Safeloan reclaim response

SD18

Afternoon all,

So after doing some various reading around I decided to try and reclaim back my charges and interest on a loan from Safeloans.
I sent the following:

Good evening

I am making a complaint to you about irresponsible lending.

I had a loan from your group (Safe Loans) from 17th January 2012. You did not check that I could afford to pay back the loan when I took it out. At this time, I was earning very irregular and small amounts which mean I could not afford this loan. As demonstrated with my initial failure to pay, eventually resulting in you issuing a CCJ against my name on 3rd August 2012.
At the time of taking out this loan I had already taken out several other pay day loans with different companies and had encountered difficulties in paying for them.
My average income at this time was approximately £600 for which I had to pay £400 for rent and approximately £100-£150 for other bills, council tax and utilities.

This shows that there was no way I could afford this loan. I had to continue taking out pay day loans with other companies after yours to help pay off previous debts. I was so concerned about the interest I was occurring and debts mounting up that I could not afford to pay my council tax in full during this time.

Had proper affordability checks been carried out you would have seen that it was not responsible to continue to lend to me. My credit reports would have shown my other debt repayments and problems including late payments/defaults.
To pay off and satisfy the CCJ you put against my name, I had to borrow money from a relative.

You should never have given me these unaffordable loans. I am asking you to refund the interest and any charges I paid, plus statutory interest, and to (where applicable) delete any negative information from my credit record.

I only found out I could make this sort of irresponsible lending complaint in May 2018. I understand the Financial Ombudsman will consider all my loans, including those that are more than 6 years old.

Please find my details below:
xxxx

Kind regards
X


I received this response today:

Dear Mr Benjamin Williams,

We write further to our email dated 4 June 2018, thank you for your patience whilst we have been investigating your complaint.

Your complaint relates to the loans you had with our company and the affordability assessment that was undertaken at the time of your applications.

Please see a list of loans that we will consider in regards to your complaint of irresponsible lending.

Loan Reference X
Start Date 17/01/2012
Loan issued £190.00
End date 31/10/2014
Total repaid £431.55
Interest £241.55
Status Repaid

Before your loan was issued your application was subject to SLL’s responsible lending assessments which included our manual underwriting evaluations and full credit checks provided by the Credit Reference Agency Teletrack.

From reviewing the results of your credit checks, we can confirm your credit score of 708 was a good score and within a reasonable range of SLL’s lending criteria. There was no evidence of IVA, Bankruptcy or CCJ’s and your Teletrack Aware score (payday loan specific data) was clear and reported no current defaults, no historic past due accounts, no current delinquents, and no historic delinquent accounts at the time of making your application.

Your loan application included your self-declared income allowing us in part to make reasonable affordability assessments. You gave your employer as XXXXX and you declared your monthly income of £1100.00.

We used the information that you declared at a face value and in good faith and in conjunction with a Teletrack credit search to help us make a reasonable assessment of whether you could afford to meet repayments in a sustainable manner. Based on the information that you supplied at the time combined with a credit check we were reasonably satisfied with our lending decision.

Our company had regard to the regulatory standards that were in place during the period of time and the relevant regulator at the time was the OFT whose guidance included;

‘’Borrowers also have a part to play in helping to create an environment of sustainable credit provision. For example, where creditors’ assessments of affordability rely, in part, on information provided by borrowers, it is important that such information is accurate and up to date and the borrower should advise the creditor in a timely manner of any relevant change in circumstances that is likely to significantly impact on any such assessment. Creditors would not be considered culpable by the OFT for placing reliance on information provided by borrowers, at least in part to inform such assessments, which was subsequently found to have been substantively inaccurate or untrue at the time that it was provided, where the creditor had no reason to suspect that this was the case”.

Our lending decisions are also based on the information a borrower provides to us, as a consumer it is your responsibility to provide the correct information to assist us to determine the affordability of your loan applications. We should be able to trust that the information provided by a customer is a true and accurate reflection of their situation.

You did not repay your loan in accordance with your schedule of payments and your loan has been subject of court proceedings. You were given reasonable time and opportunity by the court to challenge any aspect of our claim if you were not satisfied, you did not. The court has formally decided that you owe the money and a judgment order was granted for you to repay the total sum owing.

The courts have already dealt with the case in question and we do not believe that it is fair or reasonable to doubt the court’s jurisdiction on this matter.

We hope that our evidence reassures you that we made reasonable and affordable loan decisions taking into account your self-disclosure of income and credit checks.

