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?
Cheryl71 says
I am literally raging!!! After waiting 14 weeks for a final response from Wonga I have been told they will not be paying out a penny to me as in their view the loans were affordable. Between 2011 and 2013 I had over 28 loans from this company ranging from £30 in the early days to £600 at the end. I got into a debt spiral because of this company and very nearly got evicted from my home due to missing my rent payments to pay them. How the hell can they now say after all this time that these loans were affordable. I am overwhelmed with pure anger at the moment. Can anyone shed any light on this for me please??
Fay says
Hi
I so feel your pain! I waited 12 weeks to get the same response – they even implied I was a perfect customer as I paid on time – only because I took it back out an hour later!!!! I have sent mine straight to the FO. Don’t bother re contacting them as they completely ignore you! Good luck X
Martin says
What a couple of days!
I’ve had 3 loans wrote off now this week, all without FOS involvement.
First SLL Capital wrote off £650 owed to speedeloans, then today I had Mr Lender write off £550, and also 24/7 Moneybox write off £250.
Still a long way to go as I’m still fighting with Wonga, Peachy, Lending Stream, CFO, Liquid Advance, and Payday Express, but having 3 lenders write off a combined £1450 is a great start.
This website is amazing and I can’t believe the results I am getting.
pete says
Hi, I had 5 loans with Lending Stream, between 2010 and 2013, with a total interest of £1089, i currently owe them £935 from an original loan of £500 taken out in july 2015. i also had loans from other companies around the same time, i have requested all charges and interest back and they have offered to reduce the £935 balance to £180…. what should i do? keep chasing them for a better offer or accept this one? kind regards. pete
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Is that ‘total interest’ the total amount you paid on the 5 repaid loans? We’re any of these loans rolled or repaid late? Have you made any payments to this last defaulted loan?
pete says
Thanks for your response Sara, borrowed: £1465 total paid: £2554 = £1089 interest, i dont think that any were rolled but atleast 3 of them were approved despite me already having active loans with PDUK of between £450 and £650 and i havent made any payments on the defaulted as of yet… copy and paste from email:
Resolution:
Having stated the above, we would not refrain from extending our support. Considering your relationship with Lending Stream, we are willing to offer a refund of the interest and charges paid on the loan account …. (as there was a procedural error whilst this loan was approved). However, we found that we have not yet received any payment towards the loan account ….. In order to settle the matter amicably, we are willing to waive all the interest and charges levied to the loan …. and request you to pay back only the original borrowed amount (after subtracting the sum of interest and charges paid on the loan …..).
To clarify, the amount payable to close the loan …. would be £182.00 (£500.00 – £318.00, i.e., borrowed amount of the loan 0000 – interest and charges paid on the loan ).
We are also willing to set up a payment arrangement to help you clear the debt in affordable repayments.
If this offer is acceptable to you, please send a confirmation so that we can make the necessary changes on our system.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
This doesn’t sound like a very strong case then. Your 5 loans were spread out over 3 years then there was a gap of 18 months until the last one. I’m not sure you would get more by going to the Ombudsman.
Angie says
Hi, this is an email I recieved from QQ today. I did have 7 loans rolled over but in the end I had to go to a debt company to help me get payday loan free so I am struggling to work out the interest. I had to pay the debt management company too but the payday loans interest was frozen at this point.
Any advice!
[standard stuff edited out]
You held a total of 7 payday loans. We have acknowledged that, during your lending history, your roll over history increased. Our records show that you have repaid your loan and was funded a new loan on the same day on three occasions.
In full and final settlement of your complaint, we would like to offer a payment of £250.00.
[edited]
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Hi Angie, I have removed the standard guff. This looks like another of QQs poor offers. People have taken this sort of offer to the Ombudsman and got 5 or 10 times as much awarded, see https://debtcamel.co.uk/quickquid-payday-loan-refunds/. It’s not possible to guarantee this, but it sounds a reasonable case to take forward.
Aga says
Hi everyone ! just quick update on my report to FCA and also plz if you have probs with Money Shop plz report it , it takes only few min and it can help all of us:
“Thank you for your email about your complaint against the Money Shop. I understand you wrote to the firm asking them for a statement of your account so you could put in complaint about payday loan affordability on specific loans.
However the firm have responded saying that due to a current backlog there will be a delay in sending you a final response and they no longer have an obligation to provide a statement of account. I appreciate how frustrating this may be. I hope I can help by explaining what we expect from them and what you can do next.
