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 you still owe money.
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 repaid 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 solve a short-term problem. If you kept 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 ignore obvious signs of problems such as your loans increasing in size, or borrowing again soon after repayment.
How much compensation can you get?
You don’t have to calculate this. 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.
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?
You can complain to lenders that are still in business, even if they are no longer lending. These include:
Lending Stream, Cash Converters, CashASAP, Drafty, Dot Dot, Fast Loan Uk, Fernovo, Fund Ourselves, Kabayan, LoanPig, Mr Lender, Moneyboat, MyKredit, My Finance Club, QuidMarket, Savvy, The Money Platform, WageMe, Wizzcash,
See this email list for payday lenders for a longer list and all the contact details to use.
If the lender has gone into administration, including CashForUNow, Piggybank, Ferratum, Oakam, Safetynet Credit, Tappily:
- make a claim to the administrators – there is normally a simple form for you to complete, see the lender’s website for details – but there will be a time limit for doing this.
- you may not get much cash back but this is very easy to do. A balance may be reduced or cleared even if there is no cash to distribute. And if you win the complaint any negative marks on your credit record will be removed.
It is probably too late to make claims to other lenders who gave up years ago, see this list.
For longer-term loans there are better template letters to use on other pages:
- doorstep lenders and guarantor lenders,
- Loans2Go – the worst loans in Britain!
- 118 Money, Likely Loans, Bamboo, car finance, bank loans and other long-term loans.
Do this before, before you send in a complaint
Doing these 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.
If you still owe money to the lender, read Will an affordability claim hurt my credit record, and other questions. These looks at your options for stopping paying, the effect on your credit record etc.
If the rest of your finances are difficult, look into a Debt Management Plan (DMP) where you make one affordable payment a month to StepChange. This gets you into a safe financial position as these affordability complaints can take a long time to go through at the Ombudsman. Winning a complaint then speeds up the DMP.
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.
If your loan was sold to a debt collector you complain to the original lender. But also tell the debt collector that you are disputing the debt. It is a good idea to carry on making payments to the debt collector if they are affordable.
Start your complaint & get loan details
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. Paying you each month left me with too little money so I had to keep borrowing to get through the next 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.]
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.
Some ways to improve this
Add any other points that help you describe what happened to you. You don’t need to list the loans – the lenders knows them.
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 or when you could not make a payment, add a bit about this.
You can attach bank statements if you like, This is a good idea as these show how unaffordable the loans were for you. If you have gambling showing, this helps your complaint, it doesn’t harm it.
I don’t know if many lenders actually read what you send them. I
it’s easy to make these complaints – you don’t need to calculate what refund you should get or quote laws.
Only one loan?
The template refers to multiple loans because that is what normally happens with payday lenders.
When you only had one loan and it was large, read Refunds from large loans and use the template there.
If you only had one loan and it was small, this is going to be a very difficult complaint to win. If you have borrowed once or twice from 5 leaders, that is much more difficult to win an affordability complaint than having 4 or 5 loans from two lenders.
Waiting for a reply from the lender
This email starts your affordability complaint.
They may send the list of loans first and later respond to your complaint. So don’t be surprised if you get sent info on the loans but nothing about your request for a refund.
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.
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.
Don’t be surprised if you have to wait until the end of the 8 weeks to get response – this is common.
Send your bank statements or other information?
Some lenders ask you to send them a copy of your credit record, payslips or bank statements.
Credit record – the lender can check your credit record themselves if they want. But you should download a copy of your credit record asap as the Ombudsman will ask for it. Don’t put this off, the sooner you get a report downloaded, the further back it goes which is good.
Don’t send payslips – they won’t help an affordability complaint and the ombudsman never asks for them.
It is a good idea to send bank statements. But think twice about the cost of copying and postage if there are a lot. Some lenders seem to ignore them if you do send them.
Again this is a good point to get those bank statements even if you do not want to send them as they will help an Ombudsman claim a lot. You can get them going back at least 6 years even if the account has been closed.
Lender says No or makes 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 accurate 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 – if you only had one or two small loans that is true. But if the loans were large or you kept borrowing, they should have looked more closely;
- your loans are over 6 years old – the Ombudsman will look at these even if the lender says they won’t!
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 it if you think the lender should have realised a lot of the other loans were unaffordable;
- an offer to write off your current balance may sound convenient … but it may be very poor if you should get a refund as well;
- 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 large. Here is one single loan case that was won even though it was an installment loan and the borrower had a good income. And another single loan 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. When you aren’t sure, send the complaint to FOS. This is easy to do – let FOS make the decision.
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!
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. You can add more details, for example, if you disagree with what the lender replied to you.
If some of your loans were over 6 years ago, tell the Ombudsman when and how you found out about these complaints. For example:
“I knew the loans were causing me difficulty in 2016, but I thought this was my fault for being bad with money. I didn’t find out that the lender should have checked the loans were affordable until June 2022 when my brother told me about these claims/I saw an advert from a claims company on Facebook/I read an article about these claims” – change this so it is right for your case!
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
- a copy of the credit agreements for the loans if you have them. If you don’t, don’t worry, FOS will get them from the lender.
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.
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.
Card & catalogue affordability complaints
Can you get an overdraft refund?
Could a Debt Relief Order help you?
fusionx212 says
Hi all, I asked the fos to review my peachy loans and they ruled in my favour but I only claimed for 2013-2014. I had loans between 2014 and 2015 but I considered i had a better job at the time and I had more affordability which I stated to the FOS and said this was fair.
I wanted the credit entries removed and peachy said they will remove the ones for 2013-2014 fos said she could not ask for all of them.
so on the off chance i emailed peachy asking if they would please consider removing the entries of all my loans from my credit report as a gesture of good will to my self I did not want any refunds for 2014-2015
I had loans between 2014-2015 the repair of my credit file is worth alot more to me than a small amount of cash.
so hats off to peachy found them quite reasonable.
devers says
Hi,
Just to say I have 10 claims in progress. I started at end of March I’ve had my first success – myjar have refunded me £6.4k. They said out of the 118 loans I had 115 were unaffordable.
I like so many others had gambling issues hence the reliance on paydays, and as a financial controller I should know better. I always paid every loan back as defaults would affect my job, but the knock on effect was having bad debt loans, guarantor loans and loans from parents.
Ripping apart my credit report showed nearly 400 loans and that doesn’t include sunny (who effectively had a credit limit and not individual entries)
I was shaking with relief yesterday I feel I can finally start to chip away at the bad interest rate debts and card I have.
I emailed Sara yesterday my extreme gratitude.
Will update on other claims as they get completed – good luck everyone
Danielle says
Hi everyone,
I receieved my statement of account from Wonga and put my complaint in and have had acknowledgement that my complaint is being look at but having looked over my statement of account again, I have noticed a big payment of roughly £900 is missing… I used a friends card who lent me the money to pay it off and that payment is completely missing? Do you think this is just a mistake as its in someone elses name or do you think they are trying to get out of it hoping I wouldn’t notice? It’s from 2012 and I dont know if my friend still has the account etc.
QuickQuid complaint into week 4
CFO same week 4
Mr Lender with FO (Mr Lender rejected my complaint after a week)
John says
Hi,
Im extremely new to all of this. So any advice and help would be appreciated.
I borrowed from wonga 54 times since 2012, i have received a full statement of all my loans and have now sent an official complaint to wonga. Having received acknowledgment on the 28th of April. My loans varied in amounts and have all been paid off. However, my loans started as a very small amount until i was borrowing everything i possibly could from them.
Some of my loans i repaid with no real problems, apart from the fact i had to take out another loan as soon as i’d paid one off in order to pay my bills..etc. There were also some loans i had to extend repayment dates for, as well as some i was late to pay back.
I am currently not in debt to wonga, i stopped borrowing from them as i managed to get approved for a credit card with Aqua (designed for people with bad credit ratings, mine having been caused by wonga) i also have a lloyds credit card, both are maxed out.
There were various occasions where i would apply for a wonga loan and be rejected, wait 1 hour or so apply again and be granted a loan. I believe it would be apparent i was in financial difficulty.
