Myjar/TXTLoan Screw up

Wilcouk

Well this is very interesting, in 2011-2012 ish i took out the following loans which all paid back as you can see....




What i find interesting and i never realised this till now (or remember, either one) that i took out a loan for £300 on the 2nd and yet somehow paid £496 a few days later? there are no other transaction for the year for txtloan and or even emails after this, you'd consider the matter done right?

Nope, txtloan assigned this case to MyJar who then chased me for the "outstanding" loan of £300 (which by now is £696) and defaulted me, wrecked my credit file since 2012 and yet here we are and i never realised but i paid this loan back in full (with a bucketload of interest to boot) a few days later?

this complaint is already with FOS but the above information isn't, what am i allowed to do here? what should i email the FOS?

i can think of 4 things here:

1. TXTLoan took money (somehow) without me realising including additional interest a few days later after i got the loan from them
2. Wrecking my credit rating since 2012 with their unfair default
3. unaffordable lending
4. Chasing me for the money even though i paid it back (well without realising i did)

sourcrates

Hi,

Yes I would certainly pass this information to whoever is dealing with your case at the FOS.
I assume you have there email address ?

Email it to them, the more evidence you can produce the better.

Wilcouk

I did send the complaint onto the FOS with this so thanks for that


however I now have the final response from MyJar

Relevant facts

Your complaint relates to the loans you had with MYJAR – previously trading as TxtLoan. You stated that the loans you had with us were not affordable for you. You have also stated that you repaid your last loan, thus you believe the default entry should be removed from your credit file. To resolve your complaint, you have asked us to issue a refund of the interest and charges you have paid.
Investigation
You had eight separate loans with us between 25 July 2011 and 3 January 2012. The loans were made for £100 - £300 and were scheduled to be repaid within a period of less than 30 days.
When you registered with us you completed an online application, which requested you to provide us with the following information, and each time you applied for a further loan the process requested you to update any information that had changed;
· Personal
· Income
· Expenditure
We completed checks on every occasion and before we approved your loan requests from MYJAR we used a combination of;
Ø Fraud Prevention Agency Data
Ø Public Databases
We cross-referenced and validated the data we received from the above sources along with the application data provided by you. In the application form, you stated that you were in full-time employment, earning £2,000 net per month. You also stated that you were single, had no dependants living with you and had no housing costs. This information was entered into our system which uses an advanced algorithm to underwrite each loan.
All of MYJAR’s creditworthiness and sustainability assessments fall in line with the requirements set out by the regulator during that period in of time. MYJAR applied the below guidance as set out by The Office of Fair Trading;
· Section 5 – Pre-Contractual Issues
· Section 6 – Contractual & Post Contractual Issues
· Section 2.2 – General Principles of Fair Business Practice
This guidance told firms what they should consider when looking to grant credit to a consumer and what the Office of Fair Trading thought to be fair in making assessments.
Please note that your last loan remains outstanding and we have not received any payments towards the remaining balance. This loan was requested on 3 January 2012 for £300, scheduled to be repaid on 18 January 2012 in the amount of £351. We see that we were contacted by your debt management company in October 2012, however no payments had been received, thus the debt management plan was terminated. The remaining balance of your loan presently stands at £692.50. For your convenience, we have attached your borrowing summary to this e-mail. Please note that it can take longer for a transaction to appear on your bank statement. You will see that the dates when we issued and collected the funds slightly differ from those we see from the bank statement extract you provided. For more information you can contact your bank to request a bank statement covering the transactions during the period of at least January 2012.
The amount of interest and fees added was in accordance with the Credit Agreement and Borrower’s Agreements between us, this information was also accessible on our website. MYJAR’s application process ensures its customers are fully aware of all the product information, before, during and after the point of sale. In no circumstances would your loans have been granted without this information being given to you, to allow you to make an informed decision on whether to purchase the product or not.
Our conclusion
After investigating the facts, we believe we have acted in line with the OFT ILG regulation at that time. We offered a small amount of credit, we only allowed you to borrow again after you had repaid your last loan. We made our borrowing decisions based on all the information available to us and trusted the details that you provided to us to be true and accurate. However, we see that some of your loans were paid past their due dates and believe that we could have done more to assess why this was.
Decision
In light of the above, it is our view that your complaint should be partially upheld. We propose to close your outstanding loan, providing you with a total discount of £692.50. The default entry on your credit file will be then updated to Satisfied.
Kindly let us know whether you accept our proposed resolution. This offer is made in full and final settlement of your complaint and acceptance by you will indicate your agreement to this condition.
We hope the reasoning set out in this letter resolves the complaint to your satisfaction. Should you have any further questions regarding the above, please do not hesitate to contact us.
You have the right to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service, free of charge – but you must do so within six months of the date of this letter.
If you do not refer your complaint in time, the Ombudsman will not have our permission to consider your complaint and so will only be able to do so in very limited circumstances. For example, if the Ombudsman believes that the delay was as a result of exceptional circumstances

They are only offering to write off the balance and updating my credit file to "satisfied"


I appreciate they are willing to write off the balance of £696 which is still quite laughable from a £300 initial loan and considering I've already paid out £1,896 in total from initially lending £1,400 continuously from a "payday loan" firm month to month which they then wanted a further £696 from me to take the total amount to £2,592 which is almost double what I originally borrowed, seems quite absurd.