What we expect from the Money Shop
As the Money Shop is authorised and regulated by us we expect them to follow our rules. Our rules and guidance say that they should have effective and transparent procedures for the reasonable and prompt handling of complaints.
As part of this we expect them to allow complaints to be made by any reasonable means and recognise complaints as requiring resolution.
Your next steps
I understand you intend on taking your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service. The ombudsman service is free and they aim to settle complaints between consumers and businesses when they’ve been unable to do so themselves. If the ombudsman service reach a decision in your favour and you accept this the Money Shop will have to follow this decision and do whatever the ombudsman service decides is best to put things right for you.
Our role and what I have done about your concerns
We regulate the financial services industry in the UK. This includes firms like the Money Shop that offer goods or services on credit, lend money to consumers or provide debt solutions and advice. We set the rules for them to follow and supervise them to make sure they follow these rules. But we can’t intervene in your individual complaint, or say what they should do to put things right for you, that’s the role of the ombudsman service.
Although we can’t look into individual complaints the information you’ve sent me is useful and will help us to build a picture of how the Money Shop operate in the industry and deal with their customers. I have passed the information you have provided to my colleagues that supervise the firm. My colleagues will consider whether the firm have breached our rules and guidance.
John C says
An update on my QQ and Pounds to Pocket complaints. Between march 2008 and October 2012 I borrowed from QQ for 59 consecutive months. Some were new loans, many were rollovers. After this I got a loan with Pounds to Pocket, part of CashEuroNet too, and then in August 2013 I opened a flexi account with QQ that ran until Dec 2014 when the facility was pulled for everyone. I had loans with P2P between November 2012 and now. Over the course of this time with QQ I borrowed over £73k and paid over £15k on this. Scary numbers! I put in a complaint of unaffordability to QQ at the start of February, after getting all the information I needed off their website, with the exception of the flexi account as the info wasn’t available. I received an immediate reply of “we’ve done nothing wrong” for both businesses (despite not raising an issue about P2P) and when I challenged this I was told they would come back within 8 weeks. Now I actually got a reply after 7 weeks which surprised me, however the response did not. A straight rejection, but an offer of £750 for the stress and hassle of my complaint.
I immediately went to the FOS who picked up my case 2 weeks after I put it on-line. I provided a copy of my noddle report, screen shots from my Experian report showing late payment markers on my mortgage etc, my correspondence with CashEuroNet and my final response, along with a copy of all my other payday loans with PTPD and WDA. I first spoke to my adjudicator on 31st March. For note, I didn’t complain about all my loans, but from loan 29 from QQ which doubled from £750 per month to £1350
After a few conversations with the adjudicator and information back from CashEuroNet she decided that she agreed with my assessment, that the earlier loans were affordable (I earn a decent salary), but because I had rolled over a number of loans, had 3 late payments and was clearly struggling to pay off what I already had, it was irresponsible of them to allow me to double the amount borrowed. She recommended a refund of all interest from that point in July 2010. She did say that she didn’t think the P2P loans were unaffordable though as they were lower repayments. I haven’t argued this point as I agree on the reasoning. I did note that the flexi account had nothing against it, and she said that QQ had not provided this information, which was a bit cheeky of them. She did say though that if the repayments were lower and this account was opened sometime after my last QQ payday loan, they may argue against this. I’ve given her the information, stressed that I was at its max of £1350 every month and was paying the minimum payment of £400 interest and something towards to loan each month. I was probably repaying £600 minimum out of my salary and borrowing the £200 back straight away
Yesterday I got an email confirming that QQ accept her findings, will remove all loans from July 2010 to December 2012 from my credit file, refund the interest, but use some to pay off the outstanding balance on a P2P loan I still have (this isn’t in default, it actually has 3 months left to run). I asked for interest totalling £5,636 for the payday loans to be returned and £6,708 on the flexi loans. They have offered to pay off the £560 outstanding on the P2P loan and send me £7,048 for the payday loans. No mention yet on the flexi account. I’ve accepted this with the adjudicator on the condition it does not affect the rest of my complaint. She has said that is fine as they haven’t mentioned it, but the flexi account complaint may take a while longer to give them time to look at it again, which I have no issue with
My advice is to stick at it, listen to the adjudicator, consider what is fair, and hopefully those that have been mistreated by these businesses will get a refund. Sorry for the long post, but I see the same questions over and over again, so thought I’d break it out as much as I could for those just starting off. This is not a quick and easy fix, it will take time and it will be frustrating at times. You do need to do some work to collect information. Regardless of whether you have a response to any message you send them, the company you are complaining to has 8 weeks to deal with your request, after that you have the right to go to the FOS. You will not get everything back, and you will not see loans wrote off if you haven’t paid anything and every case is very different. Just because you had loans, it doesn’t automatically mean you will get a refund. Make sure your argument is valid and is proven as it makes things so much easier once it reaches an adjudicator. I made a spreadsheet that had every payment going in and out of my account for QQ, PTPD and WDA from 2008 to 2015. I did this by going through my bank account on-line. We all have to take some responsibility ourselves, but financial institutions do have a duty of care to their customers, no matter who they are, so lets hope we see a change in the way they operate and deal with customers that are struggling
The advice on here is great, and I have to commend Sara (again) for what she has done for those in serious debt, or those that have been. For the first time in about 5 years I have money in my bank account half way through the month, after my WDA refund, its a great feeling!