Since 2012 i have borrowed a total of £40,458 (it makes me feel sick to know that). I paid a total of £9,625 interest and i paid fees amounting to £857.
I was wondering if someone a little more experienced than myself could give me an idea of whether my claim would be upheld and if so how much i could hope to receive.
I didn’t work out the 8 percent statutory interest as i wasn’t too sure whether it was applicable.
I’d would like to say thank you in advance for any help. I would also like to thank the creator of this website as i would never have known the little i do if it wasn’t for in the information posted here. I hope i can recieve enough money to repay my credit cards and avoid borrowing money ever again.
Thank you for your help.
John
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Hi John, that sounds like an excellent claim. Things to emphasis in your complaint are the number of loans, the short gaps between them, the late payments and having to extend payments, and the fact you were sometimes granted a loan very soon after being refused. There isn’t much point in trying to guess what you might get – it’s best to take the view that any money will be a real bonus. If you get an offer you feel is indequate, come back at that point.
grace says
Bit of a bizarre twist! got an email from quick quid last night offering me £150 for the undue stress caused (I have already had my refund of over 2k) apparently I contacted them over 42 times in 6 months!!!
Also news from the FO today upholding my complaint with PaydayUK who will have to refund all 25 loans plus 8% plus £100 compensation :) Paydayuk have not even replied to the FO so not there yet but I have emailed them and harassed them and I will continue to do so until I receive my offer – if I do not receive an offer in 2 weeks it goes to the Financial Ombudsman and then it is binding apparently – stay patient people this has taken 5 long months x
Nicole says
Just a wee update guys lending stream wrote two loans off total £356! Mr lender good will gesture £56 ( only had one loan) my jar made offer turned down, still have two weeks to get back to me! Wage day advance 2 weeks left ! Satsuma and quid market with fo! Wonga and money box still have 3 weeks x Nicole
Lex says
Well, after 50 loans over 3 years totalling 9k, I finally got an offer after 13 weeks today from Wonga offering 260 quid!!!! They’re mental. I had at least one loan a month for an entire year at one point. Constantly re-loaning and had defaults on my credit report the entire time as well as late payments. Was also borrowing from Pounds to Pocket and QuickQuid simultaneously so surely that was irresponsible lending? I’m gutted. Started the FOS process today. Am I likely to get anywhere you reckon?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
As I said to someone earlier. Wonga often seem to make good offers, but sometimes they don’t! Very annoying for you as this sounds like a good case. In your complaint to the Ombudsman, emphasise the number of loans and she short gaps between them.
Tony says
I had something similar this week lex, they said only 2 of my loans were unaffordable and offered me £818, it was just so random how they chose the 2 but they weren’t too keen to enlarge on how they had reached their decision. I had already gone to FO anyway so hoping for a more positive result if possible
Lex says
Best of luck with that Tony. Yes same, they didn’t elaborate on how they came to that conclusion and very convenient that the two loans they chose were of £20 something and £100 something when I’d borrowed almost £900 in one loan before. Very annoying. Will see where we get with FOS.
Bob says
Had some good news the other day as sunny responded to my complaint to the day of the 8th week and mostly upheld my complaint and fully refunded all my interest and added the 8% on as well about £1,400 in total Just wanted to say thanks to Sara and her website as without it I wouldn’t have achieved this today. From what I’ve seen on here and experienced so far it looks like sunny and wonga are amongst the good guys out of a bad bunch and are learning from their past mistakes.
I’m still awaiting my responses from wonga who I’m gonna give a chance to even with the 4 to 6 extra weeks.
and quickquid who at the very first moment I’m allowed I’m gonna refer to the ombudsman having seen their pitiful offers to others on here, would be nice to know if anyone has had a decent offer from quickquid without the ombudsman?
Adam says
Wonga got back to me and said that the complaint was settled in Feb 15 when they wrote my loan of at the time due to a computer error and transferring to a new system. Their words was that it was easier to write off the loans than transfer them. But this doesn’t relate to the irresponsible lending compliant.
I had 16 in all and it’s only the last one that was written off. Before I had loans that I would pay then re borrow the same day.
Are they also obliged to remove the data from credit report, I have nothing adverse I just don’t want them on there.
What shall I do now? Go to the FO?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
If you only had this loan or 1 or 2 others, writing off the balance may have been a good response. But you had a lot of repaid loans before the one written off So suggest you Say you want to complain about the previous ones. Other people have had these complaints upheld.
Credit records will be deleted if found to be unaffordable but these probably aren’t harming your credit score.
Aga says
Hi Suzi and Shoo !
I sent my complaint 3 weeks ago as well however next day I received e mail asking for time to call me back : I responded I wanted to communicate in writing and I got no response since then :
I also was doing cheques every month paying interest and you reminded me now – they called me that time and informed about loan : I think we are in the same situation , I was doing that for 5 years
no idea how much I paid , I guess around 5k interest
Suzi says
Hi Aga
Yes hope you manage to get some cash bac off H & T I was doing cheque roll overs on a very regular basis, then they said no more take a loan over 12 months, ! i only managed to pay 1 full payment , thats it , So i guess that was not affordable not that they checked anything at all . i guess they owe me a good 5k , if i dont get a positive response from them off to FOS i go
no credit check was done or they would have seen i was already struggling with a very poor credit rating,
Shoo says
From start to finish it took about 8weeks. However once they called me up ot took 10 days until funds were in my account. After calling they sent me a confirmation slip which I signed, filled in account details and sent back.
graham byrne says
Well we have moved on to the next step in the process, FOS are now attempting to deal with QQ and PDUK. I hope they have quicker responses than most of us have had. We will wait and see what happens folks, remember Stick with It.
hannah says
Just to give you an idea of time scale re QQ in my case. 5 weeks from referring to FO they upheld in my favour. QQ made an offer 2 weeks later an agreed with them. That was on the weds and money in my account on the Saturday.
Good luck
Victoria Burns says
My quickquid and p2p were both upheld by the FO, quick quid and p2p both had till Friday which was the 2 weeks to reply, still haven’t heard anything from the adjudicator yet, hope I get an offer in the next few days and quickquid and p2p don’t mess around
John C says
I put my QQ and P2P complaint into the FOS on 16th March (Wed night) and it was assigned to an adjudicator on the 31st March (2 weeks later). I sent with my complaint a copy of my Noddle file, screen shots from my Experian report, a list of my loans and dates with QQ, P2P, WDA and PTPD. The adjudicator rang me on 11th April to ask a couple of questions about my salary and to give me a bit of an idea about her proposal. TBH I was asking for a refund of loans from July 2010 (from loan 29) as this is when the amount I borrowed each month changed from £750 per month to £1350. She told me she didn’t agree with me and my heart sank, till she said she wanted to go back to 2009 and include all my P2P loans, which I hadn’t even originally complained about. I left it with her, but chased up on the 21st April, and she replied to say QQ had not responded to her. I spoke to her again on Friday (the 29th April) and I was informed QQ had replied with all the information she had asked for. I was told that although the info I had given her was for all new loans – I had taken this from the QQ website, that a lot of these were roll overs and the original amount had not been repaid. I’m hoping this strengthens my case. QQ have also said they will not consider anything older than 6 years, which could cause issue with the loans from 2009. I did however put my complaint in to them in February, so they should go back to then? The adjudicator is going through all the points and has said she will write to QQ again on Wednesday this week as she is off for a week. She has promised to send me a copy of this recommendation, and she hopes QQ will have come back to her by the time she comes back off her holidays on the 13th May. That would give just over 8 weeks from complaint with the FOS to a response from the lender. I’m guessing they are getting busier, so taking a bit longer. Hopefully QQ will agree with the adjudicator and I can forget all about this episode of my life
As the interest I paid between Feb 2010 and today is well over the £12k mark, i’m happy to bide my time for a fair result. However I am conscious that WDA did not uphold the loans that had smaller payments on them and paid over a longer time, so may see nothing for the P2P loans too. I’m not greedy, I had a service and I should expect to pay for it, but I had 59 loans with QQ and then 18 months borrowing on a flexi credit account that was permanently maxed out. While I had the flexi loan I had a number of P2P loans with the same business, and still have 1 now, despite late payment markers on my mortgage of 3 months when I took the last one out!