Advice needed, do I accept or take it further with the FOS?

January2015

Wilcouk wrote: »

so ive had the final response from MyJar


Hi there, I have had the following final response from MyJar







They are only offering to write off the balance and updating my credit file to "satisfied"


I appreciate they are willing to write off the balance of £696 but considering I've already paid out £1,896 in total from initially lending £1,400 continuously from a "payday loan" firm month to month which they then wanted a further £696 from me to take the total amount to £2,592 which is almost double what I originally borrowed, seems quite absurd.


Advice needed, do I accept or take it further with the FOS?

I'm a bit confused with your figures. As far as I can see you borrowed a total of £1,700 and, if you accept this offer, the total you will have repaid for all loans will be £1896.73. This is because they are writing off the final loan of £300 and any interest that would have been due which would have totalled £692 altogether.

I think they are right in that you had to complete information regarding affordability each time you borrowed, and they did not lend you any more until you had repaid each loan.

Personally, I would accept this, but this is just my opinion. Others with more experience may come along and give advice based on more experience than I have.

Brightspark87

You could fight to have the default removed but its unlikely to have as much of an impact now as it would have in the early years.

thegreenone

The figures baffle me. You borrowed £1700 plus interest = £1989.


You paid back £1896.73 = £92.27 outstanding.


Why were they asking for £351 in January when all they needed was £92.27?


Take out the last loan.
Amount borrowed: £1638 including interest.
Amount repaid: £1896.73
They should owe you £258.73 at this point but you take another loan.
Were the extra fees from late payment?

January2015

thegreenone wrote: »

The figures baffle me. You borrowed £1700 plus interest = £1989.


You paid back £1896.73 = £92.27 outstanding.


Why were they asking for £351 in January when all they needed was £92.27?


Take out the last loan.
Amount borrowed: £1638 including interest.
Amount repaid: £1896.73
They should owe you £258.73 at this point but you take another loan.
Were the extra fees from late payment?

If you look, the date paid on some on the loans exceeded the due date and therefore there would have been additional interest added. The column headed Normal Interest is what would have been paid only if the OP settled each loan by the original due date.

Wilcouk

Isn't this kinda the definition of "unaffordable" lending? i kept going back to the same lender each month with sky high interest rate (yeah i know, i willing did it but needs must at the time) which kinda defeats the purpose of a payday loan provider, it's not meant for long term but rather short term but i took out 8 consecutive loans with them on bloody obscene interest rate and even at the point where i had to roll it over they then allowed me to take out another one getting further into debt, it looks like i was taking loans out the very day i was paying it off...

I obviously didn't see the other £300 loan i took out which is a little bit weird on my statements, so misjudgement on my part

however which brings me to this point -

Here is a regulator’s definition of “affordable”:

“To qualify for a given amount of credit, the borrower should be able to make the required repayments without undue difficulty, whilst continuing to meet other debt repayment obligations and reasonable regular outgoings.”

So for a payday loan to be affordable, you had to be able to repay it the next month and be able to pay your other bills and debts. If any of the following points apply, the payday lender should have realised the loans weren’t affordable and stopped lending you more:

you often rolled over loans;
you often borrowed again soon after repaying a loan;
your loans from a lender were increasing in size;
you were late making repayments;
the loan was a significant part of your income and you couldn’t afford it because of your expenses such as rent, bills, transport, food, other debts.

seems like i've checked off 4 out of 5 of that list.

If i complained further to the FOS, does this offer from MyJar clearing the balance go away or will it still be upheld depending on the outcome from the FOS? How do i write to MyJar stating i reject their claim but not yet decline the offer and take it further?

sourcrates

You cant have it both ways unfortunately.

Although you may find if you go the FOS route, and they dont find in your favor, the offer from myjar may still apply, or it may not.

On the other hand the FOS may agree with you, and award you more than that, but thats the gamble you take in these situations i`m afraid.

All i can say from my own experience, is that mostly, if the FOS dont agree with your side of things, any previous offer from the creditor to settle, has still been open to me at that point.

Wilcouk

Out of interest, how do i tell myjar that i want to go further with my complaint, i already asked the question in getting them to remove my default which they said -

Thank you for your e-mail.

We understand that you are ready to accept our offer if we remove the default from your credit file.

We are unable to completely remove the loan entry from your credit file as we believe that all creditors need visibility of true account behaviours and how the accounts have been managed, removing them would only put the client at greater risk.

Please let us know whether you accept our proposed resolution to your complaint. Should you agree, we will close your outstanding loan and update the credit file entry to Satisfied.

I mean, would it make much difference to my credit file sith a satisfied default of £696 with 1 year remaining? In two minds whether to just not bother with the hassle and accept the offer