Good luck everyone
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Good result, hopefully the flexi loan will also be refunded as the background to this is that by that point QQ should already have identified your borrowing was unaffordable.
It confirms the fact that that QQ are offering sometimes about 10% of what the final award is :(
You say the claiming process is not a quick or easy fix and I think that’s the right attitude to adopt! Although not many people will have such a large and complicated case to wrestle with as yours! Some people will find they get a good offer from a lender very quickly, but they are the lucky ones.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
One more point. When this is all over you might consider putting in a complaint to the FCA about QQ’s complaints handling. In this case the delays haven’t been excessive, but their offer of £750 was clearly unreasonable. It must have been obvious to QQ that you had an excellent case, so they should have considered it properly and made a proper offer. By offering you so little, they weren’t treating you fairly – in other circumstances you may have been so desperate you would have accepted the low offer.
Complaining to the FCA won’t do you any good, but it may help force QQ to improve their complaints handling. See Aga’s comment above which shows the reply from the FCA .
John C says
Hi Sarah, thank you! It does show that QQ’s offers are very low, and clearly no-one has seen anything of any value, no matter what they were claiming. The higher the claim, the higher the offer of an amount for stress, but if I do manage to get my flexi account back, we are looking at £13k – £14k in total! That’s a long way off £750. This is baring in mind I didn’t even look at the first 29 loans, although the majority were over 6 years. By rejecting my complaint outright its probably cost them a lot more in 8% interest, investigation fee leveled by the FOS (its not a fine really) and them having to pay back all of what I asked for. If they had offered earlier, I probably would have been happy to negotiate on this
I think I will follow your advice and put in the complaint to the FCA once I know where I am with the other complaint. If it helps anyone else down the line, then i’m happy to do it. I’m not sure if QQ think because they are an American owned business, they don’t have to follow the same laws as a UK firm. But if they are governed by the FOS then they should act like any other UK business. Fortunately I no longer need to have any dealings with this company ever again
James says
What about safety net credit? I had that account for over a year, and as soon as i paid back every month, i borrowed tge max out again. I know its not really a payday loan but it was the same scenario…borrowing, paying back then instantly borrowing again. It cost me about 100 a month in interest.
Oli says
Hi James,
I was in the same boat with safetynet. I put a complaint in and they got back to me within 3 days offering to write off my outstanding balance which was over £350. This worked out at more than I had paid in interest and fees plus 8% so I happily accepted. Good luck
Jess says
Hi there
I have had 14 loans from sunny between 14th July 2014 & 22nd October 2015 the first 11 loans were paid off the last 3 are in default.
I sent them an email asking for the interest I had paid to be refunded and for the last 3 loans to be written off and for all 14 to be removed from my credit file. I’m 5+ weeks into the 8 week wait but I wanted to know:
1. Do you think I have a good case for miss-selling? Many of the loans were paid and re-taken out within a few days some were even taken out on the same day I had paid the previous one. I was never asked to provide any proof of income etc BUT I did over estimate my wage (not proud of it)
2. For the others dealing with sunny …. Did they take until the maximum of 8 weeks to give you a decision? I wrote to them on Saturday 2nd April.
Thanks in advance for any replies, Jess
Sara (Debt Camel) says
If the info on the applications wasn’t right the lender couldn’t make the right decision for the first few loans. But they should have realised you were in trouble when you kept borrowing so this sounds like a reasonable case.
J says
Hi Jess- I had 15 loans with sunny, taking one out each month around pay day straight after I paid the amount I owed. They got back to me yesterday (full 8 weeks) and did not uphold my complaint… I compiled my complaint and sent it to the FO last night. The reply I received was short and generic but did mention that due to “adverse” information on my credit check I was offered less of a loan… Hmmm interested in what adverse information is suitable to provide the loan in the first place… Anyway- complaint submitted. Good luck!!
