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 simple, 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 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 what a fair refund is or which loans were unaffordable.
Just ask for a full 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. 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.
This is because payday loans are meant for short term problems and the lender should not have carried on giving you loans. This may be earlier – from the first or second loan sometimes – if your first loans were rolled or topped-up or were very large.
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 the process described here – complain to the lender and then send to the Financial Ombudsman if the lender says No or gives you a poor offer – won’t work 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 here:
- 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.
Step One – start your complaint & get loan details if you don’t know them
Find the lender’s email address for complaints from this list.
Then send your complaint email. Put “AFFORDABILITY COMPLAINT” as the subject:
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 November 2019 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 starts off your affordability complaint.
The lender has to reply to your complaint within 8 weeks from when you send the email, not when they acknowledge it. That 8 week clock has started ticking… don’t be surprised if you have to wait until the end of the 8 weeks to get response. In April 2020 some lenders started asking for more time because of Coronavirus – here are my thoughts on that: Should you allow a lender extra time?
Step Two (OPTIONAL) – send more details
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 is already underway.
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. Depressingly 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.
Step three – go to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS)
If the lender rejects your complaint or offers you a small amount, don’t be depressed. You may still have a very good case!
Instead you can send your case to the Financial Ombudsman. This is easy and free.
Tens of thousands of these cases have been sent to the Financial Ombudsman where there is a higher success rate for these affordability complaints than any other type of complaint!
Give up?
Some lenders try to make your case sound bad when it isn’t. People have had thousands of pounds 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 from a lender 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!
Need some help?
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
How to complain about a guarantor loan
Marius says
Hi everyone!
I’m Marius and I have a loan with Amigo , first it was £5500 like 2 years ago I topped up twice so I went to £8500 with my guarantor.
I pay £414 each month and I still owe them £7200, how is this possible ???
I was looking on my statement and I was charged in a couple months £470 interest and my monthly payment was £414 how is that possible?
I feel like I’m struggling and I cannot see any changes to the amount even if I pay £414 a month, I changed the repayment date a couples of times and I payed like 7 repayments before the top up and now I think after the top up another 12 with this amount £414
Can I get a refund?
And also my guarantor will be affected if I get a refund?
Is a huge APR and I feel like will never end..
Robert says
Hi
I’ve had my adjudicator say that Sunny should pay me loans 2 to 21 but Sunny have offered only 12 to 21. I don’t want to accept this as it is less than half the amount. My adjudicator states in her email:
“If you are not happy with the offer, please let us know why by 10 July 2020 and we’ll continue to investigate.”
What do I need to say for my reason why? Its that I agree with the adjudicator and not Sunny, is that enough?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Bad news, Sunny went into administration yesterday.
See https://debtcamel.co.uk/sunny-now-in-administration/ for details and the implications for people with complaints and outstanding Sunny loans.
Mesilly says
Hi,
I’ve just had my claim against My Jar over ruled by the adjudicator. My Jar now have until the 14th July to respond. My question is, are they bothering to even respond to delay payout, so I will then have to go into a queue for an ombudsman to review, does anyone know?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Your complaint has been upheld?
Myjar accept a lot of adjudicator decisions.
Mesilly says
Yes, upheld sorry. MyJar didn’t uphold my complaint so i sent it to the ombudsman. The adjudicator has upheld my complaint for my second loan so hopefully I will have £1,6K heading my way soon. I just have to wait and see if My Jar responds by the 14th July (which I’m guessing will be to the judicator?). What is the timescales and processes for payments do you know? Do they have so many weeks to pay from the 14th July and will MyJar contact me direct please??
Sara (Debt Camel) says
My jar will go back to the adjudicator and say they accept the decision.
I assume you have already accepted it?
Normally its 28 days from when they accept.
Tom says
Hi all,
I am hoping for some advice about a settlement offer from MyJar please.
I had 2x loans with them, 1x £100 (repaid £132.80 – repaid in full) and 1x £975 (repaid £0 – currently a balance of £1950 with a debt collector, payment plan set up of £25p/m as of last month).
I have made an affordability complaint and they have partially upheld in my favour, and will be completing the following actions:
Waive all interest and charges applied to loan 2, therefore making the balance remaining the original amount of £975.
Remove any negative information from my credit file.