Carla says
Good luck John. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you!
John C says
Thanks Carla, seems to have been a long process, but reading others stories on here, helps people to judge where in the process they are. By the time I get a response from QQ it will have been 16 weeks. I hope that helps others with how patient they have to be. Fingers crossed we all get a result that is favourable, and don’t have to rely on these businesses again. They are meant to be a short term option, nothing more, but lets all take some responsibility for some of our own actions too. Thankfully the PDL market has lost a lot of its really bad businesses and those that are left have had to start to clean up their acts, thanks to those like Sara that give advice and those that have gone before with their claims, giving their insight
Good luck to yourself too!
Lilly says
Hi Everyone, An update of what I have done so far.
Wonga – Emailed three times, one for statement of accounts, and two my complaint email, one including a full run down of everything borrowed and paid back – Received an acknowledgement and now waiting the 8 weeks – Over 30 loans, 5 repayment arrangements and about £2300 in interest paid.
Sunny – Emailed them, and have also received statement of accounts. They have acknowledged and now waiting the 8 weeks. 20 Loans, £1200 paid in interest.
QuickQuick – Have emailed them three times, asking for statement of accounts which I have received, once my original complaints email, and again filling in their questionnaire that they sent, I also included in this email a full run down of everything borrowed and paid back that i got from my emails. Received acknowledgement and now waiting the 8 weeks. Around 20 loans, with a flex credit account, and 3 repayment arrangements, and over £3000 in interest paid.
My Jar – Have emailed twice, one for statement of accounts which I have not received, and again with my complaint email, listing the full rundown of everything borrowed and paid back that i got from my emails. Have received acknowledgement, now waiting the 8 weeks – 33 Loans, £900 paid in interested.
247 MoneyBox – Emailed 2 times, one for statement of accounts which I have not received, again with my complaint email and also including a full run down of everything borrowed and paid back from emails. Have received nothing at all from them, but I never did as a customer via email either, their customer support is terrible. I shall keep waiting the 8 weeks and take it further after this. 30 Loans, £2600 in interest.
WageDayAdvance – Have emailed twice, same as the above, and received an automatic email response, so will start waiting the 8 weeks – 17 loans, a number of deferrals, £800 in interest.
PayDay UK – I have received statement of accounts via the post and I received an acknowledgement email. I have now sent them my complaints email, and gone through my emails and listed and full run down on everything that I have. So will wait out the 8 weeks also – 10 loans, 2 repayment arrangements and £1100 in interest.
I hope to be able to update with good news as I go along :)
I have been in debt since 2012 with payday loans, to say they have ruined my life is an understatement, I know I have responsibility for this, but as you all know, desperate times call for desperate measures.
Lilly says
I have had my first success today.
I emailed My Jar on 27th APRIL with a complaints email in regards to getting refunded on the loans I had taken out AND I received an email today with an offer from them.
They found that 12 of my loans were given wrong, out of 32 and offered me £360.
I paid around £800 in interest on all loans that i took out. The first 15 loans were all £100 loans, which were affordable to me at the time, it was indeed only around the last 15 loans that weren’t, so I am really happy with their offer.
Considering I last borrowed from them in 2014, I think they have been very fair.
Hopefully this is the start of good things :)
Martin says
Hi there,
I have just had a flat out rejection from Peachy on the grounds that I was already in a DMP at the time I borrowed from them. They say that by signing the credit agreements I had declared that u was not in a DMP and was fully able to make repayments. Should I still Persue this claim and inform the Ombudsman? Or do they have me over a barrel?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Not everyone reads all this small print. If you only had a couple of loans from them, you probably won’t get a refund. But if you kept borrowing, they should have realised you were in difficulty and the loans were probably unaffordable.
Jimmy says
Hi Martin,
I had the same email after 1 day! That i confirmed I had enough income to re-pay the loans. I had 3 in total, borrowing £1000 and paying back just over £1500. As these loans were part of the ‘bigger picture’ and I was borrowing off peter to pay paul, i feel like my credit report would have highlighted this.
Martin says
Thanks Sara/Jimmy
I had 7 loans from them in a 9 month period, my credit file would have revealed that I also had borrowed from 7 other lenders at the time I took my first loan from peachy, all of which I had not repaid. I think my case looks solid on paper, but I do worry that the Ombudsman will say I should never have borrowed whilst in a DMP.
Do the FO see being in a DMP at the time of borrowing favourable towards the lender or customer?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
A DMP shows the loans weren’t affordable. That is the first thing necessary for an affordability complaint.
But the crucial second thing us that the lender has to realise that they were unaffordable. This is the reason people often don’t get refunds for the first few loans – the Ombudsman decides the lender should have realised you were in trouble after loan 2,3,4… In your case it may be that this number is likely to be more rather than less if the info on your loan applications wasn’t accurate. So you have a case but may not get back all the interest.
Robert says
Hi everyone. Just a quick update about my complaint with WDA. I have just received their final response on the last day of the 8 weeks. I was complaining loan 4 onwards and asking that they refund the £2500 I paid in interest plus 8%. They have agreed to pay back from loan 7 onwards so a total of £1975 including the 8%. Whilst I do think that they should be including earlier loans I’m not going to turn down 2 grand – especially as no FOS involvement. Keep persisting everyone!
Rob says
I received a final response from The Cheque Centre who have declined my complaint. I had a total of two loans, the first was paid in full. The second went into arrears as I had borrowings from other payday lenders. I tried to set up a repayment over several months but was told this was not possible. Six weeks later we had to go to a Debt Advice provider to sort our debts out. Meanwhile the debt was sold to MMF , who were a nightmare and constantly bombarded me with emails regarding the debt.
Does anyone think I should go to the FOS about the second loan and it’s unaffordability?
Char says
Definitely. I received my final response from cheque centre on Friday declining my complaint for 27 loans from 2098 t0 2010. Sent off to the FOS on Friday afternoon
Sara (Debt Camel) says
The complaint in this case isn’t that there were an excessive number of loans but that the lender did not handle the situation correctly when told the borrower was in difficulty, so yes, it’s worth taking to the Ombudsman.
Billy says
Just received the following response from WDA. Based on this, does anyone think it’s worth me referring to he FO?
[edited]
Wage Day Advance used our own bespoke credit scoring logic, and during this scoring assessment we used comparable information to determine the accuracy of the information provided. At no point during the application process were we concerned that the information you provided was inaccurate. Wage Day Advance did not use Credit Reference Agency (CRA) data and the assessment of affordability was completed based on self-declared information provided by you. There was no specific legislation that stated that on-line lenders must use CRA data in the process of underwriting an application. Our decision lending criteria process was determined by combining the integrity of the data provided by the customer along with our bespoke credit scoring metrics.
During the online application, you stated that your total monthly income was £1900, your total monthly outgoings were £500 and your disposable income was £1400. Based on this information, you were approved to borrow £500, to ensure you had sufficient disposable income remaining after repayment. At no point did you advise of other outgoings that may hinder your ability to repay Wage Day Advance.
We were reliant on your honesty of you when self-declaring and could only rely on the information we were provided with at the time. You signed a legally binding agreement to acknowledge that the information given was a true and accurate reflection of your current financial affairs.
You had eight loans with Wage Day Advance which did not indicate that you were dependent on our services or that you were using our services to meet your long-term needs, there is no sequential pattern looking at your loan borrowing history.
I’d like to bring to your attention your credit agreement that states on page 3
Your Obligations: 2.1.15. You do not know of any circumstances or arrangements that would hinder your ability to meet your repayments obligations under this agreement.Please see your credit agreement I have enclosed with this letter.
You have taken out a total of eight loans with Wage Day Advance; you have rolled over twice in total and repaying all your loans on time and on occasions at an earlier date than expected and you have never entered into arrears with Wage Day Advance or ever advised Wage Day Advance of needing assistance with financial difficulty or being in trouble financially with other payday lenders.
Decision
In light of the above, it is my view that despite our obvious sympathy, we are unable to find that we did anything wrong.
