Furious with Wonga

Stipend

I am currently in a repayment plan with Wonga. Things were going swimmingly and I was about to make my last major payment, before a much smaller final payment next month.

Long story short, the money for my repayment plan has been coming out on the 19th of each month. I had the following to pay:

19th March £123
19th April £60


As I get paid on the 25th, I sent an email to Wonga merely enquiring as to whether it would be possible to change my payment date for my March payment to the 25th. I did add, however, that I was in a position to pay off the entire balance of £183. I also stated that they should use my Zoho email address for any future correspondence (I sent the email from Zoho also).

I heard nothing back for over a week. Finally, I got an email to my Zoho account stating that they had closed down my query and hoped that everything was now resolved. Not knowing what they were talking about, I did a bit of digging and found that they had emailed my Yahoo account. They had closed my payment plan, restructed everything, and now I owed the following:

March 25th £183
April 25th £58

So, suddenly, I now owe a full £58 more, even though I only ever enquired as to whether this would be possible. I am also, technically, paying the money back 26 days SOONER than originally anticipated. Surely if moving my payment date to the 25th was going to incur such penalties, they should have given me the option to stick to my original plan? It's not even as if the 19th has passed and I have defaulted or anything.

My plan is to simply pay off the £183 on March 19th and then state that, as far as I am concerned, I have paid them off in full and they have failed to account for the £58 that they have slapped on without even giving a full breakdown of what this extra £58 is for.

Anybody else had similar experiences? Surely, unless I explicitly said that I was not going to pay on the 19th, they are not within their rights to do what they have done?

matttye

Before you get furious with them, ask them to explain why they have done this and what the extra £58 relates to. It might be a mistake, or there might be a legitimate reason for it that you haven't considered.

jmhgibson123

it will most likely be admin fee and extra interest for the extra days they are waiting for their money maybe

Apples2

Did your payment plan include the freezing of interest?

If not, you would have had an additional 6 days worth on interest on the larger balance. At the interest rate you thought was super (5853%) it would have soon ramped up.

6 days is a considerable time considering the intended duration of a Payday Loan, you have added almost 25% to the "normal" term.

I've no idea if this is an error or not but you can't simply decide to delay payments like that without penalty.

matttye

Apples2 wrote: »

Did your payment plan include the freezing of interest?

If not, you would have had an additional 6 days worth on interest on the larger balance. At the interest rate you thought was super (5853%) it would have soon ramped up.

6 days is a considerable time considering the intended duration of a Payday Loan, you have added almost 25% to the "normal" term.

I've no idea if this is an error or not but you can't simply decide to delay payments like that without penalty.

I think Stipend is making the point that he merely enquired about whether it was possible to move the payment but didn't actually ask them to go ahead and do it.

I have to say that if I asked 'Can you tell me if it's possible to move my payment date to dd/mm/yyyy?' I would probably add a disclaimer saying 'Please note I'm not actually asking you to move it at this point; I'm just enquiring if it's possible.'

Stipend

They had frozen the interest. Yes, it wasn't too clear in my original post because I was still fuming, but my anger is the fact that all this has been done simply because I enquired about changing the date.

matttye

Stipend wrote: »

They had frozen the interest. Yes, it wasn't too clear in my original post because I was still fuming, but my anger is the fact that all this has been done simply because I enquired about changing the date.

What was the exact wording of your question?

If you said 'Can I change my payment date?' they could either have interpreted that as a simple question or as an actual request to move it.

Kayalana99

Stipend wrote: »

They had frozen the interest. Yes, it wasn't too clear in my original post because I was still fuming, but my anger is the fact that all this has been done simply because I enquired about changing the date.

If someone asked me 'can I do this?' I would take that as that's what they wanted to do and I would go about setting it up.

Apples2

Stipend wrote: »

They had frozen the interest. Yes, it wasn't too clear in my original post because I was still fuming, but my anger is the fact that all this has been done simply because I enquired about changing the date.

That's good, stick with the argument it was only an enquiry, not an instruction.

The freezing of interest would be a condition of the payment plan and breaking that agreement will bring back the interest.