Did your payday loans cost so much when you repaid one you had to keep on borrowing?
You can get a refund of the interest you paid on unaffordable loans.
It’s easy to ask for a payday loan refund using the free template letters here. The letters work if your payday loans were repaid or if you still owe money.
This article covers everything you need to get started. It’s easy, free and many people are winning large payouts.
The comments below this article have thousands of stories of the refunds people have got using these letters. It is a great place to ask questions!
Contents
What are “unaffordable” loans?
Was a loan affordable just because you managed to repay it?
No! If paying a loan left you so broke you had to borrow again – from the same lender or a different one – it was unaffordable!
The regulator says:
“the borrower should be able to make the required repayments without undue difficulty, whilst continuing to meet other debt repayment obligations and reasonable regular outgoings.”
That means a payday loan is only affordable if you repaid it on time and you could still manage to pay your other bills and debts.
Payday loans are meant to be used to solve a short term problem. If you kept rolling a loan or repaying one then getting another loan soon after, the lender should have stopped lending to you.
If the loan was small and it was the first loan or second loan from a lender, the lender may not have realised the loan was unaffordable for you. But it was irresponsible lending to just carry on giving you more loans.
Many lenders ignored even very obvious signs of problems such as your loans increasing in size or borrowing very soon after repayment.
How much compensation can you get?
You don’t have to calculate this. Or work out which loans were unaffordable.
Just ask for a refund from the lender and see what you are offered. This is simple and it works well.
The Financial Ombudsman has seen tens of thousands of payday loan affordability complaints.
Payday loans are meant for short term problems and the lender should not have carried on giving you loans, A typical decision by the Ombudsman is that the payday lender should refund all the interest you paid interest after the third, fourth or fifth loan.
But if your first loan was large, or was rolled over several times you could get a refund from just one loan.
Which lenders can you get refunds from?
Use the letters on this page to make an affordability complaint to most UK payday lenders, see the email list for payday lenders. The larger lenders include:
Lending Stream, MyJar, Satsuma, Mr Lender, Ferratum, CashASAP, Moneyboat, Smart Pig.
Also use these letters for the very high-cost sorts of “flexible credit”, including:
SafetyNet Credit, Drafty, Polar Credit.
But if the lender has gone bust:
- Sunny – read Sunny goes into administration – what should customers do? for how you can put in a complaint
- 247 Moneybox, Peachy, Piggybank, Swift Sterling, Uncle Buck are in administration. Send a complaint to the administrators, see the lenders’ websites. You may not get much back but this is very easy to do, just send a short email saying you were given unaffordable loans;
- QuickQuid – read What will happen in QuickQuid’s administration for how you can put in a complaint.
- Wonga, Wageday Advance, the Money Shop, Payday UK, Payday Express and lenders who gave up years ago – it is now too late to make a complaint about these lenders, see this list.
For longer-term loans there are better template letters to use on other pages:
- Provident,
- Amigo and other guarantor lenders,
- 118 Money, Everyday Loans and other high-cost large long-term loans.
First, before you send in a complaint
Doing these four things now will make your life easier later.
Get a copy of your TransUnion statutory credit report and keep it. After complaints are started, sometimes loans are deleted and you may want the full report if you later have to go to the Ombudsman. Don’t get an Experian or ClearScore report instead – many payday lenders don’t use those.
If you can log-in to the lender’s website and see your loans, take a copy of them as sometimes they vanish when you complain.
If you still owe money to the lender:
- unless you can afford to make this month’s payment without borrowing again, cancel the CPA to the lender at your bank. Otherwise the lender may take the money and you will be in a mess.
- read the Stop making payments? section in Payday loan refunds when last loan not repaid. If you want to offer a lower affordable amount, add a sentence to your complaint letter saying this.
- if you have a lot of borrowing at the moment, read Escape from the payday loan trap which looks at how a debt management plan can help you.
If your loan was sold to a debt collector you still complain to the original lender but also tell the debt collector that you are disputing the debt. Don’t skip this bit or a debt collector may go to court. It is a good idea to carry on making payments to the debt collector if they are affordable.
Start your complaint & get loan details
You can find the lender’s email address for complaints from this list.
Put “AFFORDABILITY COMPLAINT” as the subject of your email:
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 delete any negative information from my credit record.
[delete this sentence if you know what all your loans were.] I know the difficulties your loans have caused me but I no longer have all the loan details. Please send me a list, showing for each loan when it was taken out, how much interest and charges you added and what I repaid – this will enable me to assess any refund you offer me.
