Advice

bob_the_builder_3

Received this email....

We want to put things right for our customers

We are writing to you as a Wonga customer. If you believe you have received this email in error please call free on 0800 042 0210 or if you are calling from a mobile on 0333 003 0830.

Dear Mr ....

You may have already read or heard in the news recently an announcement on 2nd October from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regarding changes to our lending criteria.

We can confirm that you have been affected.

The changes mean that we have new ways of testing whether customers can afford the loan they want to take out - these are called affordability criteria. Your recent loan would not have met the new criteria.

What happens next

This will depend on the status of your loan. Please see the relevant section below which applies to you:

If you have not yet reached your repayment date: Please continue to repay your loan as planned. We will then remove the interest and fees for this loan automatically by the end of October 2014.

If you feel that repaying the loan as planned will put you in financial difficulty, please call us on the contact details below. We can set up a 4 month repayment arrangement to make paying off the outstanding loan amount easier. This arrangement will help you to clear the balance from which we will remove all interest and fees.

Please note, you can cancel your Continuous Payment Authority before the due date of your loan by contacting us or your bank directly.

If you have missed your repayment date: We will reduce your outstanding balance to remove all interest and fees on your loan.

If you already have a repayment arrangement in place, your agreement will continue as normal. However an amount equal to the interest and fees will be deducted from your final payments which will reduce the total amount you need to pay us. If you wish to change your existing repayment arrangement, please contact us on the numbers below.

If you do not already have a repayment arrangement in place, we can set up a 4 month repayment arrangement to make paying off the outstanding loan amount easier. This arrangement will help you to clear the balance from which we will remove all interest and fees.

If you have already paid back your loan: The interest and fees of your loan will be automatically refunded by the end of October 2014. If you are experiencing financial difficulty, please call us and we will aim to have this refunded within 48 hours.
We are working with the relevant credit reference agencies to remove records relating to this loan from your credit report. We will make best endeavours to complete this in three to four weeks. This will be done automatically and there is no further action required from you.

On behalf of our Chairman, Andy Haste, and the rest of the team at Wonga, we recognise that we may not have always made the right lending decisions, and we intend to be sure in the future that we only lend to customers who can reasonably afford to repay their loans.

You can find out more about these lending criteria changes here. Alternatively, if you would like to talk to someone from our customer care team about any of the above options please call free on 0800 042 0210 or if you are calling from a mobile on 0333 003 0830.

Yours,

Tim Weller
Interim CEO, Wonga Group

Now, what does this actually mean? I've already paid the loan back, which was half the reason I was flapping in my previous post on here. So do I get money back? Do I get a refund of interest and charges accrued? How far back does it go? Is it for every loan I've ever had or just the most recent?

Cheers in advance!

redpete

bob_the_builder wrote: »

If you have already paid back your loan: The interest and fees of your loan will be automatically refunded by the end of October 2014. If you are experiencing financial difficulty, please call us and we will aim to have this refunded within 48 hours.
...
Now, what does this actually mean? I've already paid the loan back, which was half the reason I was flapping in my previous post on here. So do I get money back? Do I get a refund of interest and charges accrued? How far back does it go? Is it for every loan I've ever had or just the most recent?

Well that seems the relevant bit and says you will get your money back (interest and fees). To check what it means in detail why not phone the freephone number they give in the letter?

However, if you have had several loans with them and managed to pay them back then it seems that they were affordable so I'm not sure why Wonga should refund this money.