We recommend that there will be no consideration to pay you back any interest and charges that you paid in borrowing your loan or any compensation payment.

We hope that we have addressed your complaint and concerns and we look forward to your response in due course.

Yours faithfully
Complaints Review Team

Is it worth challenging them further? Do they in general reject most complaints in a hope that people will go away quietly? Despite what they have replied, at the time I did have other payday loans. And my income changed monthly. I genuinely think that I shouldn't have been accepted for a loan and I couldn't afford it, hence why it defaulted resulting in a CCJ!
What would be the next step? FOS?

Thoughts appreciated.

Cheers

National_Debtline

Hi SD18


There are 3 credit reference agencies and they can hold different information on you. It's possible for a creditor to only report to one of the agencies. And in turn the credit agency this creditor checked with may not have showed all of your debts.


Do you remember if you declared a different income to the one you were actually receiving? If so, it is likely to be a factor that could go against you.


It may also be harder to challenge the debt because a CCJ was obtained for it. You would need to check whether the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) would investigate a complaint where a court has already been involved.


Best wishes


Susie
@natdebtline

[Deleted User]

I don't think it gives you particular leverage if when you contact a firm you borrowed money off, that you admit you knew you couldn't afford to pay it back and yet went ahead and borrowed it anyway.

I have every sympathy for people who were exploited by loan companies but I think in this case, it's one of irresponsible borrowing and you got what you deserved.

[Deleted User]

camelot1971 wrote: »

I don't think it gives you particular leverage if when you contact a firm you borrowed money off, that you admit you knew you couldn't afford to pay it back and yet went ahead and borrowed it anyway.

I have every sympathy for people who were exploited by loan companies but I think in this case, it's one of irresponsible borrowing and you got what you deserved.

I agree: people have got to start taking responsibility for their actions

Red-Squirrel_2

People borrow more than they can afford because they are desperate and are often in a spiral where they need to borrow to keep up with repayments on previous debts.

The companies taking advantage of these people were completely unethical. You don!!!8217;t find credit unions or building societies behaving like this do you?

sourcrates

Unfortunately as a court has already ruled on this matter, I think your flogging a dead horse.

The FOS would not be able to overturn the courts decision, and it’s unlikely to even look at your case because it’s already been decided.

SD18

National_Debtline wrote: »

Hi SD18


There are 3 credit reference agencies and they can hold different information on you. It's possible for a creditor to only report to one of the agencies. And in turn the credit agency this creditor checked with may not have showed all of your debts.


Do you remember if you declared a different income to the one you were actually receiving? If so, it is likely to be a factor that could go against you.


It may also be harder to challenge the debt because a CCJ was obtained for it. You would need to check whether the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) would investigate a complaint where a court has already been involved.


Best wishes


Susie
@natdebtline

I was upfront about what I could earn. May pay varied massively from month to month.

camelot1971 wrote: »

I don't think it gives you particular leverage if when you contact a firm you borrowed money off, that you admit you knew you couldn't afford to pay it back and yet went ahead and borrowed it anyway.

I have every sympathy for people who were exploited by loan companies but I think in this case, it's one of irresponsible borrowing and you got what you deserved.

I did take responsibility and paid it when I could. I was in a hole and had no escape at the time. I don't think the phrase "got what I deserved" is fair. You don't know what situation I was in.

Deleted User wrote: »

I agree: people have got to start taking responsibility for their actions

I have. I paid when I could.

When in a situation that it seems no escape, that every day you live in constant stress and anxiety about just making it to the next day. You take what ever glimmer of light, albeit temporary. This is what pay day loan companies did back then. Preyed on those in horrendous situations.
I paid back everything I owed and lived with the shame of a CCJ following me around for 6 years.

This was merely an attempt to claim back the stupidly high and unfair interest and charges applied to the loan.

SD18

sourcrates wrote: »

Unfortunately as a court has already ruled on this matter, I think your flogging a dead horse.

The FOS would not be able to overturn the courts decision, and it’s unlikely to even look at your case because it’s already been decided.

I was hoping that maybe they would consider it based on claiming back the interest and charges being unfair, not the actual loan amount.

But if not it's not the end of the world. The CCJ is almost gone and sometimes you have to ask to see if you can get.

sourcrates

SD18 wrote: »

I was hoping that maybe they would consider it based on claiming back the interest and charges being unfair, not the actual loan amount.

But if not it's not the end of the world. The CCJ is almost gone and sometimes you have to ask to see if you can get.

For the price of a stamp you can find out for sure.........

Ignore the usual suspects telling you your a bad person........