wonga direct are awful reporting conduct on account which are incorrect.

Callcredit are useless too sending me an inital message saying nothing we can do unless account hasn't updated for 6wks!, it's been 3mths! idiots.