Wage Day Advance adhered to legislation set out at the times the loans were granted. You never advised Wage Day Advance of needing financial assistance, nor could we have reasonably been aware that you were in need of financial assistance with your loans and that they were unaffordable, as you repaid your loans back on time and even repaid in full earlier on occasions.
Whilst Wage Day Advance allowed you to rollover twice, this is not something we encourage but in allowing you to do this
Wage Day Advance sympathises with your health issues and stress caused by financial difficulty and had we been informed of these issues at the time, Wage Day Advance would have assisted you in every way possible to making your dealings with ourselves more affordable. However you stuck to all your payday loan agreements and even repaid early. Wage Day Advance could not have been aware of your circumstances without you declaring them.
It was not mandatory that a payday lender in 2013 and 2014 ran a credit check on their customers. Wage Day Advance has adhered with all legislation during the time period of your loan history and on each loan.
For the reasons out lined above, Wage Day Advance will not be issuing any redress from your loans as we have done nothing wrong.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
8 loans and 2 rollovers in a bit over a year sounds like a good enough case to take to the ombudsman to me.
Paul says
Hi I have taken out over 16 loans with quick quiz and about the same with wonga in the last two years. I’ve had a major gambling addiction and from my banking it is clear what I have been spending the loans on and then applying for another when I’ve lost it all and this process has gone on and on and spiralled out of control resulting in further credit card debt and loans to pay off payday loans and I still have the payday loans. Do you think I would have a case? As I have been rejected for loans before due to gambling, so therefore they should have picked up in this due to high amount of payday loans I have had.
Kind Regards,
Paul
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Several people have reported getting refunds when their bank statements had frequent gambling on them. 16 loans is a lot, well worth a try.
Kelly says
Hello all,
I’ve been reading online about the refunds from various payday loans. I’ve decided to take the plunge and send off some emails to a number of PDLs I borrowed from. I had a number of loans in 2010-2 with Wonga , Payday UK (default on credit file £540) and QQ. I don’t have any clue on how much I borrowed from each, as there were numerous loans taken out in that time so I may need to contact my bank for statements.
I managed to get myself in to more trouble at the end of last year. I borrowed from my Jar in August, September and then October. The amount I borrowed increased each time. In October I borrowed £825 and had financial problems and now they have added interest and charges of £800! so the total amount payable is £1625. I currently have an arrangement in place, they haven’t defaulted me (yet). I am a little worried about contacting them just in case they add a default on my credit file.
Another important note to mention is that I was issued with a CCJ in September 2015 for £600 (not payday loan or any finance). It was removed in February 2016. Taking this into account, I am surprised they borrowed money to me at all. I also had one with Payday Express in October 2015 and January 2016, however they froze the interest as soon as I told them I had financial difficulties so I am not sure if i will be chasing after them.
Anyway I’ll keep you posted on each :) thanks to everyone who has shared their stories so far!
Sam. F says
It’s now been a week since the Adjudicator upheld my case & I’ve heard nothing from Quick Quid, I gave my bank details to the FO to pass on but do you think it’s worth emailing them myself to confirm?
Kath says
I too had my complaint upheld last Monday (29th) but heard nothing from QQ. I called them this morning to ask if they needed my bank details but they refused to engage with me at all, insisting that I went back to them via the FO. How ridiculous – the complaint was dealt with by the FO, their offer was accepted, the FO told them this and the next step was for QQ to contact me to arrange payment. Why they would refuse to speak to me when I called (unless they were stalling/sore at being made to pay up) is beyond me.
Lo and behold, two minutes after my call I had an email from QQ asking me to confirm my bank details. They’ve since confirmed that payment will be in my account by close of play tomorrow. These emails came from a different email address – foscomplaints@enova.com. You might want to try emailing them direct.
Sam. F says
Hi Kath, that is very interesting information, mine was upheld on 26th, I’ve done as you suggested, thanks!
Gordon says
For ppls records. QQ seem to be owned by another company as well as CashEuronet
https://www.enova.com/brands-services/
They seem to be the ‘real’ parent company of QQ, P2P
mark says
So i began my refund journey in Jan/Feb 2016 with Wonga, Mr Lender, Pounds to Pocket, Ladder Loans, Payday Express, and the Money shop.
Wonga – have asked for more time above and beyond the 8 weeks which will take them to the 16th May, i do hope they don’t ask to extend again its 23 Loans in 27 months £1800 of interest.
Mr Lender – made a pretty acceptable offer within 6 weeks i needed to negotiate them up a touch but they were okay about it was only 4 loans and i got 2/3rds the interest back.
Pounds 2 Pocket have sent there question sheet perhaps not appreciating that they should have the vast majority of this information if it is indeed used to judge a persons affordability.
Payday Express are with the FOS as no response from original complaint its 91 days so far or 13 weeks.
Money shop are with the FOS as no response within the 8 weeks and alos declined to provide me with any statements.
So I have a question about the money shop i cashed personal cheques through them to borrow and then rolled over i must of paid £2000 or more to them in a 2-3 year period has anyone had a complaint upheld by the FOS adjudicator or the ombudsman and been refunded from them i’m really keen to hear peoples outcomes.
Aga says
Hi Mark!
I am in similar situation with Money Shop , I have no idea how much interest I paid but I was rolling over cheques for amount of 5 years , I had credit line 600 so every month I paid 17.50 on each cheque , they refused to send statements on the grounds that my loan is paid off , my 8 weeks gone , o sent them letter reg statements as advised by Sara ; I have no idea how much but it would be around 5k
OMG how messed up my finance was???!! good luck to you ; if u get any update on Money Shop plz share , thanks
Nicole says
Hi there wondering if anyone can help I got a letter from dolleruk on behalf of paydayuk and money shop saying I will get a refund of 372pound which is fair enough as I only took out one loan. Says its automatic and will go into my bank before 05/05/16. My question is did anyone else get one of these letters but never recieved the money. I did contact them and they said everything is up to date and the money will be with me 5th may at the latest thanks guys and good luck with ur refunds
Aga says
Hi Nicole ! lucky You to get a refund from Money shop, just quick Q : how long did u wait for the response I mean decision , did it go over 8 weeks :, i think only1 person here got the refund from M shop the rest is with Fos ; in my case 8 weeks gone ; they refuse to send the statement : i have no idea how many times i extended
Nicole says
I just got a letter in post on 26th April they had written it on the 25th April. I didn’t contact them at all as I wasn’t aware of any problems etc. Money due to go in 5th may I will keep you all posted
Sonia says
Hi . Yes I received a letter from Dollar saying from money shop and payday express saying I will get my refund by the 10th may .
grace says
Today OPOS/Minicredit have agreed to write off £800 and refund £50 they are unable to remove details from credit file for Minicredit
I used complaints@oposlimited.com for anyone that is having trouble contacting them
Mags says
Bit disappointed but not disheartened.
The adjudicator at the FO found in Wage Day Advance’s favour as 4 loans was not a pattern of unaffordable lending. I do not know where the figure regarding my monthly income came from, but it wasn’t right! I pointed this out but the answer is still no (although with the correct monthly income figures, 2 of the 4 loans were unaffordable). Not sure where to go from here. Any advice welcome.
Fingers crossed for the rest of the claims.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
The question is whether this is worth going to the Ombudsman. If the 4 loans were very close together, only a few days, then it may be worth it. It’s still a bit marginal unless any of the loans were rolled or paid late.
Suzi says
Hi Mark
Yes i done same with Money Shop cheque cashing & rolling over worh about 5k back to me , FOS adjudicator upheld my complaint , told Money Shop to pay up , they didnt even bother to reply to FOS -So – adjudicator said she has to pass to Ombudsman for final say ,
That was 4 weeks ago its due for a decision this week , when what the ombudsman says go as it becomes legal binding & The Money Shop will have to pay me back with 8% interest & probably a further amount for stress etc caused
Martin says
Hi Everyone
One of the lenders I am having trouble locating is speed-e-loans.com, I borrowed £300 from them in March 2012 which I am currently paying back through my DMP. The company collecting the debt is SLL Capital, and my research has shown that speed-e-loans.com stopped trading on 4/7/2013.
I have so far contacted albemarle & bond who have no records of my loan, and have pointed out that they are handling complaints for Speedyloans and not speed-e-loans.com.
