Student loans and pensions

paddyposh

I apologise for the huge post firstly. I will copy and paste the response below from Mr L. My defaults were all after this loan, which probably will mean the FOS will favour with MrLender.

Please see below, any advice would be appreciated:

Thank you for your email dated 27th June 2016. As you have made us aware of your dissatisfaction with the service you have received, we have conducted a thorough investigation in order to address the points you have raised.

Please find below a summary of your complaint and the explanation for our decision.

Your concerns outlined:

• Mr Lender’s pay day loan trapped you into a debt spiral.
• The loan was unaffordable to you.

• Mr Lender should have seen from your credit file and your salary that you were struggling financially

Our Investigation:

We have reviewed your account and can see that you have had one loan with Mr Lender.

Before your loan was issued your application was subject to Mr Lender’s responsible lending assessments. These included thorough affordability checks as well as a credit check with the information provided by the credit reference agency, Call Credit. These were conducted in line with our Responsible Lending Policy to assess your suitability.

From reviewing the results of your credit check, we can confirm your credit score was 544. This score is considered average when compared to the scores we had seen during 2014. You also had no accounts registered as defaulting or in delinquent status within three years prior to your application. Your credit report also matched you to the address provided via the electoral roll and there was no evidence of any advances against income which would indicate short term borrowing from other lenders. There was also no evidence of CCJs, IVAs or Bankruptcy on your credit file.

We conducted employment checks in order to ensure that you were receiving a regular monthly income. Upon your application you informed our underwriting staff that you were employed by xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

You confirmed the following upon your application:

• Your net monthly income was £1,100.00

• Your expenditure was £657.00 which consisted of: o Mortgage and Rent - £360.00

o Electricity Gas and Water - £50.00 o Food and Travel - £100.00

o Telecommunications - £40.00 o Council Tax - £107.00

o Other Loans - £0.00
o Other regular outgoings - £0.00

All of the above information was confirmed verbally over the telephone at the time of application and would have left you with a disposable income of £443.00. From the information you provided and the checks completed, Mr Lender was unable to see any indication of you suffering from debt problems and we felt that the loan attained by you was affordable.

The summary of your monthly income and outgoings listed in your complaint email does not correspond with what was provided upon application. Upon application you confirmed Utilities of £50.00 and Telecommunications of £40.00 totalling £90.00. You confirmed you had no regular outgoings and had no other loans you were paying for. However in your email you have confirmed £180.00 for Utilities and Bills and £100.00 towards debt repayments. You were asked to confirm whether the following income and expenditure was correct and we would not have been able to continue with the application until this was confirmed.

Your loan with us was approved on the 17th November 2014 for the amount of £250.00. The duration of the loan was for 11 days. On the 28th November 2014 your contracted payment was not received, therefore your account entered into our collections cycle, which meant that a member of our payments team would attempt to contact yourself to investigate your situation. If a customer advises us that they are struggling financially, as a responsible lender we will always offer further help and support. This could be in the form of an interest frozen repayment plan, affordable settlement figure or by recommending free and independent debt advice from several available services.

Throughout December 2014 and January 2015 we tried to contact you numerous times by SMS, emails and calls to investigate the reason your payment had failed. On the 5th February 2015 we sent an SMS notification advising you that we would be transferring your account to a third party Debt Collection Agency and requested for you to contact us to avoid this from occurring. You responded the same day making us aware you were indeed struggling financially and your account was to be managed by a Debt Management Agency (DMA) StepChange. We confirmed we would freeze your account for 14 days whilst awaiting correspondence from StepChange. On the 20th February 2015, we contacted you via email for an update regarding your DMA as we still had not received any correspondence from them and your account was due to become unfrozen. As you were still in the process of setting up a Debt Management Plan (DMP) we agreed to continue to freeze your account for a further 2 weeks. Due to not receiving any correspondence from StepChange we contacted you again on the 6th March 2015. You confirmed that they would be in contact as you have now set up a direct debit mandate to start making payments. We agreed to continue freezing your account for another 2 weeks whilst awaiting their correspondence.