My thoughts are that my bank statements and credit file (supplied as per the advice on this page) show a high level of defaults, missed payments and other payday loans and that if they partially uphold the claim, there must be an element of validity, however, I do not want to miss out on this offer (as it is better than the current position) and then lose at FOS.
I am unsure what is best to do, accept or take to the FOS. Please can I have your advice?
Thanks,
Tom
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Sounds like a good offer to me. the first loan was very small, you are VERY unlikely to win on that loan.
What they have offered to do with the second large loan is what FOS would normally say.
It is VERY VERY rare that FOS will say you should not have to repay the amount you borrowed.
Joseph says
Are Satsuma going under? Looks like they’re referring people’s application to another website
Sara (Debt Camel) says
where are you seeing this?
Joseph says
If you go onto the Satsuma website, and then click the green ‘Apply’ button on the right it comes up with the message
Sara (Debt Camel) says
oh interesting!
But they are referring you to Provident which is another part of the same company. This can’t be because they are going bust.
This could just be some temporary Covid-19 thing – all lenders have cut back a lot. I think we will have to wait and see it its still there in a few months to see if Provident are ditching the Satsuma brand name for good.
Claire says
Hi Sara
I am hoping you can help me.
I still have Wonga Loans on my Equifax credit report that should have been removed, so I contacted Grant Thornton and they advised they had be removed from Experian and Transunion but Equifax was delayed and I should contact them directly. I have now contacted Equifax several times stating that they were mis-sold loans and should be removed, attaching the Wonga email with all the loan numbers as well as highlighting them all on the Equifax report. I am having no luck at getting these removed as Equifax just keep replying with the same thing as below:
We understand your concern about your accounts from WDFC Uk Limited T/A Wonga.Com(I) and WDFC Uk Limited T/A Wonga.Com 2 (I) still showing on your credit report. We would like to inform you that your credit agreement information remains on your credit report for six years from the date that the account was settled or defaulted, whichever comes first.
Am I correct that these should be removed immediately as they were mis-sold and the 6 years does not apply? I am really not sure what to do next.
Thanks Claire
Sara (Debt Camel) says
This is best asked on the Wonga page https://debtcamel.co.uk/wonga-has-stopped-issuing-loans/
Helen says
Is anyone still awaiting redness from money shop payday Uk I submitted through portal and heard nothing
G says
Hi Sara, I took £700 satsuma loan on 04/2018 and I still have account with them. The total amount to repay was £1200. I started to make payment just few months ago. Can I still make affordability complaint? Also I had one more loan with satsuma before this one, it was smaller.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
yes you can still complain if you think the loan was unaffordable. 2 loan cases can be hard to win but £700 is a lot so this is worth trying.
You may also want to ask for an affordable payment arrangement now if you are struggling to make the payments.
G says
I’ve just checked my account is says it is in arrears do you think I can win this to be removed from my credit score history also?
Many thanks!
Sara (Debt Camel) says
if you win an affordability complaint (and I said this was well worth trying, that doesn’t mean you are odds on to win it) then any negative marks on your credit record are deleted.
Gerda says
Hi Sara, hope you can help me with this.
I had a loan from swift sterling back in 2018 original amount was £700 I wasn’t paying it and they passed me to creditor paycrs. I’m paying now through creditors for a while and I still have outstanding balance of £916.58 do you think I still can make affordability claim for it? As I’m paying £14.79 a month and also I have other loans to pay. And if yes, is the first step I need to contact Swift Sterling directly and straight after inform creditor that I made affordability claim, after all done is any chance that creditor will start CCJs on me? Also I tried to log in to Swift Sterling but seems my account was deleted.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
How much have you paid to the debt so far, to SS or the debt collector?
Gerda says
Around £353 since 01.2019.
Thank you
Mark says
Just looking for a answer really…I had multiple loans with payday uk, Quick quid, Pounds to pocket, Wonga and Sunny over the years and put in complaints through a claims company in Aug 2018. I have up to now recieved nothing back. Does nearly 2 years sound like a long time to be waiting? I only found this site after and have seen over time that alot of peoples claims have been in the region of 8 weeks before a payout. Many thanks if if anybody could answer my question.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
One of the problems of using a claims company is the often abysmal communication.
You need to ask them what is happening.