I am not sure who to complain to. Would SLL Capital as the company collecting the debt be able to handle this complaint?
Sam says
I wouldn’t hold out much hope getting anything of it is SLL Capital. I had 10 loans from safeloans who now trade under SLL Capital and had a final response within 2 days rejecting my claim so it’s now with the ombudsman. I like you was unsure this was the same company so called them first to check they were dealing with safeloan customers. The person I spoke to confirmed immediately that they were and gave me the complaints address to email. Good luck with yours in not hopeful with mine even though this was the only company who refused to listen to my debt management company and proceeded to try and get a CCJ against my name.
Martin says
Cheers Sam,
I got a reply from SLL Capital within 2 hours of contacting them. They have offered to remove all interest and charges from the account, reducing the outstanding amount from £653 to £129.
It’s not a bad offer to be fair, but i was hoping to have the whole thing wrote off.
What do you guys reckon? Is this the best I can expect or should I now involve the FO?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
If you only had a couple of loans this may be a reasonable offer – see this article on asking for balances to be written off https://debtcamel.co.uk/payday-lender-write-off/
grace says
Finally after 5 nearly 6 long month payday express has made an offer of £2k, write off outstanding amount £120 and remove from credit file, It was with the FO but they made an offer before the investigation process. I am sure if I went through the FO it would be more but I am happy with the offer and just want it over!
Now I am just waiting on an offer from payday uk who are dragging their heels!!!
Matty says
Well done Grace! Had a reply from payday UK after 15 weeks last week was a rejection. Lodged both at the same time and heard nothing about my Payday express one but this gives some hope. What was refund in comparison to interest paid if you don’t mind me asking? I calculate around 3k in interest paid with them.
grace says
Hi Matty I had about 20 loans with them so £2 I am happy with as its been ongoing for months I am sure I would get a bit more through the FO but just want to see some light at the end of the tunnel, am waiting on paydayuk which went through the FO am hoping for nearly £4k xx
Aga says
to be honestGrace I would be happy with 3/4 of interest without going to FOS however my 8 week period gone and they advised to go to FOS I have 1000 with Payday Expres and 2.5 Payday UK and 5 k with Money Shop apparently those 3 companies are Dollar sth company ….all of them
advised to go to FOS and money shop is refusing to send statement of account
Matty says
I’m the same. Grateful for any refund really we are lucky that the dark times we all had and had to recover from have got a happy ending. I’ve spent the last 3 years not doing much and paying everything back now I’m completely debt free and it’s a wonderful feeling. I’m more bothered about getting credit as I can’t imagine will be easy to get on property ladder with a history of borrowing from the vultures.
Stuart Davis says
PDUK made an offer to me last week, one week after the FOS adjudicator took up the case. I rejected their first offering of £1600, and they upped this to £1900 the day after, which I accepted, especially as the adjudicator thought it was a fair offer. Just waiting for it to credit my bank account.
Lou says
Another response today, monkey dosh have agreed to wipe off remaining £113. original amount borrowed was £100, rolled over twice, no refund but happy to have debt wiped from DMP, just waiting for wonga and wage day advance to give their final responses due 12th and 18th may. Quick quid, 247 money box and payday uk already with FOS. Don’t know if anyone remembers my post about data breach, but after emails backwards and forwards they agreed to £200 compo for the data breach, and accepted I had refused the final response for the affordability part of complaint and will comply with FOS.
Lea says
Just an update on my complaint with Wonga. I made my initial complaint on 4th Feb, I received an email from that at just over 8 weeks on 1st April, they requested an additional 4 weeks. This came and went last Friday (29th April) I just called them to ask what is happening and after being put on hold twice I was advised they will be emailing me today to confirm that they will be providing me with a response by the 12th May, which o guess makes up the additional 2 weeks people have said they are now asking for. My patience are wearing pretty thin with them now to be honest, I’m undecided at the moment if I am going to wait it out until the 12th or just set the ball rolling with the FOS. Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.
Kath says
Hi
I made my complaint on 29 January and after the initial eight weeks, a request for a further four weeks, and then a request for another two weeks, I’ve just had the knock-back from Wonga. They consider 44 loans totalling £8k+ over three years to be affordable. They have offered me £50 compensation, but I’ve paid them £4,200 in interest.
I’ve had some success with these claims both with and without FOS involvement, so the fight goes on. I’d heard that Wonga were one of the more reasonable companies and I was willing to give them the extra time, but sadly it’s been for nothing.
This lot are the last of the PDLs I have to deal with, so I’m hoping that this will be over soon. I’ve received £1,600 from Sunny, £1100 from Lending Stream, and £900 from Quick Quid. P2P was rejected by the FOS but I’ve asked them to reconsider.
Of these Sunny and LS settled without FOS involvement. Lending Stream loans were 2014 onwards, about 20 taken over 18 months including half a dozen in the space of two months. They didn’t refund in full, but the compensation and the value of outstanding loans they wrote off came to about 65% of the interest I’d paid overall. They initially refused, then made an offer when I pointed out the number of loans.
But I borrowed more from Wonga than anyone else, and I am not going to settle for £50.
pauline says
Another query from me this evening. I contacted Wonga in February asking for statements of my account and asking for my account to be written off. I am on a DMP with them and paying a small amount each month to them. They since emailed me the statements of someone else’s account which contained all their confidential information rather than mine and also declined my request to write off the account and instead said they will accept a payment of 1 pound a month! It will take around 40 years to pay off – i probably won’t even be alive then!! Should I now take this to the FO or email back an email of complaint about the incorrect statements and that i will live long enough to pay off the debt 1 pound a month?! thanks
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Definitely go back and ask for compensation for this data breach. Other people have received £150/200 for similar from other lenders.
Also ask them to look again at your case as they may have confused it with someone else’s… How many loans / rolls did you have over what period before this last defaulted loan?
pauline says
the loans i had with Wonga went on continuously for about 2 years. I’d pay them off on payday each month, and then take it out again to cover what i paid off as it was a large chunk of my salary. It all got too much at the end of last year and entered into a DMP.
Tray says
Has anybody recently had their complaint upheld by Wonga ?? The stories seem to of gone quiet on here. I’m now on the extra 4 weeks ( week 11) response due by 10th May, however I phoned today for an update and the man said they are most likely going to ask for an extra 2 weeks . So annoying !
Anjmcj says
Mine took 12 wks with wonga then went to FOS week later offered 1.3K only on 3 loans,but I’m happy,but waited 8 days 4 money so phoned them today 2 hours said it will be in bank in 3 days,Pixie,Lending Stream and Mr lender took 1 day to wipe off balance and ls 204 refund,Pixie month ago wouldn’t budge but I pushed really happy,but Peachy,satsuma and defaults sunny I’m fighting through FOS,it’s all about chasing these awful companies
Suzi says
Had a offer from H & T after 4 weeks in write off loan outstanding almost £800 plus small amount of cash refund
Should have it in my bank hopefully by tomorrow,
Im happy with that as it was cheque roll overs -turned into a loan which i defaulted on
H & T were easy to deal with all done via e mail & phone call
Hope this helps others
Vic Smith says
I found H&T easy to deal with too.
We arranged a time to have a phone call,and the lady offered me £200 on £380 of interest.
I accepted this,as I thought this was reasonable.
I read a couple of weeks after,that someone played it tough,and got the full amount refunded.
Martin says
Hi everyone, the company handling collections for speed-e-loans, SLL Capital are also handling complaints for anyone else dealing with them.
I got a reply from SLL Capital within 90 mins of contacting them. They have offered to remove all interest and charges from the account, reducing the outstanding amount from £653 to £129.
It’s not a bad offer to be fair, but i was hoping to have the whole thing wrote off.
What do you guys reckon? Is this the best I can expect or should I now involve the FO?
Fergie says
Hi
Cheque centre have come back with a no saying that they are only considering the loans from April to May 2011 and ignoring the 6 months I loaned in 2009. They said that they are only considering the 3 loans and were very reasonable in accepting a repayment plan when I mentioned financial difficulties. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have had a gap between these loans as I was in real financial problems at this time with loads of payday lenders. Is it worth going to the FOS and asking them to look at all the loans? They admitted they did no credit check as it was a cheque cashing thing.
