Merchant Financing Loan

Unhappyfella

Hi,

As a small business owner, I was in need of some money to enable us meet some quick obligations and I applied through my bank and a Merchant Financing loan was approved. I have now quickly gotten the money back and looking to refund the loan in 7 days but the company are insisting that I had to pay all the fees. I pushed back stating that their agreement didn't say anything about early repayments nor otherwise, neither was anything of such stated in the terms & conditions. They came back and said to allow me only pay 50% of the loan fee as a goodwill gesture if paid within 14days, which I have now paid.

They have stated that "Merchant financing is not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and so the Financial Ombudsman Service will be unable to consider any complaints related to your merchant financing agreement."

Is it right for the business to be able to charge in this way?

DullGreyGuy

Unhappyfella said:

As a small business owner, I was in need of some money to enable us meet some quick obligations and I applied through my bank and a Merchant Financing loan was approved. I have now quickly gotten the money back and looking to refund the loan in 7 days but the company are insisting that I had to pay all the fees. I pushed back stating that their agreement didn't say anything about early repayments nor otherwise, neither was anything of such stated in the terms & conditions. They came back and said to allow me only pay 50% of the loan fee as a goodwill gesture if paid within 14days, which I have now paid.

They have stated that "Merchant financing is not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and so the Financial Ombudsman Service will be unable to consider any complaints related to your merchant financing agreement."

Is it right for the business to be able to charge in this way?

Businesses have much less statutory protection than consumers, its assumed they either know enough about the law themselves to deal with matters or know they dont know so engage a lawyer rather than being a small helpless consumer being taken advantage of by big nasty companies. 

In the first instance re-read your terms, if there's a link to them online it would be great (as in generic ones, not your personal).

Having read them properly around early repayment etc if you are still of the view that some aspects arent payable then ask them to point to the clauses they are depending on