On the 10th April 2015 we received confirmation from StepChange and an offer for a DMP which was accepted. We received payments from May 2015 up to and including October 2015 but no further payments were received. We continued to freeze your account for a further three months but unfortunately due to non payment your DMP was cancelled on the 3rd February 2016 and we notified you of this via SMS and email. You responded to this notification and requested for the account to be put on hold for 30 days. Our collections team emailed you on the 25th February 2016 for an update in regards to your situation. We received a response on the 29th February 2016 where you offered to settle your loan for £140.00. Unfortunately we were unable to accept this offer as the original amount borrowed (capital) was £250.00 and we had only received payments totalling £6.00. Once again we offered a repayment plan to allow you to repay your loan over monthly payments. Unfortunately due to no further payments and no further communication from yourself, your account was transferred to the third party debt collection agency SLL Capital Financial Solutions UK Ltd (SLL) with the outstanding balance of £539.88.








Outcome of your complaint:

Having reviewed and investigated your complaint, we believe that all checks were carried out in line with the company’s responsible lending policy. All of the assessments conducted by Mr Lender were completed in accordance with regulatory requirements and guidance at the time of your loans set out by the Financial Conduct Authority.

At the time of applying for your loans, you would have had to confirm that you had read and understood the Adequate Explanations document. We would not have been able to process your application unless this was confirmed. This document states the following:

‘Your agreement is intended to provide funding over a short term period of no more than one month. It is important for you to know that entering into this agreement would be unsuitable to support sustained borrowing over long periods and would be expensive as a means of longer term borrowing, such as over a number of years. You should not consider taking out this loan if you are unsure you can meet the required monthly repayments, including if you are already in financial difficulty’.

Furthermore, part 10 of your contract titled ‘Payment and Continuous Payment Authority’ under the

‘Terms and Conditions’ states, ‘Subject to the requirements of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, we will be entitled to demand that you repay the whole of the balance due under this agreement if any of the following events occur’. Part 10.1.2 also states ‘any information you have given us was incorrect in a material respect.’

For the reasons given within our investigation, we do not believe that we have acted irresponsibly and the loan issued was fair, and should have been affordable based on the information you provided at the time and the checks that were carried out.

We make lending decisions based on the information a borrower provides to us at the time of application, this is in addition to credit checks and our underwriting evaluation. When you provided us with your monthly income and expenditure at the time of your application and signed the Consumer Credit Agreement, you agreed that the information was accurate and that you would be able to repay the loan based on this information. There was no indication at the time of application that you could not afford the loan that we issued to you.

However as we can appreciate your current financial situation, to assist you as a goodwill gesture we would be willing to recall your account with SLL Capital where we will discount all interest and charges to reduce the outstanding balance to the original capital borrowed of £250.00. Furthermore to assist you, we would be willing to apply a further discount of £6.00 which is the interest paid to Mr Lender. This means the outstanding balance will be £194.00 to be repaid in full. Alternatively we can offer you a repayment plan where we can spread the outstanding balance over affordable monthly payments.

Please note, this would mean you will have just paid the original capital borrowed and will have not paid any interest applicable.

We hope that you have found our investigation to be thorough and the outcome to be fair. This is our final response in the hope to resolving this complaint and this offer will expire if it is not accepted by the 13th July 2016.

fusionx212

paddyposh wrote: »

I apologise for the huge post firstly. I will copy and paste the response below from Mr L. My defaults were all after this loan, which probably will mean the FOS will favour with MrLender.

Please see below, any advice would be appreciated:

Thank you for your email dated 27th June 2016. As you have made us aware of your dissatisfaction with the service you have received, we have conducted a thorough investigation in order to address the points you have raised.

Please find below a summary of your complaint and the explanation for our decision.

Your concerns outlined:

• Mr Lender’s pay day loan trapped you into a debt spiral.
• The loan was unaffordable to you.

