Amigo Loans really are an evil company

Hi all. Here for advice, not to be judged because it's been a horrible year.


8 months ago my partner and I lost our child and had to pay for a funeral. No savings so to speak despite both working incredibly hard. Also little family that could help. I also took very unwell due to the loss and had to leave work and claim disability benefits. Very shameful and upsetting for me.

We didn't know our options and having just lost a child were very panicked so we borrowed 7k from a company called Amigo Loans. My partner has a brilliant credit score (Or did have) so he acted as my guarantor. We borrowed a slightly larger amount than the funeral because whilst our little one was sick we fell behind on a lot of bills and my partners car repayments (Which he has now cleared due to the Amigo Loan)


The repayment plan was £320 a month for 5 years and at the time was affordable due to my benefits and partners job.


Again, another blow as my partner fell into deep depression and had to cut down his working hours. He's only 29 years old but his hair was turning grey and he was having seizures induced by panic attacks. He could now (And still can) only work for 20 hours a week and still has to pay for his car, the rent, food and other expenses.


We realised this meant we would fall short with Amigo so we contacted them right away. They know our situation yet seemed to get pretty angry with my partner on the phone. I understand they're just doing a job and likely do not care about our personal circumstances but my partner offered to go on a reduced payment plan and pay £120 a month for a few months (Still a push) and then asked if they'd re-assess his income and they got really angry over this and told him it wouldn't allow him to pay off the loan in a reasonable time frame and that they'd take us to court to get a CCJ on both of our credit files. He agreed to paying back £220 a month. They claimed they couldn't reduce it anymore without taking us to court. We've paid this for 2 months now despite really struggling to even afford food and rent.



I've no idea where to turn about this. We have tried to communicate with this company several times and yes I know we owe them money, I'm not an idiot but I've heard my partner begging with them on the phone saying he is willing to repay, we're just struggling and the woman 'helping' responded by raising her voice and acting passive aggressive. I have no idea how my partner kept his cool on this call but he did.


Should we just let it go to court and get CCJs on our credit files for the next 6 years? CCJs aren't desirable and we will probably be stuck renting forever and never be able to get our own house but it seems a better option than us struggling to buy food every month because of a crazy expensive Amigo loan that we took out whilst our minds were cloudy and panicked. We've fallen behind on many payments and even have arrears for our council tax. (However the council have been more willing to help than Amigo) We're in such a bad situation right now, I feel I can't even go on. It's genuinely making me suicidal. I've been given numbers for citizens advice and so forth but I've seen on this forum that they can't usually help with Amigo loans. I've no idea why this is or if I've read something wrong but I'm in desperate need of help, we both are.


Have any of you got any advice?


Any advice is appreciated in advance.