[delete this sentence if none of your loans were sold.]If a loan was later sold to a debt collector, please inform me of the date of sale and the name of the debt collector.
[Only put this bit in if some of your loans were more than 6 years old. This explains why you haven’t complained before. It ‘s only an example, don’t copy it, change it so it covers what happened to you!] [I didn’t know that the lender was supposed to check that I could repay the loan without having to borrow more. I only found out in 2020 when I saw a newspaper article in the Sun/an advert on Facebook for payday loan refunds/a friend said they had made a complaint/whatever.]
This email begins your affordability complaint.
The lender should reply to your complaint within 8 weeks from when you send the email, not when they acknowledge it. Make a note in your diary for 8 weeks time and chase the lender up if you don’t get a reply.
They may send the list of loans sooner, and then later send the response to the complaint, so don’t be surprised if you get sent info on the loans but nothing about your request for a refund.
Don’t be surprised if you have to wait until the end of the 8 weeks to get response. A lot of lenders are really slow.
When you get your loan information, you can send in more details about your complaint if you want. You don’t have to do this, your complaint has already begun and the lender has to reply.
I don’t know if many lenders actually read what you send them. But it’s easy to do – you don’t need to calculate what refund you should get or quote laws.
Change this template so it tells your story.
I have had x loans from you from [2015 to 2016].
Paying you each month left me with too little money so I had to keep borrowing to get through the next month.
For this period my take home pay was about £x a month.
[Include the following details if you know them, but if they varied a lot miss this out My living expenses were roughly: rent/mortgage £x. Council tax £x. Utilities and bills £x. Transport costs £x. Clothes £x. Food, toiletries etc £x. Child expenses £x Other debt repayments £x. Total £x per month.]
You should have realised from the number of times I borrowed that my debt problems were getting worse. It was not responsible to continue to lend to me. [Add more details eg how often you borrowed or rolled loans if you know them, how the amount borrowed generally went up etc]
[Include/change this if your credit record would have shown big problems: My credit reports would have shown all my other debts and problems including late payments/defaults /CCJs/debt management.]
You should never have given me these unaffordable loans. I am asking you to refund the interest and charges I paid, plus statutory interest, and to delete negative information from my credit record.
Some ways to improve this
Add any points that help you describe what happened to you. And delete any bits that don’t matter to you. Some examples:
- “I took out another loan with xxxx to pay you.”
- “Sometimes I borrowed to pay the rent and then had to top-up to get money for food.”
- If you weren’t treated fairly while you were borrowing add a bit about this.
Don’t worry that the lender will say you should have cut back on your living costs, just put down your normal expenses. You don’t need to include evidence about your expenses.
Send credit record and bank statements?
Some lenders ask you to send them a copy of your credit record, your payslips or bank statements. This is mostly to be difficult – the lender can check your credit record themselves if they want.
Don’t send payslips – they won’t help an affordability complaint and the ombudsman never asks for them.
Send bank statements if you want, but think twice about the cost of copying and postage if there are a lot. Most lenders seem to ignore them if you do send them.
Some people feel these are personal and they don’t want to send them to a payday lender. If you don’t want to send them, tell the lender you will send the Ombudsman any information that is needed.
Rejected or a poor offer?
If the lender rejects your complaint or offers you a small amount, don’t be depressed. You may still have a very good case!
It is easy and free to send your case to the Financial Ombudsman where many thousands of people have won their payday loan complaints, despite being rejected by the lender.
Give up?
Some lenders try to make your case sound bad when it isn’t. People have had large amounts refunded after a complete rejection!
Just ignore any of the following comments, they do not mean you have a weak case:
- they relied on your loan applications and you didn’t give the full facts – see Lender says I lied for more about this;
- you repaid some loans early – this doesn’t prove the loans were affordable, just that you were trying to save interest;
- your borrowing didn’t go up every time – irrelevant, what matters is that you kept borrowing;
- you had a good enough credit score or they didn’t legally have to check your credit record;
- your loans are over 6 years old – the Ombudsman will look at these even if the lender says they won’t!
Will a lender improve an offer?
You may be wondering if you should go back and try to get the lender to give you a better offer. Most lenders won’t do this, but a few may if you make out a good case. For example if they have offered to refund loans 6-12 you would be happy if they included one or two more, you can say why you think loans 4 and 5 should also be refunded. See When and how to negotiate about payday loan refunds for more details.
A good enough case to go to the Ombudsman?
If you don’t know what to do, ask in the comments below this article. Accepting an offer settles your whole complaint – you can’t change your mind later.