Thanks
Sara (Debt Camel) says
So there are two problems – should the earlier loans be considered and should there be a refund for some of the last 3 loans. These are separate issues because of the long gap between them.
I think they should consider the earlier loans, see https://debtcamel.co.uk/payday-loans-6-years/. 3 loans is marginal, the Ombudsman may decide there should be a refund for the third one as it sounds as though the gap is very small.
I would say why not go to the Ombudsman? All it will take is a bit of your time. Just view anything you get as a bonus.
Fergie42 says
Thanks Sara.
Why not indeed go to the FOS you are right.
The FOS currently have 2 of my lenders from the same period so hopefully I can refer them to the situation I was in. There are at least 4 other lenders I am waiting to hear from though.
Thanks for your help :)
Sam says
Hi Sara,
Im looking for some advice, Wonga have sent me an email to say one of the loans will not be included in the redress, for this 1 loan i paid them £1400 in interest but because they wrote off my last payment due to the FCA requirements changing in October they are stating that i can not include this in my Redress even though i did not ask to have this written off and they did this on their own accord.
Is this something you have encountered before?
“Following your query with our customer service team on 26 April 2016, we are sorry that you were not given the correct reason for the loan ***********, you believe should have been included in our refund calculation.
We did not omit that loan, or overlook it. The factual reason why this was not included in the redress calculation was because this was already written-off under our affordability forbearance programme, and so this would not be visited again.
[edited]
That programme was limited to those customers with an outstanding loan who would not have received that loan if the application was presented under our new criteria.
Closed loans were not covered by the forbearance programme and it was agreed with the FCA that outstanding balances owed and as the loans amount stood would be written-off.
As your loan account was part of this programme, we wrote-off whatever outstanding balance we owed and you were also informed of this on 10 October 2014. Your account was overdue by more than 30 days and so we took this to be unaffordable for you in our forbearance programme.
Where the customers loan was previously written-off in agreement with the FCA, Wonga would not visited the loans that fell in that affordability forbearance programme again. ”
The loan was for £1089 and i paid £2509 for it and they wrote off £300.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
I haven’t seen this before. It may not have mattered to other people as the loan may not have been large or they may not have paid much to it, but this one is obviously big for you.
Have they made what would be an acceptable offer for other loans you had from them? How much compared to the interest you paid?
sam says
They have made and offer of just over 2 grand, which is pretty much every loan i had with them that was over £500. All the smaller loans were deemed affordable which i cannot disagree on.
Hopefully the adjudicator will have more information about this on Monday for me because it doesn’t sit right that they can get away with £1200 on the biggest loan i had with them due to a loophole
Jimmy says
Hi All
Lending stream came back with an offer after 1 week. £152. I have an outstanding loan with them of £907 (I took out £500 loan and defaulted and have paid back £88). I have declined. I only had 3 loans but I believe the last 2 were not affordable.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Hi Jimmy, this article looks at what the Ombudsman may decide in this sort of case https://debtcamel.co.uk/payday-lender-write-off/. If there were only short gaps between the loans a fairly common outcome would be for the outstanding balance to be reduced to the amount you borrowed less what you repaid i.e. £412.
You could go back and say if they don’t agree to that you will be going to the Ombudsman?
Jimmy says
Hi Sara,
I’ve just received an email from Motormile Finance UK LTD saying they’ve taken over the amount from Cash Genie after CG went into voluntary liquidation. They are saying i owe £320, yet i’ve got a complaint in progress with them. any thoughts?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Hi Jimmy, I suggest you reply to MMF that you have raised a complaint with CG, the debt is in dispute, you haven’t yet had a resolution.
Also email the administrators and say you want to complain that they should not have sold your debt whilst there was a complaint in progress.
Jimmy says
Hi all,
Just had a response from Mr Lender. I had 3 loans with them (£400 on 20/12/13, repaid on 28/2/2014; £600 on 28/2/2014, repaid on 30/4/2014; and £600 on 30/4/2014 which i defaulted and entered a repayment plan settling on 31/7/2015). They claim that my credit score was 579 which they state “is a top 10% score”. They have rejected my claim and state that they lent in accordance to their affordability policy. They have offered a good will gesture of £40 which is a refund on late fees. I paid back £833 in interest on 3 loans!! Any suggestions on my next step?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Hi Jimmy, it sounds as though you rolled the first 2 loans? In that case, given you were reborn owing the same day, the Ombudsman may decide the second one was unaffordable and probably would think the third one is… you could go back to Mr L and say unless they refund the interest and charges on loans 2 and 3 you will be going to the Ombudsman? Does that sound fair to you?
Jimmy says
Thanks Sara. I’ve requested the interest and charges on my last 2 loans. They were technically a roll over, but i settled the loan and took another out on the same day. Thanks for your help.
Victoria says
Had a few phone calls today from the adjudicator regarding qq & p2p , both have disagreed with the adjudicator but still made an offer of about £3200 so I’m happy and accepted , and immediate payment , hopefully next few days , thanks to this site , I couldn’t of done it without your wise info.
My adjudicator was really good and helpful. And this offer is much better then £150 quickquid and p2p offered Me before!
Shaun says
After going the full 8 weeks with Myjar (with no luck), i received an e-mail from the Adjudicator- (3 weeks). He agreed that my loans were unaffordable on 26 loans out of 29. He has asked Myjar to refund all charges and interest 8%. The loans were taken out from 2010-2013. Myjar has until May 16th to respond to them.
So to date i’ve had £1050 wrote off Mr Lender, and credit file cleaned up.
Lending Stream- 3 loans wrote off total amount £550, and credit file cleaned up.
Wageday Advance- complaint upheld by Adjudicator (1 loan) now with Ombudsmen, as WDA don’t agree.
Payday UK – Still waiting on Adjudicator (3weeks now), and quite a lot of loans there.
Chin up everyone! Good luck.
Suzi says
Hi Aga & All
Just wanted to update you my 1st payday refund success -H&T complainted only 4 weeks ago no FOS involved , done via H & T over the phone, & i had my money in my bank account 2 hours later ! i got my loan written off plus money as well.
Im awaiting The Money Shop compliant in the Ombusdman queue as The Money Shop did not reply to them
QQ awaiting allocation to adjudicator which will be next week.
Anyone else got a claim with H& T they like to settle without Ombudsman but you will not get the 8%
Hope this helps
Mags says
Had an email from Vivus regarding the 4 loans I took with them – all fully repaid. They have agreed to refund me £367 which is the interest on the loans, plus 8% interest. No escalating tithe FO needed – just took 8 weeks for the offer to be made.
This is the first company that I put a claim in for loans that had been fully repaid.
Thomas says
Wage Day Advance are refusing to uphold my complaint and have sent a final response. I took out 7 loans with them over 18 months totalling £2400, but they won’t accept they lent irresponsibly, even though my credit report clearly showed other regular payday lending and 8 credit card defaults at the time. I’ve just submitted a complaint to the FOS :-)
More worryingly, I took out a £400 loan with them last November which I haven’t managed to make any repayments on, but they’re adding interest at a rate of £3.20 per day :-(
Steph says
i had major success without FOS involvement – WDA refund of almost £3k and Yes they do tend to take the full 8 weeks. These companies do have 8 weeks in which to respond and need to be allowed to do so if a full and thorough investigation to their complaint is required.
Matt S says
WDA have also responded to me this week refusing to uphold my complaint, had 5 loans and 7 rollovers over 14 months at a time when I had multiple other loans, defaults and ended up in debt management. Will also be submitting complaint to the FOS.
Donna says
Just a quick update:
Around the 16th April I had an email from 247 Moneybox offering to write off my current balance. Before accepting this offer I asked for a statement of account as they had not sent this when originally asked for. Despite sending another 5 emails since then I’ve not received any reply from them. I’ve just sent them another email to say I’m now referring the complaint to the financial ombudsman.
I also had an offer from lending stream around the same time. I sent them a response asking if they were willing to put the 8% interest on. Again have sent about 5 emails asking for an update and not had any response. Do I take this to the ombudsman as well?