• Mr Lender should have seen from your credit file and your salary that you were struggling financially

Our Investigation:

We have reviewed your account and can see that you have had one loan with Mr Lender.

Before your loan was issued your application was subject to Mr Lender’s responsible lending assessments. These included thorough affordability checks as well as a credit check with the information provided by the credit reference agency, Call Credit. These were conducted in line with our Responsible Lending Policy to assess your suitability.

From reviewing the results of your credit check, we can confirm your credit score was 544. This score is considered average when compared to the scores we had seen during 2014. You also had no accounts registered as defaulting or in delinquent status within three years prior to your application. Your credit report also matched you to the address provided via the electoral roll and there was no evidence of any advances against income which would indicate short term borrowing from other lenders. There was also no evidence of CCJs, IVAs or Bankruptcy on your credit file.

We conducted employment checks in order to ensure that you were receiving a regular monthly income. Upon your application you informed our underwriting staff that you were employed by xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

You confirmed the following upon your application:

• Your net monthly income was £1,100.00

• Your expenditure was £657.00 which consisted of: o Mortgage and Rent - £360.00

o Electricity Gas and Water - £50.00 o Food and Travel - £100.00

o Telecommunications - £40.00 o Council Tax - £107.00

o Other Loans - £0.00
o Other regular outgoings - £0.00

All of the above information was confirmed verbally over the telephone at the time of application and would have left you with a disposable income of £443.00. From the information you provided and the checks completed, Mr Lender was unable to see any indication of you suffering from debt problems and we felt that the loan attained by you was affordable.

The summary of your monthly income and outgoings listed in your complaint email does not correspond with what was provided upon application. Upon application you confirmed Utilities of £50.00 and Telecommunications of £40.00 totalling £90.00. You confirmed you had no regular outgoings and had no other loans you were paying for. However in your email you have confirmed £180.00 for Utilities and Bills and £100.00 towards debt repayments. You were asked to confirm whether the following income and expenditure was correct and we would not have been able to continue with the application until this was confirmed.

Your loan with us was approved on the 17th November 2014 for the amount of £250.00. The duration of the loan was for 11 days. On the 28th November 2014 your contracted payment was not received, therefore your account entered into our collections cycle, which meant that a member of our payments team would attempt to contact yourself to investigate your situation. If a customer advises us that they are struggling financially, as a responsible lender we will always offer further help and support. This could be in the form of an interest frozen repayment plan, affordable settlement figure or by recommending free and independent debt advice from several available services.

Throughout December 2014 and January 2015 we tried to contact you numerous times by SMS, emails and calls to investigate the reason your payment had failed. On the 5th February 2015 we sent an SMS notification advising you that we would be transferring your account to a third party Debt Collection Agency and requested for you to contact us to avoid this from occurring. You responded the same day making us aware you were indeed struggling financially and your account was to be managed by a Debt Management Agency (DMA) StepChange. We confirmed we would freeze your account for 14 days whilst awaiting correspondence from StepChange. On the 20th February 2015, we contacted you via email for an update regarding your DMA as we still had not received any correspondence from them and your account was due to become unfrozen. As you were still in the process of setting up a Debt Management Plan (DMP) we agreed to continue to freeze your account for a further 2 weeks. Due to not receiving any correspondence from StepChange we contacted you again on the 6th March 2015. You confirmed that they would be in contact as you have now set up a direct debit mandate to start making payments. We agreed to continue freezing your account for another 2 weeks whilst awaiting their correspondence.