Don’t worry that you will lose a small offer by going to the Ombudsman – this doesn’t happen.
Some points to think about:
- if you are offered a refund on only a few loans, don’t accept if you think you paid a lot more than that in interest. Some lenders offer a few hundred pounds to people who get ten or twenty times as much from the Ombudsman.
- an offer to write off your current balance may sound good … but it may be very poor if you should get a refund as well, see Refunds when you have a balance owing for details.
- if getting defaults or late payments removed from your credit record is important to you, are you happy with what the lender is proposing to do? Don’t assume your credit record will be cleared if the lender didn’t mention this.
One or two loan cases are hard to win at the Ombudsman. It’s probably best to give up on one or two loan cases unless:
- the loan was rolled or topped up several times; or
- the loan was large. Here is a single MyJar loan case that was won even though it was an instalment loan and the borrower had a good income because it was for £3,600. And a single loan Sunny case for a loan of £1,000. You can win cases for smaller amounts if the repayment would have been a large amount of your income; or
- you still owe money.
Don’t delay too long – there is a 6-month time limit after a lender rejects your complaint to send the case to the ombudsman.
How to send a complaint to FOS
Put in a separate complaint about each lender.
Don’t wait until all your lenders have replied before sending the first one to the Ombudsman!
One reader said: They couldn’t be any nicer. Caroline Wayman, the Chief Ombudsman, says:
It’s really OK to phone up and say, ‘I don’t think it was fair.” It’s not court; you don’t have to turn up with your ‘heads of claim’, you don’t have to write a fancy letter. Tell us your story and we will do the rest.
FOS’s “complain online” option is easy and takes you through your complaint step by step.
You can just copy what you said in your complaint to the lender. Add more details, for example, if you disagree with what the lender replied to you. Include a paragraph about having only just found out you could complain if some of the loans are more than 6 years old.
Things to attach:
- the reply you have had from the lender.
- bank statements if you have them. Ideally from 3 months before your first loan until the last loan was repaid or you defaulted on it. This strengthens your case, showing how unaffordable the loans were. You can still get bank statements even if your account is closed – if you don’t have them, start the process of getting them now, don’t wait until FOS asks for them.
- a copy of your TransUnion Statutory credit report.
What happens after you have sent a case to FOS
You will normally be contacted within a couple of weeks and asked for a copy of your credit record and your bank statements if you haven’t sent these. If you have sent these on one complaint, then when you complain about a different lender they will use the ones they already have.
After this initial contact, your case will wait for the lender to send FOS your case file and then wait to be picked up by an adjudicator who will make a decision on it.
If you are still making payments to the lender, tell the lender you want to reduce these to an affordable amount. This will make waiting for an Ombudsman decision much less stressful for you.
The Financial Ombudsman has a two-stage process. Most cases are settled by the first “adjudicator” stage but about 10% go to the second “Ombudsman” stage.
A few problem cases
Don’t ask for a refund:
- if you are bankrupt now or have been bankrupt in the past – any refund would go to the Official Receiver.
- if you are in an IVA, as refunds will go to your IVA firm not to you. If your IVA has finished the refund may still be sent to your old IVA firm.
- if you are in a DRO now, getting a refund may mean your DRO is cancelled!
More help
You can ask a question in the comments below – you may get a reply from someone who has been in your exact situation.
If you need help to complain, go to your local Citizens Advice, they will help for free.
Don’t use a claims management company. They are expensive and often incompetent. It’s easy to do this yourself and you can ask questions below and get replies from other readers who have done this.
Ask for a refund for large bad credit loans
Will you get a refund from Mr Lender?
How to complain about a guarantor loan
Ernestkola says
Ask for 8% statutory interest aswell from the day the loans taking till date
Jodie Riordan says
I received a refund from Cash converters back in 2017 but they didn’t add the stationary interest. I opened a case with revolver this week asking for the stat interest and have been awarded nearly £900 would that be to the date they paid me or up to the date this week?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
I think you should ask them.
My instinct says that you should get the stat interest on your refund up to 2017 and then you should get stat interest not on the whole refund but just on the stat interest part since 2017. So that wouldn’t be a very large amount extra.
Jodie Riordan says
Thank you Sarah,
J S says
Hi Sara. I have chased up the adjudicator regarding the 2 Amigo Loans I had and he has come back advising he’s waiting on some information from them regarding the 1st loan before he gives his opinion on the case.
Now, Amigo had already conceded that the 1st loan was unaffordable and offered to refund this on the proviso that tge 2nd loan wasn’t looked at. I rejected this and said I wanted FOS to look at 2nd loan too.
