Loan Centre

Leanne-cb

You assume i am getting no-where!!! I have had a reply and have followed their cancellation policy. How you can actually say that the bullies on here are giving good advice is quite laughable! I suggest you take a look back through the conversations between apples, wutang, Enfieldian and makaveli2101. Calling someone, stupid and illiterate is no advice!

CHR15

Let us know when you get your money back.......please!

Apples is the only one in this thread who has given the full details of what you lot should do.... and it only took him 3 minutes.

How long have you lot wasted going around in circles??

I'm not surprised with some of the comments, people are banging their head against a wall!!

Kayleigh09

What a nightmare of a thread!

shaz152

makaveli2010 wrote: »

hi there can i have there address please???

This is a copy of the email I received after following the cancellation link on their website telling them not to debit my account.

"I am sorry you do not wish to continue with your Loan Centre membership.

You have the right to cancel your membership and to do so you must write to us within 14 days of agreeing to our terms and conditions on our website to receive a refund.

If you wish to cancel, you must write to the Loan Centre at the address below confirming your cancellation and request for a refund, and in this event we will refund your fee within 30 days of the date on which we receive your written request to cancel your membership. We do not receive the membership fee paid on your credit or debit card for a minimum of 30 days, therefore we cannot refund the fees earlier as we will not have received the funds ourselves.

Requests must be posted to:
Customer Service Department, The Loan Centre, 46 Alexandra Street, Southend On Sea, Essex, SS1 1BJ.

All refund requests must be made in writing including your full name, address and postcode, together with a stamped addressed envelope to ensure that refunds are sent to the correct postal address"

Hope this helps you get your money back

marmitedog

What a car crash of a thread.

I'd often wondered how these non value adding "brokers" made money.

A combination of sailing close to the legal wind, desperation and preying on peoples ignorance (or blind stupidity) it seems.

Half the Google front page of "The Loan Centre" is filled with alleged scams.

rox87

I've been reading through here, and honestly it's just not helpful in any way to post something if all you're trying to do is insult somebody. At the end of the day, everyone makes mistakes, and we can all be a bit naive sometimes. I refuse to believe that a single person on this thread can put their hand up and say 'I have never made a stupid mistake'.

Anyway, I was hit by this same scam. I thought I'd post my experiences and correspondence with the loan-centre.net in the hope that it will help someone else.

I had a council tax bill to pay, and that's the kind of thing I don't like to leave waiting, so rather than leave it til payday I thought I'd absent-mindedly browse for a quick loan to bridge the gap. The loan centre was one of a few different sites I looked at, and when they asked for my card details I assumed, after what they had written on their website and the application form, that this was because they needed to know where to deposit my loan money. Now of course I realise how stupid that was, but at the time I was quite honestly insanely busy with work and just wasn't thinking, it was as simple as that. More to the point, aside from the vague terms and conditions, there was no mention of any charge.

Lo and behold, £47.50 disappeared from my account. I was not going to take that lying down, so after googling a bit of advice I sent the following, rather irate email. This was all sent to help@loan-centre.net.

Me, Aug 13 2010 10:44 (BST): I have had a payment taken from my account for £47.50 and I want to know why and want it refunded. If I don't get a response and the matter resolved with an immediate refund within 24 hours I will be referring the issue to the FSA along with trading standards. I will be escalating this matter to the police after finding out on google that I am not the only this has happened to. I want this dealt with now.

Me, Aug 16 09:42 (BST): OK, I have now reported you to trading standards, and am now more than willing to take it to the FSA, the police, the financial ombudsman, and the small claims court. I want my refund NOW.

Marvin Thomas, Aug 16 10:13 (BST): Thank you for your email in which you have advised that you have been charged a payment for the Loan Centre Service. This payment was taken from your account as agreed as a one off membership joining fee when you completed the on line application. As stated on the website when you joined, we don't charge this fee upfront and as promised, the fee is only charged after we have found you your first recommended Lender and Loan. This service is a membership and your personal webpage will be updated regularly as new and cheaper plans, new Lenders and discounts become available to you. Your membership also includes access to your free credit report, over £85 worth of eBooks, discounts which can save you hundreds of pounds and access to lenders you won't find anywhere else. We will be bringing you updates on a regular basis of all of the latest offers in the UK financial products and discounts market. Yours faithfully, Customer Services at the Loan Centre

Me, Aug 16 10:22 (BST): Legally you are required to allow at least a 7 day ‘cooling off’ period for members to cancel and get a refund. Don’t feed me any more of your !!!!!!!!, I was completely misled by your website. You do not state what this one off charge will be in your terms at all, I don’t want “updates on a regular basis of all of the latest offers in the UK financial products and discounts market”, I want my money back, and I want it NOW. GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK.