Kez says
Hi Sara,
I have just received an offer from CFO lending for just over £300.
I had 2 loans the first £250 which I deferred once then repaid in full the following month. I took the second loan out the same day for £467.
I deferred this loan 6 times paying £182 for each deferral, before I stopped paying
In total £560 worth of interest was charged after I stopped paying. I then set up a payment plan and paid £50 a month for 27 months.
The figure they have quoted sounds very low to me so I called them and asked how they reached the figure and was told it was the interest for rolling over the loan for 1 month.
I asked if that would be the final offer as I wasn’t happy and then she asked me to tell her what I thought would be the figure to settle the claim.
I think a fair amount would be all my deferral interest plus the 8%.
Any thoughts!
Kez
Sara (Debt Camel) says
You could ask for all the interest to be refunded on the second loan (so 6*182 + 560 = 1652 if I have read your numbers correctly?).
Point out that If you go to the Ombudsman 8% interest is usually added on, but you would be happy to settle this now without that? Many people think this is a reasonable compromise.
If you do go to the Ombudsman you would be unlikely to get a refund of interest on the first loan.
LJ says
I chased Sunny today for a response after their 8 weeks was up to day. Heard nothing apart from acknowledging my complaint when I first submitted it, they responded very quickly all of a sudden saying they had done nothing wrong and all lending was affordable. I wont go into too much detail but for over a year I was borrowing from them, I agree I would pay them back always on time but would immediately, the same day in most cases borrow again from them. I also had one of there flexi loans and over £1000 of interest was paid back. Very disappointed with the results to be honest! Has anyone had much success in referring to the FO with Sunny?
Andrew says
Hi guys, but if advice please. I was one of the customers who Wonga automatically had the balance wrote off as they admitted it was not affordable.
Great but have seen that all interest charges prior to this I could possible reclaim? Is this correct and do I have a good chance as they have already admitted they lent when they shouldn’t have by their own accord?
Thanks!
James says
I am also in this boat Andrew, I’m looking at over £4000 of interest paid over 22 loans in 2 year gap and hoping that because they wrote my outstanding debt of £1000 off I should be entitled to the refund aswel
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Hi Andrew and James,
If you had a lot of borrowing before the loan that was written off its well worth asking for a refund for the earlier loans. This may be lower because of the write off (that would be fair!) but at this point just ask for a refund of interest and see what is offered. You may well need to take these cases to the Ombudsman, so be relaxed about this taking a while….
Lea says
Hi all
I would just like to update on my success with wonga, today at 13 weeks and 6 days I have received an offer of £2543 which I have accepted.
This was on my own no FOS involvement. At the end of the initial 8 weeks they requested an additional 4 weeks, then at the end of the 4 weeks they requested an additional 2 weeks.
I paid them around £3000 in interest however at the beginning of my pdl journey a lot of my loans were small and probably were considered affordable, so taking that in to account I think that the offer is fair.
Thanks for all your help
Jimmy says
I’m so annoyed with PDUK. I have been chasing a statement of my account for about a month now and they had been delaying me (saying it’ll cost £5/saying they can’t sent by email and i’ll have to pay postage). So I got them to read my statement over the phone so I could at least calculate how many loans I had and how much interest I paid. They told me I had 7 loans since 7/2010 borrowing approx. £2100 and repaying approx. £2700. I thought this seemed fishy as I was so reliant on them, so I continually chased them for my statements. I received them today by post and notice that on my 7 loans I deferred over 40 times paying back way more in the process!
Jimmy says
So i’ve done my calculations. I had 8 Loans, continuously from July 2010 to defaulting June 2014. I had 8 loans, but actually deferred 30 times in total. I actually borrowed £3140 and repaid £6,935.87 ( still have £544 outstanding). How can PDUK forget to tell me of the deferrals/roll-overs. I was often just paying interest to roll-over. I did not roll over on my first loan but rolled over 7 times on one loan and then borrowed more money once I paid it off fully. I’m devastated I paid so much interest and I’m sure PDUK will be a long process but i’m willing to be patient.
James says
Lot of comments about companys saying that the customers only had 7 for loans for instance, but turns out theyve had like 25 or 30! This is shocking, and surely illegal. But if u dont have bank statements or anything to prove it, then what prevents them from lying about how many loans uve had?? It seems like theyre trying there best to do that, and are/can they get away with it?!