Aga says
Hi Donna , just send to FOS ; I did that with Payday UK and cash Converters ; may I ask how many loans you had with Lending stream ? they did not upheld my complaint ; they say my credit score was 806 that time which means affordable ; in fact my credit score was much lower .
Donna says
Hi Aga,was that their final response?
I only had 4 loans with then back in 2010 but I rolled each one over and at one point was paying more than one loan to them at a time. I didn’t finish paying them until 2011.
They also said my credit score was something I knew there’s no way it could have been.
They didn’t uphold my complaint, I sent an email asking if this was their final response, they didn’t reply so I sent another one saying I was going to refer it to the ombudsman, again no reply. I completed the online form to the ombudsman. About 2 weeks later I received a letter in the post from the ombudsman asking for more details and on the same day had an email from lending stream saying they’d reviewed my complaint again and this time decided to offer me a refund.
They’ve offered about half the interest I’ve paid which I was happy with. Thought I’d be cheeky and ask if they would pay the 8% as well (someone else on here said they did the same and got the 8%) and I’ve not heard anything since,
melly says
Hi Donna,
I had the same offer and i just accepted it my balance was cleared two dys later and my credit file is being adjusted,i was that sick of them i was just happy to have the balanced wiped really
Jimmy says
Hi all,
Following a first offer of £40 from Mr Lender, I went back detailing their flaws in their internal credit scoring system (calling me a “top 10% scorer”). They have now come back offering me £220 which is a refund on all interest for the last loan. I paid £883 in total but i feel i won’t get much more from the ombudsman. I have requested that my default being removed which was placed in May 2015. Thank you all for your help.
melly says
I need advice p[lease i’ve had a response from MYJAR stating that out of 12 loans i repaid 11 ontime and there was no reason to presume from my details that they would be unafordable.
The last loan of 300 was paid late and so far only £83 from the balance has been repaid
They proposed wiping the remaining balance and refunding me £104 and clearing the default from my credit file can anyone advise?
Tony says
Melly, if your loans were continuous or nearly so, I think they would every reason to realise you were struggling.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
They are effectively removing the interest from the defaulted loan and offering 217 (300 less the 83 paid) plus 104 makes £321 in a refund for previous loans. If you have a list of the loans and interest, work back from the last loan – how many loans are they refunding interest on, the last 3,4,6?
Steven says
I wondered whether anybody has had a complaint about Lending Stream upheld by FOS yet and if so was this through an adjudicator or did it go to the ombudsman? I had around 20 loans with LS in 2013 worth around £3K and paid back around £6K in total. LS offered me a tiny refund so I escalated to FOS. The bit I’m worried about is that LS would give me an installment loan, then when I’d make the first payment on this they’d give me another ‘separate’ loan, and so on until I eventually had 4 or 5 individual loans open at any one time all for different amounts. Each loan had a different loan IDs but they were under the same account and in reality I was just ‘topping up’ the outstanding balance by borrowing repeatedly. How does FOS view this type multiple loan situation?
Kim says
Hi – I currently have a claim upheld by the adjudicator against lending stream however they did not respond to the adjudicator so it is now with the ombudsman (10 days ago) so await the final out come. This was for 3 loans – 2 of which running at the same time – adjudicator recommended interest refunded on the 3 loans with 8% plus 150.00 compensation – I await the final outcome!
Sally says
I used step one on here yesterday as I had a mini credit loan in 2012 but couldn’t remember how much I had paid off. On my credit file it says I owe £812.
Emailed yesterday, at 14.07 got a reply at 14.22 saying that the loan I got for £100, (£80 after admin)
I have repaid £251, they spoke to their compliance manager who in the space of 15 mins decided I only need to pay another £122 to get this paid off full and final and partial settled on my credit file. As I have already paid off £151 more than the loan I am going to ask that they waiver the £151 and just put it as partially settled on my file. I think with the drop from £812 to £122 that they know their charges are excessive. When they put on the charges I was in hospital with complications after a miscarriage which I told them, the woman replied that is there no one you can borrow the money off as the charges will keep increasing.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
” When they put on the charges I was in hospital with complications after a miscarriage which I told them, the woman replied that is there no one you can borrow the money off as the charges will keep increasing.”
That was an inappropriate response to anyone, and you would have been in a vulnerable situation. If they won’t wipe the balance go to the Ombudsman.
Tray says
Has anyone had any luck with Wonga this week ?? If so how many weeks is it ??? ( I’m on 11 wks 3 days )
Danny says
I Would say go to the FO , Wonga offered me 2300 I went to the FO 1 week later offered over 4k . I think they clearly offer a lot less hoping people will bite.
Good luck
Ally says
Hi, just want to say a HUGE thank you to Sara for this website. If I hadn’t came across it I would still be struggling with payday loans. I’ve managed to settle myself with mr lender, pixie loans and myjar. Qq and payday uk however not so easy. Qq offered to settle my balance of £1100 and give me £150 which I rejected and went to the ombudsman, who were so helpful and friendly! Yesterday I got an email from them saying qq had offered to clear the £1100 and give me £3900! They are still trying to get a response from payday uk….anybody had any luck with them?
Once again thank you Sara :)
Stuart says
Hi
Ref PDUK, got no response within the 8 weeks, sent to FOS. Allocated adjudicator 2 weeks ago, got an offer within a week, which I rejected, then accepted their 2nd offer. Adjudicator thought it was a “fair and reasonable” offer. Credited my bank account 5pm yesterday.
So hang in there. PDUK are useless, but once an adjudicator picked up the case, took just 2 weeks to sort out.
Suzi says
Hi Ally
Well done on your amazing success , i too have a case with QQ who offered me zero . so its in the FOS Q -AS is The Money Shop
Have you got any more refunds due ? who have you found easy to deal with
I found H & T easy to deal with like yours loan cleared plus money
Katy says
Hi Everyone
I’m just starting out on my payday loan compensation journey. When I looked back over old bank statements, I can see from the period from around 2009 – 2013 I had loans with around 20+ different lenders, including the big ones like Wonga, Payday UK, Payday Express. I’ve contacted them all asking for Statements of Account. Majority have jet to reply but will give them a week or so and chase them up.
Can anyone help and advise as to whether they had payday loans with Cheque Centre/Loan Centre? If so, have you had any compensation/interest etc. back from them?
I was also frequently rolling over cheques with H&T Pawnbrokers. Has anyone had any dealings with them and if so, any joy in getting any compensation, interest back etc?
It makes me so sad when I look back and see what I mess I was in with these payday loan companies. Anything I can get back from them will be a bonus!
Aga says
Hi Katy !
I had cheque loans with H@T , sent them complaint , they rend to sort out claimant via calls , o requested comminication in writing however they insidted they would call , so i am awaiting their call on Monday , they didn’t send statements , so I have no clue how many times I rolled over
Suzi says
i had success from H & T i sent 1 email had a reply to e mail i called after 4 weeks spoke to a very heplful girl all done over the phone i got loan written off plus cash as well , you dont get the 8% extra the FOS give. i was e mailed a full & final letter to sign -i did scanned it & e mailed it back & the funds were in my bank account 3 hours later -Success
Hope this helps all -Call them & get your refund back -Fast
Glenn14 says
Hello new too the forum
I recently used the template too complain too avant credit, don’t know if anyone else has tried this, got an interesting reply the other day.
Dear Mr. T
[general stuff edited out]
During the application process, you were required to provide your monthly net income and to verify this amount with the submission of a bank statement dated within the previous 30 days. Your monthly net income is used to help determine what a suitable monthly repayment amount would be for yourself. On the application, you indicated that you received £1400 monthly, which was then verified by information on your bank statement dated 21 June 2014 indicating a monthly net income of £983.13. Due to the discrepancy we amended the information on his application to reflect this new verified amount. This information was then confirmed against information pulled from your Callcredit Tac report to determine your eligibility for credit.
