Wonga / Payday Loans BEWARE!

Mindless_Clone

EllaBeagle wrote: »

I watched This morning on wednesday about the woman who turned to prostitution due to payday loans. I actually had to disagree with her! No matter how bad things may have got with wonga I would never have thought that was my only way out :eek:

Very respectable profession that. One of the oldest in the world.

antrobus wrote: »

Obviously not, since it appears that you regularly don't have sufficient funds to pay your bills. Taking out the payday loan was only a temporary solution to a more permanent problem. You need to address that problem. As suggested above the DFW board might well be the place to start.

I am guessing you posted that without reading this posted before it:

EllaBeagle wrote: »

The problem started when my job ended.

Understandable and these things happen. FWIW it's all very well for us to sit here and say "oh you should never use them rip off merchants" but some people really don't realise what they're getting into. These companies have very clever marketing strategies making it look easy to borrow small sums and pay back and look transparent what you are paying. Paying say, £120 back on a £100 short term loan looks pretty reasonable to a lot of people who have no real money experience. These companies target the younger generation so perhaps have got into situations through short term poor money management; people who probably wouldn't think twice to spending £20 on a round of drinks on a night out so it seems like a good deal.... until next week when they can't pay it back and the interest rates really start to kick in.

So yep, the more threads and articles out there that say "beware of payday loans" that will get indexed in search engines, the better.

EllaBeagle

Mindless_Clone wrote: »

Very respectable profession that. One of the oldest in the world.





I am guessing you posted that without reading this posted before it:



Understandable and these things happen. FWIW it's all very well for us to sit here and say "oh you should never use them rip off merchants" but some people really don't realise what they're getting into. These companies have very clever marketing strategies making it look easy to borrow small sums and pay back and look transparent what you are paying. Paying say, £120 back on a £100 short term loan looks pretty reasonable to a lot of people who have no real money experience. These companies target the younger generation so perhaps have got into situations through short term poor money management; people who probably wouldn't think twice to spending £20 on a round of drinks on a night out so it seems like a good deal.... until next week when they can't pay it back and the interest rates really start to kick in.

So yep, the more threads and articles out there that say "beware of payday loans" that will get indexed in search engines, the better.

Exactly. People always think it will never happen to them.

Take for instance my first loan of 100.00. I paid 120.00 which hit me hard unexpectedly. I then got another loan for 150.00.

Paid back 180.00 on the 150.00 meaning I was 180.00 down. Again hit us hard. Got another loan for 200.00.

And it goes on. I'm now up to 480.00 as had to get another one today to help with bills.

I can only hope that within the next month it will be sorted and I'll never have to use them again. It doesn't matter how much you carefully plan your finances. **** happens!

EllaBeagle

Mindless_Clone wrote: »

Very respectable profession that. One of the oldest in the world.

:rotfl: That will be my thread for next week.

Mindless_Clone

:rotfl:

Do yourself a favour and speak to your bank or credit card company ASAP - first thing Monday if not possible to do it sooner. Arrange a small loan and take the money straight to Wonga and pay it off. If you explain to them why you need it and what's happened (job wise) and have a realistic repayment term with them, it's still far better than anything Wonga offer. Get yourself OUT of debt with them ASAP, even if it means owing someone else in the slightly longer term.

If your credit rating is otherwise good, a £1000 loan over, say 12 months should not be difficult for you to get and probably cost you less than £100 a month and total interest will probably be less than what you've already committed to Wonga. You can usually pay loans up early too.

EllaBeagle

Mindless_Clone wrote: »

:rotfl:

Do yourself a favour and speak to your bank or credit card company ASAP - first thing Monday if not possible to do it sooner. Arrange a small loan and take the money straight to Wonga and pay it off. If you explain to them why you need it and what's happened (job wise) and have a realistic repayment term with them, it's still far better than anything Wonga offer. Get yourself OUT of debt with them ASAP, even if it means owing someone else in the slightly longer term.

If your credit rating is otherwise good, a £1000 loan over, say 12 months should not be difficult for you to get and probably cost you less than £100 a month and total interest will probably be less than what you've already committed to Wonga. You can usually pay loans up early too.

I have a very poor credit score and only have an electron card haven't got a current account . My partners credit score is also rubbish however he's just been accepted for a vanquis credit card with a limit of 250.00. What we've had to do is pay our bills for this week with wonga (AGAIN! ) And we're going to live very carefully until next week on the credit card for food and petrol.

Is there anyone other than the bank we could ask? Other than that I was just going to wait until I start getting a wage in and try to wean ourselves off them.

VitaK

The problem is that people take out these loans, knowing full well that they cant meet the repayments.

piglet25

Out of interest, if the £400 you owed Wonga wasn't paid for a whole year what would the total owed amount to? Not good at working out the rates and just wondered how expensive a short term loan would be over the longer term

Mindless_Clone

piglet25 wrote: »

Out of interest, if the £400 you owed Wonga wasn't paid for a whole year what would the total owed amount to? Not good at working out the rates and just wondered how expensive a short term loan would be over the longer term

By this calculation:

http://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2011/09/21/fact-borrowing-100-at-wongas-apr-costs-more-than-the-us-national-debt-over-14-trillion-after-7-years/


at least £16,800. :eek:

Pollycat

EllaBeagle wrote: »

Take for instance my first loan of 100.00. I paid 120.00 which hit me hard unexpectedly. I then got another loan for 150.00.

Paid back 180.00 on the 150.00 meaning I was 180.00 down. Again hit us hard. Got another loan for 200.00.

And it goes on. I'm now up to 480.00 as had to get another one today to help with bills.

I can only hope that within the next month it will be sorted and I'll never have to use them again. It doesn't matter how much you carefully plan your finances. **** happens!

You say you didn't want advice (just posting a warning about payday loans) but I really do think you need advice.

Don't just 'hope' that it will be sorted in the next month - do as maninthestreet suggested in the second reply you got and post a SOA on the DFW board.

EllaBeagle

VitaK wrote: »

The problem is that people take out these loans, knowing full well that they cant meet the repayments.

I never knew full well at all. I accounted for how much I owed but things happen unexpectedly.