Advice needed regarding Payday Loans

System

JH1345 wrote: »

Good Evening All,

I’m just looking for a bit of advice regarding a MyJar loan that I took out in April 2017 - I have made a claim regarding this loan, and the previous loan that MyJar gave to me, because I feel they were both unaffordable and I have asked MyJar to refund the interest on the previous fully paid loan and the existing loan (which only has 2 remaining monthly payments left).

You didn't miss any repayments, you're not on target to miss any so clearly they weren't unaffordable were they?

It is hard to claim they were unaffordable when you met the repayments for both loans. For the first loan you'd have had to lie on your application about your income for it not to be seen as unaffordable for example overstating your income or understating your outgoings or both and/or lying about your employment status. Given you said you were desperate I'd not put it beyond the realms of possibilities that you told a porkie pie or two and you don't get your interest refunded for lying on an application. In fact if you even hinted to them that you misled them on the application by saying something like they should've known the figures were different they could call the police and you could find yourself being arrested for fraud. For the second loan from them you'll have most likely only had to state that it was affordable and again if it wasn't and you said it was you're again lying on an application.

The reason so many people have got interest back is mostly due to mis-selling and mostly confined to just a few lenders such as Wonga.

z1a

"I feel they were both unaffordable"

But you knew this when you took the loans out.

JH1345

Tarambor wrote: »

You didn't miss any repayments, you're not on target to miss any so clearly they weren't unaffordable were they?

It is hard to claim they were unaffordable when you met the repayments for both loans. For the first loan you'd have had to lie on your application about your income for it not to be seen as unaffordable for example overstating your income or understating your outgoings or both and/or lying about your employment status. Given you said you were desperate I'd not put it beyond the realms of possibilities that you told a porkie pie or two and you don't get your interest refunded for lying on an application. In fact if you even hinted to them that you misled them on the application by saying something like they should've known the figures were different they could call the police and you could find yourself being arrested for fraud. For the second loan from them you'll have most likely only had to state that it was affordable and again if it wasn't and you said it was you're again lying on an application.

The reason so many people have got interest back is mostly due to mis-selling and mostly confined to just a few lenders such as Wonga.

Your post right there optimises the snobbery and rudeness of some people on this forum. I would, however, like to address some of the things you have pointed out here - I’m sure people who are in a similar position to me may find this helpful in the future. I also can only think your arrogance will be because you’ve not had a Payday loan before and you do not understand the stress and strain this can put you under.

1) You have claimed I have told “porky pies” on my application. I haven’t. Unfortunately, suck it up, you’re wrong.

2) I’ve never, ever read about a pay day lender taking someone to the police for not being up front about their income though. If you want to look at some pay day lenders, it actually clearly states on their website they verify your income by other means - sometimes they’ll ask for a statement if they’re unable to verify this. In my case, they never asked for this. They either verified the income or they didn’t do the check. If this case was to go to the ombudsman, the ombudsman would ask them to prove how they did their income checks just like they would ask the lender to prove they did a credit check. This is a FACT.

3) Correct. I have not missed any payments and I am on track to make the repayment of the loan without any missed or late payments. Whilst this is fantastic, I have had to take further pay day loans to keep up with the payments, withdraw money from credit cards and from other means. The whole point of being granted a loan, is that you can make the payments comfortably. I was unable to keep up the payments without significant financial pressure. In my eyes, due to this, no matter what you think or say this means the loan was unaffordable. Whether I asked for the loan or not, it’s the lenders responsibility to check that it was affordable. Using your logic, it would be acceptable for someone to take out loans with multiple banks, for large sums of money, and it would be the consumers fault. Do you not recognise the fact that in that scenario the bank would also be heavily to blame for this situation?

4) Believe it or not, in sheer desperation, people, like myself, will take loans not thinking of the consequences. Is this solely their fault? No, I don’t think it is. I strongly believe, in this case, My Jar need to take some responsibility for granting me a loan which I would struggle to pay comfortably.

5) Last point, you mentioned compensation is only for customers generally who were with Wonga. Again, you’re wrong. I suggest you take a long look through claims with the financial ombudsman for ALL pay day lenders and you’ll find their are a large number of upheld complaints that are given in favour of the customer for unaffordable loan. You can actually look through the cases (if you have got enough time). There’s My Jar, Swift Sterling, Mr Lender and many other lenders on there and they still aren’t being responsible.

I hope this thread serves its purpose because the truth is on the financial ombudsman website and whatever the numerous people claim on here PayDay lenders are not saints. I’ll update people when I have further information.

System

JH1345 wrote: »

4) Believe it or not, in sheer desperation, people, like myself, will take loans not thinking of the consequences. Is this solely their fault? No, I don’t think it is. I strongly believe, in this case, My Jar need to take some responsibility for granting me a loan which I would struggle to pay comfortably.

Why should loan companies have to compensate you because you willingly took out a loan you chose to take out knowing fully what the terms were and you knew what money you had to repay it with? It is entirely and solely the fault of the applicant. Nobody put a gun to your head and you weren't moaning how badly done to you were at the time when the money hit the bank.

MyJar could only go on the information YOU provided them so given you passed affordability tests either you lied on the application or you are so poor at managing your own personal finances that other things happened after you took the loan out which made repaying it hard. Certainly if the latter is the case then how is that the responsibility of MyJar? How are they to know that so many months into the repayment you're going to do something to make your finances worse which means you're going to struggle to repay it? They're not and it wouldn't be reasonable to expect them to.

And as to those who have won, you'll be lucky to find any where it just involved one or two Payday loans. Usually the cases involve people who've had several, some running concurrently and them basically going straight from one to another over several loans.

JH1345

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

I don’t think they can force you into a repayment plan. Have they not written to you explaining their actions? I think they have taken what you have said at face value and think you cannot afford the loan so have reduced the payment. Get in contact and tell them you can now afford it. Much as I think payday loans are dreadful I am not sure about the claiming back of interest when you knew full well how much it was.

Using Payday loans will affect your chance of getting a mortgage in the future.

They acknowledged the complaint within 24 hours and when I logged in on to my account I saw that the loan had changed to a “repayment plan” status. I have called them to see why this was done without my knowledge or consent and I was told the complaints team would be in contact to advise what their resolution is.

I would rather pay the loan in full without a payment plan, and continue in the PayDay loan cycle for a couple of months, because once this loan has finished I’ll have £500 of my monthly wage back. For the sake of 6 weeks, I think I can almost deal with it. It’s just whether it compromises my other bills as my monthly wage is going out within the first week of the month!

System

It sounds that you'd be better off posting on the Debt Free Wannabe board than in here to try to sort out your finances so that you're not seeing your monthly wage disappearing in the first week. Hopefully it'll also allow you to get into the position where you have an emergency fund so no longer need to use payday lenders in the first place.

JH1345

Tarambor wrote: »

It sounds that you'd be better off posting on the Debt Free Wannabe board than in here to try to sort out your finances so that you're not seeing your monthly wage disappearing in the first week. Hopefully it'll also allow you to get into the position where you have an emergency fund so no longer need to use payday lenders in the first place.

Good advice. I’ll have a look now.

Thanks,
J.