If the 1st loan was already accepted as being unaffordable, do you know why the adjudicator would want information on this? Thanks.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
At a guess it is evidence of your financial position?
JR says
Do you know if Amigo take responsibility for FLM quick loans? Amigo took over FLM and are part of the Richmond Group?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
yes, but questions best asked on the guarantor page: https://debtcamel.co.uk/how-to-complain-guarantor-loan/
Dale says
Hi I received a refund off mr lender in may 2019, I accepted their offer but this was without statutory interest added. I questioned them on this after and they said they didn’t have to pay it because the offer I accepted was what it was. Is it too late to go to FOS about this now?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
I suggest you say either they pay you the statutory interest or you are sending the complaint to FOS.
Dale says
Even after 18 months down the line I would still have a case with FOS? I have already said that to mr lender and they flat out refused to pay it.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Worth a try? How were you to know they should have added statutory interest if the lender didn’t tell you?
B says
I personally would raise this as an additional complaint and then at that stage, the FOS cannot refuse to look at it due to timings as it’s in theory, a separate issue to your affordability complaint
B says
I’ve finally had my complaint uphelp against Satsuma. I can honestly say they have been a mixture of great and terrible. Whilst looking at my complaint orginally they were great! I had a response within 3 weeks and after spotting some errors in their reply (against my income and outgoings) they agreed to look at it again. from that point forward they were a nightmare. They didn’t uphold the complaint despite it being a clear cut case of irresponsible lending (back to back loans, countless loans on credit file already, more than 30% of my income repaying them every month before other creditors which made up an additional 60%). They missed every deadline given to them by the FOS so I took Sara’s advise and contacted the FCA, i got a response from satsuma less than 24 hours later after outright ignoring my other 10 emails chasing them for the info.
As for the FOS, whilst it’s frustrating at times that they are not more forceful with business, I definately struck gold with my adjudicator who called me at 7pm (yes he was still working at 7pm!) to tell me he had upheld my case and spent a further 20 minutes on the phone to me telling me why he couldn’t uphold the first set of loans, which i agree with.
Now to its a waiting game to see if Satsuma agree and action his findings! Good luck all and thank you Sara
Jane Y says
Hi All
I’ve received an email from Cash Euronet re my claim against Quick Quid, Poundstopocket and Onstride partially agreeing to my complaint. They came back with one email and I’m assuming it’s for all 3 companies though the email is headed up “Quick Quid”
Just wondered if anyone else had received one.
Thanks
Jane
Sara (Debt Camel) says
see https://debtcamel.co.uk/quickquid-casheuronet-administration/ where people are talking in the comments
Dale says
Hi Sara I have just had my claim against a claims management company rejected by the FOS they have agreed that a 36% deduction from a 3k claim for sending a few emails is valid. Do you know of many people who win these cases? I was very naive and didn’t know how or even if I could complain to payday loan lenders at the start before I found this brilliant website so unfortunately like many before and many after I have been stung by these leaches. The fees apparently weren’t hidden although their actually website has no affiliation to their registered or trading name. Should I appeal or should I accept and move on?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
The fees apparently weren’t hidden although their actually website has no affiliation to their registered or trading name.
can you say some more about this?
were you not told what the fees were before you signed?
Dale says
I signed up off the back of a Twitter ad which took me straight to a page that filled out my details rather than a homepage littered with information containing their fees. The FOS have claimed their website is clear with their fees but it’s not, their website name is not their trading name or their registered name, if you were to google the company you wouldn’t find their website. They send the initial email but obviously during this period of time I became knowledgable I could complain myself so I decided to take the case on myself with the lender but they still demanded their fees (£1,000) when I won a (£3,000) case.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Then I suggest you ask for this to go to an Ombudsman to be looked at. set out why you disagree with the adjudicator decision in writing and ask for this to go to the ombudsman.
Wes says
What seems to be the rough/average time scale of receiving an answer from the point where an adjudicator picks up your complaint?
Mike_p says
Mine have all been around a month.
Wes says
Cheers mate. An adjudicator picked mine up end of October/beginning November so hopefully hear back soon.
Kirsty says
Hi Sara,
I submitted a complaint to Creation for irresponsible lending and they haven’t upheld it. I had previously been sent information via DSAR and there was no mention anywhere of checks done prior to lending, yet they state in letter that they have. Is this something worth chasing up with them?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
I suggest you send the complaint to FOS and also go back to creation and ask why they haven’t included information on the credit checks they made in your SAR.