Me, Aug 16 10:37 (BST): I am now beginning court proceedings against you. You have 1 hour to respond.

*After this, I receive a phone call on the morning of Aug 17th from Harry Williams, a customer services manager. He tells me ‘so you didn’t read the term and conditions when agreeing to payment’ etc, and basically seems very experienced in making people feel stupid for getting into this situation. I stand my ground, and tell him that while he may get away with what he does for now, we both now that it cannot be entirely legal and is pretty much stealing. I also mention the flood of similar cases I have found on the internet, which he explains away as ‘2% of our customer base’. I just laugh at this and tell him yeah, sure it is. The phonecall ends after he tells me that I will be receiving a refund within 30 days of them receiving a written request. I had sent this the night before recorded delivery, so we shall wait and see. I did ask him for a contact telephone number, but he said they deal with customer services online only, and he only rang me to ensure the matter had been resolved. I.e. to make sure I wasn’t going to follow up on my threats. I then received the following confirmation email, another copy and paste job.*

Harry Williams, Aug 17 09:39 (BST): I am sorry you do not wish to continue with your Loan Centre membership. You have the right to cancel your membership and to do so you must write to us within 14 days of agreeing to our terms and conditions on our website to receive a refund. If you wish to cancel, you must write to the Loan Centre at the address below confirming your cancellation and request for a refund, and in this event we will refund your fee within 30 days of the date on which we receive your written request to cancel your membership. We do not receive the membership fee paid on your credit or debit card for a minimum of 30 days, therefore we cannot refund the fees earlier as we will not have received the funds ourselves. Requests must be posted to: Customer Service Department, The Loan Centre, 46 Alexandra Street, Southend On Sea, Essex, SS1 1BJ. All refund requests must be made in writing including your full name, address and postcode to ensure that refunds are sent to the correct postal address. Yours faithfully Harry Customer Services at the Loan Centre.

I hope this has been helpful, basically to sum things up, threaten them with everything under the sun, and maybe you’ll be lucky enough to get your £ back! Good luck!!

CHR15

Sorry but after all your pointless ranting they have done the one thing you SHOULD have (and COULD have) done, shown you the T&C's.

Everbody makes mistakes, it is how you resolve it which counts.

The advice is to READ THE T&C's BEFORE committing and signing anything. You could have done, but didn't.

You still didn't after you realised what a scam it was, instead flew off ranting and raging via email.

After all that, they can see you are still not prepared to read the T&C's, so have kindly copied and pasted the chapter for you.

"You were very busy at work and wasn't thinking" is hardly a robust excuse for not spending two minutes researching who you are getting finaincially involved with.

The message in your OWN post above simply says "Read the T&C's to cancel and get a refund".

rox87

I have already said myself that I know I should have read them, but to try and defend this company is just ridiculous. The sheer number of complaints, the fact they don't like speaking over the phone, and the vague t&c's are all signs that is what you could describe as a 'legitimate scam' of sorts.

They 'kindly copied and pasted' those replies to every single person, they hide behind them.

I was busy, and to be honest I don't need to make any excuse to you. I was only sharing my experience with other people who had been involved with them. That is the purpose of this forum after all, not to try and make yourself feel big and clever by putting down other people.

Another point, they only instructed me on a refund after I had sent them several emails. They should have replied to my initial email personally, telling me how to get a refund immediately.

You know that saying, 'If you've not got anything useful to say, don;t say it'? I prefer 'If you've not got anything useful to say, !!!! off'.

Fiddlestick

rox87 wrote: »

The general consensus is wrong in that case, as I set up a direct debit for my council tax on the phone but for some reason they ignored this attempt and instead I got landed with a letter from a solicitor's asking for my council tax. Hence my need for a hasty loan to pay it off swiftly.

If the direct debit failed to be set up correctly, why could you not just call them up and pay via debit card?

Wouldn't the money have still been in your account?

rox87

Fiddlestick wrote: »

If the direct debit failed to be set up correctly, why could you not just call them up and pay via debit card?

Wouldn't the money have still been in your account?

I tried calling them up and they said it had been handed off already to this solicitor that sent me the letter, and it was them I had to deal with. No the money wasn't still in my account; I was still working my way out my overdraft when I set it up initially and once I had done that, which was only very recently, I cancelled the overdraft..leaving not enough money to pay the council tax, especially considering they were demanding the full amount for the whole year in one go.