On the 10th April 2015 we received confirmation from StepChange and an offer for a DMP which was accepted. We received payments from May 2015 up to and including October 2015 but no further payments were received. We continued to freeze your account for a further three months but unfortunately due to non payment your DMP was cancelled on the 3rd February 2016 and we notified you of this via SMS and email. You responded to this notification and requested for the account to be put on hold for 30 days. Our collections team emailed you on the 25th February 2016 for an update in regards to your situation. We received a response on the 29th February 2016 where you offered to settle your loan for £140.00. Unfortunately we were unable to accept this offer as the original amount borrowed (capital) was £250.00 and we had only received payments totalling £6.00. Once again we offered a repayment plan to allow you to repay your loan over monthly payments. Unfortunately due to no further payments and no further communication from yourself, your account was transferred to the third party debt collection agency SLL Capital Financial Solutions UK Ltd (SLL) with the outstanding balance of £539.88.








Outcome of your complaint:

Having reviewed and investigated your complaint, we believe that all checks were carried out in line with the company’s responsible lending policy. All of the assessments conducted by Mr Lender were completed in accordance with regulatory requirements and guidance at the time of your loans set out by the Financial Conduct Authority.

At the time of applying for your loans, you would have had to confirm that you had read and understood the Adequate Explanations document. We would not have been able to process your application unless this was confirmed. This document states the following:

‘Your agreement is intended to provide funding over a short term period of no more than one month. It is important for you to know that entering into this agreement would be unsuitable to support sustained borrowing over long periods and would be expensive as a means of longer term borrowing, such as over a number of years. You should not consider taking out this loan if you are unsure you can meet the required monthly repayments, including if you are already in financial difficulty’.

Furthermore, part 10 of your contract titled ‘Payment and Continuous Payment Authority’ under the

‘Terms and Conditions’ states, ‘Subject to the requirements of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, we will be entitled to demand that you repay the whole of the balance due under this agreement if any of the following events occur’. Part 10.1.2 also states ‘any information you have given us was incorrect in a material respect.’

For the reasons given within our investigation, we do not believe that we have acted irresponsibly and the loan issued was fair, and should have been affordable based on the information you provided at the time and the checks that were carried out.

We make lending decisions based on the information a borrower provides to us at the time of application, this is in addition to credit checks and our underwriting evaluation. When you provided us with your monthly income and expenditure at the time of your application and signed the Consumer Credit Agreement, you agreed that the information was accurate and that you would be able to repay the loan based on this information. There was no indication at the time of application that you could not afford the loan that we issued to you.

However as we can appreciate your current financial situation, to assist you as a goodwill gesture we would be willing to recall your account with SLL Capital where we will discount all interest and charges to reduce the outstanding balance to the original capital borrowed of £250.00. Furthermore to assist you, we would be willing to apply a further discount of £6.00 which is the interest paid to Mr Lender. This means the outstanding balance will be £194.00 to be repaid in full. Alternatively we can offer you a repayment plan where we can spread the outstanding balance over affordable monthly payments.

Please note, this would mean you will have just paid the original capital borrowed and will have not paid any interest applicable.

We hope that you have found our investigation to be thorough and the outcome to be fair. This is our final response in the hope to resolving this complaint and this offer will expire if it is not accepted by the 13th July 2016.

Hi Paddy in regards to the disposable income part,

o Other regular outgoings - £0.00

if you had £430 spare a month, how did they expect you to eat etc, you obviously had a shortfall in your earnings and a need to borrow.

the problem is with your complaint paddy, it was only one loan. I am being Honest here you have to show previous unsuitability. i.e defaults late payments which show you were not an ideal candidate.

unfortunately as much as I hate to admit it. They have a fair assessment unless there is something you could say to prove you had financial hardship, I would say you're going to struggle it getting your loan wiped out.

although you did enter into a step change dmp, you could argue this loan was the initial seed onto that step but, from what they have argued they had only received 6 quid from you at that point. it wasn't a case of you got your £250 repaid it back and this left you in a far worse position and had to re-roll.


Please understand I am sympathetic and will always look to help as much as i can.

if you are truly unhappy with the way they offered to you.