Wonga payouts were in February. If the CC didn’t put your claim into wonga or to Payday Uk it’s now too late
Mark says
Ok thanks. I just feel that if everything was done back in 2018 when I first approached the company, I should of recieved something because alot of the payday loan companies were still in buisness back then. But with them now all going bust I shall receive basically nothing.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
I agree. But I don’t know if a complaint was made on your behalf and rejected, in which case you should be advised whether it was worth taking to the Ombudsman, or the claims company never entered your complaint, in which case you should be asking them for compensation.
john says
Make a complaint to FOS about your claims company about their poor communication and not acting in your best interest.
https://cmc.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Good suggestion, but the CMC he mentioned (whose name I deleted) isn’t FCA regulated.
Mark says
Ok thanks Sara. It’s a pity I can’t post the name of them because they have been totally useless and after numerous phone calls they just talk gobbledygook all the time. I would avoid them at all costs in the future for anything else..
.I guess I shall just wait and see what happens from here on.
G says
Hi Sara, hope you can help me with this. Thank you in advance.
I had 5 Ferratum loans now all have been paid off. Amount wasn’t really big up to £200, but the last one I took 06/2018 and I wasn’t paying so they passed me to creditor and I paid last payment of my balance on 08/2019 through creditor. Do you think I can still make a affordability claim?
Thank you!
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Yes you can – it’s obviously not the strongest of claims, but it’s not unreasonable with 5 loans.
If you would be happy with this, you could amend the standard template to say you only want a refund on the last loan and the negative mark removed from your credit record.
G says
Hi Sara,
One of last questions is about uncle buck. I had one loan before and when I took second one on 31.05.2018 original amount was £300 after I missed payment on 27.06.2018 it was already £578.90 then I started to make payments by £45 each month for 3 months. And then I missed one payment and they passed me to creditor with a balance of £443.90 and I’m still paying until now. Now left to pay £71.18.
Can I make affordability claim for this one?
Thank you very much!
Sara (Debt Camel) says
how large was the first loan from UB?
G says
It was around £160
Sara (Debt Camel) says
You would be very unlikely win an affordability complaint with just those two loans, they are too small.
steve says
i sent a complaints email to Mr lender in May , I havent heard anything back from them at all – Not even aknowledging
Is this normal ?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Did the email bounce back as undelivered? Have you tried phoning them and asking if they have your complaint?
steve says
I used the email from your website , i have emailed them again but to no response
Sara (Debt Camel) says
phone them up and ask what is happening to your complaint!
RD says
complaints@mrlender.co.uk
That is the email address. I had the same issue.
Sara, you may need to update your webpage.
RD says
HI Sara.
I sent a complaint to cash on go/peachy, which they rejected. I believe that they are wrong. 4/10 loans upheld my complaints. (still waiting for remaining 5).
With your advice I emailed the administrators with an upheld FOS case (12/6/20), but I’ve not heard anything back at all.
What should I do?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Ask why they haven’t responded?
There are no set rules about what to do in this set of situation.
Franki says
Hi Sara
I would firstly like to thank you again for your website. Your information has been so invaluable to me I am so grateful. Anyway.. one of my refund requests with lending stream has been denied. They sold the loan to a debt management company lantern whilst the complaint was going on – is this okay to happen?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Yes they can sell any debt they want.
How many loans did you have from lending stream before this last defaulted one?
Franki says
I had 4/5 altogether
Sara (Debt Camel) says
then that complaint is worth sending to the Finacial Ombudsman to look at.
Franki says
Thanks Sara will do
Lucia says
Hi,
I had loans with cash generator few years ago. Did anyone ever tried to claim unaffordability with them? And if so, is it worth to claim back as it was more than 6 years ago. They stopped lending in 2015. Thanks.
Lucia says
Hi Sara,
Have u heard about loans from cas generator? I am trying to claim a refund from every company I had a loans with cos I missed out so far with wonga, money shop and sunny cos I claimed late as I wasn’t aware of it.
Please can u give me any info at all?
