An on to the next complaint....

Birminghamboy

Hi Everyone, 

I am still chipping away at the complaints for my Brother's debts. For those of you who have not seen my previous posts - my brother is heavily in debt and has suffered a massive breakdown and mental health issues. He is on the mend but I have been helping to unpick it all and have now had 3 irresponsible lending claims upheld. 

This next complaint is more complex.We have just logged this with the Financial Ombudsman. We are complaining for what we feel constitues an unfair customer relationship under the FCA guidelines. 

 Here are the facts. 

The lender issued him 4 loans. 2 of the loans have already had irresponsible lending claims upheld on them by the lender .Two loans remain at high interest rates. 

The lender was informed of his vulnerabilities 2. 5 years ago - mental health issues, sucicidal ideation etc .

The had an error last year where they sent him multiple arrears notices in one go, many of which had no name ,address of correct information. This sent him into a huge spiral!

The lender uses an app and this doesn't work well for him - the links for his annual statements and credit agreements doesn't work. He has flagged this and a member of staff sent him a message telling him that this was an issue that other customers were facing. A different member of staff told him that nobody else had flagged the issue. We have copies of these messsages

We have managed to get copies of his annual statements and there are some issues that we have flagged. He had 5 months of payment holidays. They didn't issue any detailed information regarding the payment holidays before he agreed, they simply stated that the payments would be recalculated afterwards and that interest would only ever be charges at the current apr stated in his credit agreement. At the end of the payment holidays they have added interest payments exactly equivalent to his contractual monthly payment. This is a clear error and not in line with his credit agreement. 

This year they sent him 7 arrears notices within 24 hours sending him into a panic and anxiety spiral. We also flagged this but it was dismissed. 

He reached out to them on their app last week asking for someone to speak to ( their phones don't work). he explained that he was in a real state of anxiety over the state of his accounts. It took 7 days for a response. 

Yesterday he received a direct email from the CEO of the loan company telling him that he would review what had happened and that if they had made an error, he would ensure that a fair resolution was made. 

So this really is a long line of failings by this lender. The fact that they have already agreed that they have lent to him irresponsibly is quite poor in itself. 

Questions....

Is it unusual for the CEO to directly email customers? 

Would the Financial Ombudsman take a dim view of their persistent errors and poor treatment?

Could we ask the loan company for a settlement ( this would both loans written off, credit file clear up and some financial compensation)

Thanks

BB

sourcrates

It`s certainly very poor customer service, although the multiple arrears notices were most likely caused by computer error, its not unusual to get two different versions of events depending on who you speak to at the company, this sort of thing tends to be rife especially in large organisations.

Personal CEO emails, well Amazon do it, I had one myself, not from Jeff granted, but one of his team, so nothing too surprising there.

The FOS would look at the treatment of your Brother as a whole, obviously the more failings you can list, the better the outcome you can hope for.

You can ask for anything you want, the old adage "don`t ask, you don`t get" would apply here.

Birminghamboy

sourcrates said:

It`s certainly very poor customer service, although the multiple arrears notices were most likely caused by computer error, its not unusual to get two different versions of events depending on who you speak to at the company, this sort of thing tends to be rife especially in large organisations.

Personal CEO emails, well Amazon do it, I had one myself, not from Jeff granted, but one of his team, so nothing too surprising there.

The FOS would look at the treatment of your Brother as a whole, obviously the more failings you can list, the better the outcome you can hope for.

You can ask for anything you want, the old adage "don`t ask, you don`t get" would apply here.

Thank you Sourcrates. It was the actual CEO himself at 7.20pm. I am hoping that this is a sign that they want to resolve it and avoid reputational damage etc. 

Brie

Have you got a Debt & Mental Health form for your brother?  I would suggest this as your next step if the CEO doesn't resolve this.

Debt and Mental Health Evidence Form. StepChange  

ManyWays

what dates were the four loans taken out and how large were they? is it the larger or more recent two that have been upheld?