Beyond confirming your monthly net income we further examined your credit files to identify any pre-existing debt obligations. We then cross-referenced these amounts to your previously verified monthly net income to gauge the affordability of an additional obligation. This supported our calculation of the affordability of an additional credit obligation. We also examined your past repayment history, which indicated that you had not been in arrears on any account in the previous 12 months. Furthermore, no defaults appeared on your credit file. Your credit score was also taken into account when making the decision to lend. These metrics had a significant influence when evaluating your application with our industry-leading risk assessment model, prior to making a credit decision.
In light of the above information, we do not agree that we acted inappropriately when it was determined this loan was affordable for your circumstances at the time of your application. For these reasons, we do not accept the premise of your complaint. Additionally we are not bound to react based on the decisions of other lenders as is suggested in your complaint.
We recognise that you may be in some difficulty and would like to help. The last payment received on your account was on 22 July 2014 and no further payments were received after this. Missed payments since this date have been reported to your credit file and interest has continued to accrue on your account since this payment from 22 July 2014. We would like to offer to submit an amendment request to the credit reporting agencies, having any arrears marks updated to reflect as payments being received on-time beginning from August 2014 to April 2016. Furthermore, we will offer to use the payoff quote for your account from 22 August 2014 for the amount of £1182.62, effectively wiping out all interest which has accrued on your account since your missed payment in August of 2014.
[general stuff]
All seems legit at first but after taking a closer look at my credit file I noticed I have a default notice lodged on July 2014 from quick quid , which was in arrears months and months prior to this, I also had other areas with other lenders, so the fact is that avant credit just lied to me in their email about their credit check. Where do I stand? Should I take the offer and pay it off, or exscalate further with FOS, or email them back ?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
You need to think whether this offer is reasonable. This will depend on how much interest you have paid on the outstanding loan and on previous loans, see this article which looks at offers to clear / reduce balances: https://debtcamel.co.uk/payday-lender-write-off/.
If the offer seems reasonable, accept it. If it doesn’t as you have paid a lot of interest, then the credit check / default point is one to mention, but the heart of your complaint needs to be the number and frequency of loans.
2 other points on credit checks. First they seem to be suggesting it is possible to confirm your income from a credit check – it isn’t. Second they are using Call Credit, so you should get a Noddle report to see if your QQ default appears there. It may only appear on say Experian in which case they wouldn’t have seen it.
Glenn14 says
I have just checked my noddle account and it is under closed accounts as it was sold on to DCA, the default was lodged on 06/07/2014, where as my avant credit account was opened in the June
Garpar says
Hi, been lurking for a while got a reply from wda today about my complaint basically stating they have done nothing wrong. My question is should lenders like this lent me?my credit report shows 5 defaults prior to my loans with them in 2015 (defaults started 2013 last one September 2014) do I challenge this only had 2 loan and still owe 437.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
This article looks at complaints for just a few loans with a balance outstanding: https://debtcamel.co.uk/payday-lender-write-off/.
5 recent defaults is a lot. Unless the loans were very small, this is probably worth taking to the Ombudsman. But cases with only 2 loans aren’t clear cut.
Garpar says
Hello thank you for your reply,well I emailed them screen shots for the defaults and today they reversed their final response from yesterday and have wiped the full balance owing 437!!.
Nicole says
So my eight weeks with wage day advance is up on Sunday 15th…… Hopefully they will get in touch by the end of the week! Not seen many complaints upheld from them recently so won’t be holding my breath!!! Could be straight to the fo on Monday!
Lucy says
WDA replied to me on the last day. Total charges plus interest on all loans was £2.6k, they offered me £1.5k which I turned down, they then made a final offer off £1.9k which I accepted. All very quick and received money day after accepted.
That was just over 2 weeks ago. I received the letter on the Friday, emailed them on Saturday, he made a new offer in Wednesday which I accepted Thursday , money in my account Friday
Hope it all goes well and pain free!
lou says
An ombudsman has upheld the decision of the adjucicator in my case against QQ. It took 5 weeks.
How long is it currently taking QQ to pay out once you have agreed the decision.
Thanks
Miles says
OK, I’m gonna be totally honest here. I lied on my application form.
I’m not proud but I did.
I was terrible desperate and they just shoved a form at me saying income and expenditure. “Don’t worry about it, just the basics” they would say.
Because it didn’t have partners earnings, debts, outgoings etc, I just added some of the other debts, but not all, they they didn’t really see the massive problems I had.
So, is it their responsibility to find the truth in which case I feel they didn’t do enough, as they simply believed what i wrote down, or should they have done a credit check, or a bank statement check (They would not have lent if they had done so)
Or will the argument be I’m at fault for hiding the truth (OK, lying)
They wrote their final response saying it was my responsibility to tell the truth, which I guess is right.
What do you guys think?
What do I say when the Adjudicator says “you lied, case denied”
Sara (Debt Camel) says
I have looked at this sort of situation in this article: https://debtcamel.co.uk/payday-lender-says-lied/
Martin says
Had my first success today, after just 6 days.
SLL Capital have agreed to write off £650 which I owed to speed-e-loans.
After making first contact the agreed to wipe all interest and charges, leaving just £129 of the original £300 to be repaid.
Not being convinced by this I done my sums to see how much I had actually repaid through Debt Management, and the figure was £284, leaving just £16 left of the £300 originally borrowed.
When I presented these facts along with proof of the payments made, they responded by writing off the whole balance.
Hope this the first of many still to come.
Keep believing everyone.
Sam. F says
Yay! today is a very, VERY good day! the refund from Quick Quid hit my account this morning (finally) I have paid off all my existing debt & wont have to worry about money for a while, it’s a wonderful feeling!
I submitted my complaint literally the week after Christmas, so it took about five months in all.
Thank-you so much Sara, you ha e literally changed my life & thanks to all the other posters for the encouragement & advice, stick with it people, all the best to you all.
Sam. F x
Kate says
Well done Sam X
Sam. F says
To be honest Kate, I don’t feel like I did much at all, my Adjudicator did all the heavy lifting & was amazing, I wish I could buy him a round ;)
I’m not sure how the figure was calculated but the offer was very fair & double what I thought I’d get so, I’m very happy! :)
There’s enough for a few small treats! one will be a very nice good nights sleep.
Lee says
with Wonga I got to 8 weeks and they asked for an extra time, I waited 2 weeks and decided to complain to the ombudsmen, once the ombudsmen is involved and looking at my case how long will it take for them to give me an answer will it be another 4 weeks or could it be quicker?
I have had very good success with 2 x lenders without the ombudsmen and got all my interest back plus 8%.
total back so far is £6k! it has been a fantastic help finding this site so glad I did.
S.D says
Final ombudsman decision upholding my complaint against Wonga.
Started the journey at the beginning of January with Wonga not responding after 8 weeks, no request for extension.
Went straight to financial ombudsman, and after 4 weeks an adjudicator found in my favour and recommend Wonga repay all interest + the 8% interest on that.
Wonga never responded to the adjudicator so it went all the way to the ombudsman, two weeks into that Wonga offered to settle on almost half my loans via the adjudicator, I refused and allowed the ombudsman to continue his investigation.
After a total of 17 weeks since my complaint to Wonga the ombudsman upheld my complaint in full for all loans other than first 2. Which I obviously accepted thankfully.
Anyone know what happens after this and how long Wonga take from here to pay up.
Louise says
Just had a phone all from adjudicator, he’s upholding my complaint with quick quid. He has given them a week to respond
Tony says
Hi all
I have had a phone call today from adjudicator regarding my complaint v Wonga. Wonga had offered to repay two charges to totalling 818 but I refused. The adjudicator has said all loans were unaffordable and I should get all monies back to the 6 year period. Think it will be in the region of 4K including interest. The adjudicator did say that she does not expect Wonga to reply so would then go to the ombudsman.
Louise says
I also had another complaint upheld today from 247 moneybox, I only had 3 loans but he has said in his letter to them that had they done proper checks they would have seen I had defaults etc and is advising a refund of interest against all 3 loans, he has again given them 1 week to respond.
just waiting for wonga(8 weeks up Thursday) wage day advance (8weeks up next week) payday uk is with the adjudicator now, don’t know who it’s been assigned to as the adjudicator I have had for QQ and 247 is changing jobs, so couldn’t take that one on too, I do know that they have requested information though from them. So just a waiting game :)