MSE News: Payday loan customers should 'fight back' against bad treatment

dtsazza

fairy2707 wrote: »

Yes I took the loans out.

Unless the lender has breached the credit agreement, I don't think there's grounds for complaint then. You asked for the loans, and got the loans. Let's focus on how to improve this situation now that you're in it.

They were used to pay other loans off.
3 of these loans are still current after an agreed payment plan

Thank you to the people actually giving advice

That doesn't sound like a good idea. Paying off a loan with another loan doesn't do anything to reduce the debt. And with the high interest on a payday loan, you really want to reduce the debt.

The only way to actually get rid of debt is to pay it down. That means your expenses need to be less than your income, so that you can put the extra to loan repayments. I strongly recommend that you draw up a budget (making sure to include every expense, including e.g. birthday presents, TV license, etc.) and see where you stand.

If your income is greater than your expenses, make sure you keep your expenses at that level and put the extra money into paying down the loans. If your income is lower than your expenses, then this is a crisis situation which you need to address immediately. Taking out more loans will not fix this fundamental problem (in fact it'll make it worse due to extra interest). You need to find a way to do something, anything, to get your expenses below your income.

Payday loans are only legitimately useful when your budget is usually balanced, but a (genuinely) unexpected expense has occurred that you need a week or two's cash to tide you over. (Of course, a small amount of savings is even better for this, so once you've paid off the loans, keep making "loan repayments" to yourself for a while, so you won't need to go to a lender if/when this happens again.)

jamesd

fairy2707 wrote: »

They were used to pay other loans off.
3 of these loans are still current after an agreed payment plan

If lenders did not agree to affordable repayment plans when informed that you were in difficulty, and after you had supplied income and expenditure data to prove it, then that would have been treating you unfairly. Agreeing repayment plans that are affordable is treating you fairly. Granting a new loan might or might not be unfair, depending on affordability - an area in which payday lenders have in general apparently been quite poor at investigating.

Using one payday loan to pay off another can sometimes be useful in part because it can avoid having an arrangement shown in your credit report. That can sometimes be more harmful than another loan. In general, though, for those who can't get credit elsewhere, the lenderscompared.org.uk site has a fair prospect of finding willing expensive lenders who are still much cheaper than repeated use of payday loans.

Payday loans are useful at times but usually there are cheaper options available, like those still expensive ones via lenderscompared. That place was set up by law after an investigation into doorstep lending. Something similar might well be useful for payday lending, perhaps integrated with that site so people also find some cheaper but still expensive alternatives.

John1993_2

fairy2707 wrote: »

Yes I took the loans out.

They were used to pay other loans off.
3 of these loans are still current after an agreed payment plan

Thank you to the people actually giving advice

And to dealer wins I am a woman and I think you need to look at your own comment before calling people too stupid

You are welcome. You can hit the "thanks" button under my post, to let people know.

rizla_king

MSE_Helen wrote: »

"Citzens Advice is urging payday loan customers to complain to the Financial Ombudsman if they have been mistreated..."

Complain to the FOS - http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumer/complaints.htm

and the OFT - http://www.oft.gov.uk/OFTwork/credit/payday-lenders-compliance-review/#named6

redpete

fairy2707 wrote: »

Thank you to the people actually giving advice

You still haven't said what you think your grounds for complaint might be. Once we know that then maybe some useful advice might come.

MrsWinters

I don't understand what complaints can be made unless they were mis-advised by the said company.
Generally, you take out a loan to pay a loan, in this case, 10, you're bound to end up worse than you started.

[Deleted User]

No doesn't necessary have to be a 'miss-sell'

Can be a complaint about anything involving a financial business, what I suspect people don't understand is that it is an impartial service - it hears out both sides of the story and doesn't always have to side with the complaintive

I've never gone all the way with FOS I'm to inpatient - served my own court papers and dealt with PDL solicitors where there was a need - both times successful in respect of a lender trying to charge double interest whilst confirming this had been frozen, and, when it comes to horrendous charges like the '£100 doorstop collection charge on an £80 quid loan to begin with' when no-one infact showed up at my door and my account was settled in weeks rathers then months and years, I only got awarded what I paid under sufferance which was all I wanted, and really believe I saw some positive from it too