Thanks
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Contact details for firms are on this page https://debtcamel.co.uk/payday-lender-email-addresses/
James Stevens says
Does anyone know what is going on with Piggbank loans and 247 moneybox? PiggyBank went into administration in December and I received an email of a proposed redress in January but that’s been it, and no update. I understand it’s been difficult times but that’s pretty long
James says
Hi All,
Has anyone had any correspondence from Lending Stream in the past couple of weeks? I put in a complaint at the start of March which they acknowledged, then midway through I received notice that it may take longer (16 weeks)
I am now on 19+ weeks and they are not even acknowledging my emails anymore. I will be forwarding to Ombudsman but concerned that they seem to be completely blanking my attempts to get any info
Michael says
I put my complaint into Lending Stream and about 6th week I got the email saying that due to Covid there is another 8 weeks added on. I said I didn’t recognize the additional 8 weeks, I am not 100% sure if FOS have given their blessing for them to extend 8 weeks. When I hit my 8th week I just went to FOS, seems to be the best approach for LS is to stall and delay as much as possible. From experience if they are given a date to response by that is 4 weeks in advance, they will reply on that deadline date.
FOS picked it up when I submitted it, they didn’t state anything about the additional 8 weeks that LS claim
Chris says
I haven’t heard from them since they first spoke to the Adjudicator. Since then it’s gone to the Ombudsman and I’ve still hear nothing from LS (it’s been three weeks since the Ombudsman ruled in favour of the adjudicator). They are poop!
Tom says
They want 16 weeks to decide on the complaint but this is not legal.
You can forward to the FOS after 8 weeks as normal.
Tom
Cazza says
SNC have just upheld my complaint after just under a week, all interest has been removed along with interest already previously paid, reducing my balance from £1174 to just over £400 which is amazing.
They have actually been a great company to deal with, last week they took a large amount of money from my account which my son had transferred to pay for his car insurance. They refunded the money the next day and then dealt with this complaint swiftly / very professional in this area.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
good to hear!
J S says
I have received an offer from Amigo and I have no idea what to do.
I had an initial £3k loan with them but topped this up and took out a larger loan
I paid approx £690 interest on loan 1 and £4.5k on loan 2.
Amigo have offered to refund loan 1 but refused to look at loan 2.
Response from FOS…
“They have offered to uphold loan 1 and refund all interest, plus any 8% if applicable and remove any negative markers from your credit file.
Please be aware that we have been unable to assess the case as Amigo deemed it out of jurisdiction. We think we can look at the case but if we do get the option to there is no guarantee we would uphold either loan”.
Its obviously a risk to decline their offer, but I feel like they have just made this to get rid of me.
Don’t get me wrong, 690 plus 8% would be good for me, but it wasn’t really the 1st loan that caused me problems, it was the larger 2nd one.
What should I do? Can I make a counter offer and ask for loan 1 and ½ of interest on loan 2 or just flat out decline?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
In theory you can make a counter offer. But I haven’t heard of anyone having any success trying this with Amigo. I think they are trying to get through thousands of decisions very fast and it may be that no-one has any time to think about counter-offers. And they are under investigation by the regulator and have said they will settle cases in line with FOS decisons. Now FOS may well have decided the second loan was unaffordable but what is 100% certain is that FOS would not have suggested refunding you half the interest on the second loan, it would be all or nothing.
re FOS jurisdiction – I think this will turn out to be a no brainer for your case. As Amigo have agreed to refund loan one it is VERY hard to see how they could object to FOS considering a later loan on the grounds it is too old.
Also it is common for a FOS adjudicator to start by saying “loan 1 is not in dispute as Amigo have offered to refund it, so I will only look at loan 2”.
Their offer makes no sense except as a way to try to buy you off cheaply.
(NB I am assuming here that your finances had not improved a lot between taking loan 1 and the top-up loan. You didn’t get a big pay rise, have your rent halved or magically managed to settle all your other debts?!?)
The real risk is not that your case won’t be upheld at FOS but that Amigo may go bust and you may get nothing. There is no sign of this happening at the moment. Amigo had £115million in the back at the end of May and this had gone up to £136million by the end of June. But there must be some chance it could happen in the next year or two.
If you decide to decline, just tell your FOS adjudicator you think the offer is ridiculous and unfair and you would like them to progress your case as quickly as possible as Amigo has effectively conceded the jurisdiction argument by agreeing to refund the first loan.
j s says
Thanks Sara for the reply.
My initial thoughts were they were trying to buy me off on the cheap too. I have decided to decline their offer.
My only worry is them going bust, bust I feel like it’s a risk worth taking.
Also, my finances had not improved between loan 1 and 2. In fact I took out the loan and still never had enough to pay off all my debts with it, and effectively got into more debt by taking the top up.
Thanks.