Ca says
Have received settlement letter from EDL again. They’ve supplied a few of these so far, all of which have been incorrect. They have said:
Loan 1 – borrowed £2000.00 and monthly repayments were £197.01 over a term of 24 months this making your total repayable amount to be £4728.24
Loan 2 – took this loan in March 2018, borrowed £1500.00 over 24 months with monthly repayments of £155.51
They’ve given two options:
Option one: accept £1255.18 in full and final settlement of my complaint reference number EDL000104168 (Re: Account number: 1113095558. I understand that I will repay the reduced amount of £570.93 on loan 1109860571).
Option 2 – I accept £684.25 in full and final settlement of my complaint reference number EDL000104168 (Re: Account number: 1113095558. I understand that the amount of £570.93 will go towards repaying the reduced amount on loan 1109860571).
I have borrowed £3,500 (although only received £2,593.12 as monies went towards paying off loan one). To date I have repaid £4,022.74 so I’m struggling to understand how I still owe money and this excludes the 8% interest to be added on. Any ideas? Thank you
Sara (Debt Camel) says
how many payments did you make to loan 1 before the top up? How many payments did you make to laon 2?
Ca says
Loan one 29/03/2018 £1,500 18 Months £155.51
Loan two 12/09/2019 £2,000 24 Months £197.01
So I was paying for loan one every month until the top up in September 2019 to loan two
Sara (Debt Camel) says
I am asking how many payments you actually made, not what the contract said.
CA says
I paid 17 payments (each for £155.51 towards loan one) and 7 payments (each for £197.01 towards loan two
Sara (Debt Camel) says
so on those figures neither of EDL’s options makes any sense.
I make it you have paid £1542 in interest on the first loan. And on the second loan you have paid £1379, which is just £121 short of the amount (£1500) you borrowed. So when £121 of the refund from the first loan is used to clear that balance, you should get a refund of £1421 and the balance cleared. (Plus some 8% interest but that won’t be a lot,)
It was FOS that said both loans should be refunded? If so, go back to your adjudicator and say EDL and not giving you fair figures.
JP says
Hi
Has anybody heard anything about their claim from swift sterling (MMP Financial)? I received an email early Nov saying my claim had been accepted etc and i should receive payment by Dec 2nd but have heard nothing since. Not even sure what the percentage of total claim value will be paid out?
Thanks
carl says
Hi Sara,
I’ve had an upheld case of 31 loans with lending stream in August by adjudicator and LS didn’t pay. Went to ombudsman and they made final decision 27th September and said this was now legally binding to them to pay me. It’s only about £400 but they have still not paid me. Live chat says we will escalate is etc etc but I’ve been hearing that for weeks/months now and nothing. FOS have said they have chased now too.
Any ideas who I can contact please to get my redress paid?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Try emailing stuart@global-analytics.com.
Ca says
Many thanks Sara. FOS said both loans to be refunded. I sent this to EDL and FOS earlier:
Loan One
Took this loan in March 2018. Borrowed £1500.00 over 24 months with monthly repayments of £155.51. I made payments totalling £2643.67 but also £1,093.12 from loan two went towards loan one to pay it off as in effect paid £3,736.79 for loan one.
Loan Two
Borrowed £2000.00 and monthly repayments were £197.01 over a term of 24 months. I only received £1,093.12 of this loan as the remainder went towards paying off loan one. To date I have made payments totalling £1,379.
Still awaiting a response
Ryan says
So I currently have a case against Satsuma loans. I think I’ve mentioned this before but I was first contacted by FOS on 13th if February 2020, saying they were investigating and looking into my case. Today i received an email saying that another Adjudicator was now looking at my case. This is now the 3rd one after the previous two left the business. I’m now 10 months on from when they first contacted me and I feel like I’m like at a dead end with the FOS. They are still awaiting information from Satsuma and I keep getting drip fed different information, I simple don’t trust or believe anything they say anymore. Is anyone else finding things extremely difficult?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
You are very unlucky with your adjudicators!
But are you saying that Satsuma haven’t sent their case file to FOS? An adjudicator doesn’t normally pick up the case until they have the file?
Ryan says
The latest information I got is that they are awaiting the credit files at the time of the loans been taken out. Then today they need to look at a loan I got then paid back within the 14 day cooling off period. I don’t understand how they still haven’t got all information in the 10 month time period.
Liza says
Hello, I’m the same as you I’ve been waiting since 1st February constantly being told they are awaiting further information. I’ve given up now.