I would say approach the FOS with your concerns and get them to give the final decision on this.

you could ask them to wipe the remaining 250 out on the basis you are still struggling financially and this was the seed loan.

but I don't think personally you're gonna get the result you want.

paddyposh

fusionx212 wrote: »

Hi Paddy in regards to the disposable income part,

o Other regular outgoings - £0.00

if you had £430 spare a month, how did they expect you to eat etc, you obviously had a shortfall in your earnings and a need to borrow.

the problem is with your complaint paddy, it was only one loan. I am being Honest here you have to show previous unsuitability. i.e defaults late payments which show you were not an ideal candidate, I unfortunately as much as I hate to admit it. They have a fair assessment unless there is something you could say to prove you had financial hardship, I would say you're going to struggle it getting your loan wiped out.

although you did enter into a step change dmp, you could argue this loan was the initial seed onto that step but, from what they have argued they had only received 6 quid from you at that point. it wasn't a case of you got your £250 repaid it back and this left you in a far worse position and had to re-roll.


Please understand I am sympathetic and will always look to help as much as i can and if you are truly unhappy with the way they offered to you.

I would say approach the FOS with your concerns and get them to give the final decision on this.

you could ask them to wipe the remaining 250 out on the basis you are still struggling financially and this was the seed loan.

but I don't think personally you're gonna get the result you want.

Yes I think you are probably right, I don't think the FOS will do anything, even with all my current debts that started around the same time:(

Welshie28

Hi all,

I have just received a second response from Wonga.
We sent you our final response on 21/06/2016 for your complaint dated 15/03/2016 and asked you to confirm if you accept our resolution of your complaint. You replied to us on 24/06/2016 confirming that you were unhappy with the offer made and that you have already contacted the Financial Ombudsman Service.

However, in case you change your mind about the offer we made to you then you will have 5 business days more to respond. If we do not hear from you within 5 business days, we will assume that you have accepted our response and will close your complaint.

Does this mean that the FOS will also close their complaint?

Thanks.

fusionx212

Welshie28 wrote: »

Hi all,

I have just received a second response from Wonga.
We sent you our final response on 21/06/2016 for your complaint dated 15/03/2016 and asked you to confirm if you accept our resolution of your complaint. You replied to us on 24/06/2016 confirming that you were unhappy with the offer made and that you have already contacted the Financial Ombudsman Service.

However, in case you change your mind about the offer we made to you then you will have 5 business days more to respond. If we do not hear from you within 5 business days, we will assume that you have accepted our response and will close your complaint.

Does this mean that the FOS will also close their complaint?

Thanks.

No reply, informing them you have a fos complaint open and they are to deal with them ccing your adjudicator and reference in the reply.

fusionx212

F.Y.I, wonga have decided to remove all my loans from my experian credit file, I did request this as part of my complaint. but I rejected their original offer, I phoned wonga up to challenge this with them to be told i am to speak to the FOS and escalate my complaint. I said no... FCO guidelines state only a lender can change credit information of a report and I want to know why they have removed them with out notifying me or settling my complaint. I have raised this with my adjudicator, whilst I do want the loans gone from my credit file I get a feeling wonga are trying to cover their tracks. luckily I sent my adjudicator a report with the loans listed as well as that I listed them in my complaint.

word of advice for new people looking to complain get a copy of your file, I dunno if they have done this just to me or it's their new practice of delaying.

StokieBecks

Fusion from what i have read on here and debtcamel seems they have been removing a lot of loan history even before a complaint is looked at lately

sarahb7538

On another post, i cant find it now. The Experian rep explained that Wonga are no longer reporting to Experian so maybe that is why .

Found the original thread now, might shed some light? Its post #6

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5483064

fusionx212

ok, I have raised it with the FOS Adjudicator anyways. as it kinda supports my complaint in a ways im happy to have them gone and i think I only have 4 pdl's left on my report for myjar, who I am complaining about.

fruitisbad

Just received email from wonga, it took the original 8 weeks, then they emailed me stating there was a delay, another 7 weeks later I've had success.

Large loan £1000+ after charges etc. written off and removed from credit file. £300 in fees and charges to be returned as well :beer: