The lethal payday loan conundrum

mizzbiz19

Slightly embarassed to admit this but i have fallen victim to the lethal payday loan service. After using it once to pay for car repairs I have frequently been using it for silly unnecessary things. I KNOW they pretty much a** rape you for money and I KNOW i'm so stupid for getting myself into this situation but I need some advice on how to get out and never look back!

This month I borrowed £460 total. I needed to repay this plus interest by Friday. This was going to be no problem originally but my car had its MOT which turned out to be a lot more expensive than i'd hoped. So basically this month there is no way I can afford to make a payment back to Wonga. Out of goodwill I paid them £100 last week in a vain hope to reduce the overall debt. I called them regards the fact I am unable to pay and they took the £100 as payment of interest and added another 30 days to the loan making the grand total I now owe them £578.24. I know for a fact I will not be able to afford to pay them this next month and as tempting as it is I am not going to bury my head in the sand and worry about it next month.

My choices seem to be as follows:

1) "Allow it" - don't pay it back at all and wait for a debt company to get in touch about creating a repayment plan.

2) Call them again and explain you NEED to create a repayment plan with the original interest frozen. Pretend you lost your job or something and so can't physically make the payments. Offer them £50 a month.

3) Take out a longer term 12 month loan for a grand to pay the amount today as it stands at 460 odd quid.

I'm scared about getting into more debt so option 3 is a no go for me... Can someone please tell me what I should do without the lecture about not getting myself into this position in the first place??????

falldown7timesgetup8

Do you have a friend or family member who can lend you the amount owing to avoid paying more interest?
Can you ebay/boot sale etc to raise the money?

Tixy

Hi

With option 3, you mention borrowing £1000 - so would be getting in to more debt, why would you need to borrow more than you owe the existing loan?

Re 1 - they will keep trying to take any money out of your account, and the balance will rise. Do you still use the same bank account that they are aware of? If you choose 1 or 2 you will need to open a new bank account first to ensure your wages are not taken by them as soon as you are paid.

Presumably you are not in a position to get a small loan or overdraft from your own bank at a reasonable APR? have you tried?
Do you have a credit card with any spare unused limit?

Are you employed? would your employer consider lending you an amount that you could pay back over the next 3 months or so? Perhaps explaining that you need it for your car otherwise you would struggle to get to work or something?

You say you cannot afford the £578 next month - how much will you be able to afford if you cut out all non-essentials and live/eat very frugally? i.e how much would you be short that you would need to find elsewhere? do you have anything you could sell to try to raise this amount?

nfollows1982

Please follow my advice, I cannot guarantee you will get the same outcome, but this is what you need to do.

Contrary to popular belief, you can set up a repayment plan with Wonga BEFORE your loan defaults and it will end up saving you money.

My wife borrowed £400.00 for 31 days and the promise date repayment was £535.00.

I knew we couldn’t afford to pay it back and I didn’t want to keep rolling it over so I emailed them.

I emailed them 19 days before the promise date, when the ‘pay now’ balance was at £445.00 (£90.00 less than the promise date). Within 2 hours of sending an email they had set up a repayment plan of £5.00 per week and had frozen the interest on the loan at the ‘pay now’ balance.

Send your email to the following people:

[EMAIL="balanceoffer@wonga.com"]balanceoffer@wonga.com[/EMAIL]
[EMAIL="errol.damelin@wonga.com"]errol.damelin@wonga.com[/EMAIL]
[EMAIL="tarikabdellah@wonga.com"]tarikabdellah@wonga.com[/EMAIL]

Make sure you say the following:

‘I cannot meet the liability of the loan on the promise date nor am I in a financial position to make any part payment to extend the loan. I am prepared to offer you £XXXXX every week/month/fortnight as full and final settlement of the outstanding amount. I would like this repayment plan to start on XXXXXXX. Please ensure that no additional payments are taken from my primary card apart from the payment amount that I have offered in this case.’

Send it to the 3 people I have mentioned and they SHOULD reply within a couple of hours and either accept or make you a counter offer. Once it has been accepted they will set this up on your Wonga account and take the repayment offered amount each month and no more than that.

It (a) reduces the worry of them clearing you out and (b) gives you a clear conscience that you are repaying your loan.

Please let me know the outcome.

DCFC79

To prevent it happening in the future you need to look where your money is going, move down a package with sky/virgin and same for the mobile phone, got anything to ebay/car boot ? Cut back on your grocery shopping, drive less and walk more if possible.

This should cut your outgoings so any extra you can stick in another account/savings account and use whats in it to cover car repairs etc.

theoretica

You have paid them £100 already so surely only owe them £470 next month? When you say they 'took £100 in interest' I assume that means added to the debt not taken from your bank account?

Option 4 would be to pay back the £470 on payday - leaving you short for the month. Live as frugally as you possibly can and then as late in the month as possible take out a separate loan for as small a sum as possible - could you then pay that all off the month after? No point paying a whole months interest if you can get away with only borrowing for a week or two.

paulknig

You need to ring your creditors and try and arrange payments plans. Obviously they won't like this but be firm with them back. I have been in the same boat as you with payday loan companies so don't worry. Its a bit of a faf at first negotiating with them but in my experience, all the creditors stopped charging me interest. Plus when I could, I offered them final settlement amounts which most of them took saving me a bit of cash.
Forget about the 100 quid, I doubt very much you'll get that back off the b**gers. If they refuse to set up a payment plan with you cancel your debit cards and change banks. I know this is drastic but its better than ring out of pocket. Just out of interest which payday loan company are you dealing with?
Oh and make sure you get their bank details so you can set up a standing order so you're always in control.
I know its tempting but don't borrow for debts.

smithers1981

Open a new current account to get your wages paid into else WONGA will clear you out.