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Actually only a few comments saying this, and one of those today has now agreed that he only had 5 loans but he was counting rollovers as seperate loans. It’s good if you can check from your own records what the lender is saying as errors may occur, but I don’t think there is systematic lying going on ( but being naturally suspicious I am looking out for it!)
Gordon says
Hi Sarah,
Cheque Center did the same to me. The missed some loans off the end (Said it was a copy and paste error) and missed 2 loans out the middle and added them into the statement after me showing a bank statement!
It was easy to spot because i knew i was lending consecutive months and there should have been no gaps but would have been hard to prove if my loans were adhoc.
alan says
Gordon, did you get anything back from cheque centre? I am waiting to hear from then…curious!
thanks
Gordon says
Hi Char,
Cheque Center originally offered £1200 ish. I declined saying i paid around £4500 in interest. After a bit of negotiation they came back with the same amount plus 8% interest.
I declined and said i wanted £4000, they refused and revoked there offer. I was initially kicking myself because £1200 is a nice bonus for anyone. I took it to the FO and after around month he upheld my complaint. All interest paid after 3 loans and 8% interest. total i received was just under £5000 after they took nearly £200 tax from the interest.
I emailed the complaint handler and asked for the money direct into my bank – and had to send a picture of my bank card. Money was in the next day.
Thinking back – there was one point i wished i took the £1200 and i can imagine some people will. Just stick with it because it will be put right in the end.
Claire says
Has anyone had any success with Payday UK or Payday Express? They have had my complaint for 15 weeks now and still say they are not in a position to give me their final response. I passed to the FO on week 8 but still waiting for it to be assigned to an adjudicator!
grace says
Hi Clare today I had a response for pduk after 6 months and payday express last week its been a long tough ride, but I have been emailing and calling everyday!
Claire says
I just had mine from Payday UK, didn’t uphold my complaint and offered to reduce my balance by £122. Refused it and have passed it onto the FO!
Phil says
Hi guys
I got my response from Sunny 2 days before the 8 weeks were up. Unfortunately they didn’t uphold my complaint despite the fact I had been taking out loans every month, on many occasions more than one, racking up just shy of 2k interest in that time. I did pay back every payment on time but it was largely because I had taken out another to pay back the previous.
They stated “we conducted creditworthiness checks, we assessed your ability to afford the repayments which would fall due under the proposed agreement and we considered how you were managing other debts at that time.”
I even stated to them that I had lost my job and that paying off the outstanding balance would be a major struggle.
They have even given me a link to the FOS at the bottom of their response. Do you think I have a case to fight?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
That sounds like a good enough case to take to the Ombudsman – emphasise how many loans you had and the short gaps between them. Good luck and let us know how it goes!
LJ says
Hi Phil,
I had the exact same reply from Sunny too, I am going to be taking mine to the FO as I don’t agree.
Good Luck
LJ
Adam says
Morning,
So in Nov 14, wonga wrote off my defaulted loan of about £400.
I thought that this was due to their forbearance programme however it transpired that it was down to a computer migration to an updated platform (their words) and that all old loans had to be written off.
I also had around 25 other loans from them month on month with the amount rising each time, i put in my complaint from this page and they emailed back saying it was already done in Nov 14 and the balance written off. However i have an email confirming the amount was written off due to the computer issue and not affordability checks.
I have already contacted the FOS as Wonga has confirmed that they have completed the investigation, i have also forwarded them the email regarding the computer migration.
So with this in mind, do you think i still have a case regarding the previous loans?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Yes I think this is a case worth pursuing. You have not had a complaint for the repaid loans settled.
grace says
Today I had confirmation that Payday UK will be refunding all interest and charges plus 8% plus £100 compensation on 25 loans, I am still waiting for payment from Payday Express it has been over a week and they said within 5 days. The FO did not uphold my complaint about Peachy but I did only have one loan with them. All in all after a very long 6 months I feel I am getting somewhere.
Laura says
Hi guys got some good news today. Wonga upheld my complaint and are refunding me just over £6000 I am absolutely thrilled. It took nearly 14 weeks in total but was well worth the wait. I do have one question they did say they will be deducting tax from it. I’m on a low income so don’t pay tax am I able to claim this back or do I wait to see if I get a tax rebate at the end of the tax year?
Kate says
I was told by the ombudsman that this tax year banks could not deduct the tax anymore and it was your responsibility to do so ., if they do deduct it you can claim it back pretty easy from the inland revenue but takes a few weeks. Might be worth a call to them.
Vic Smith says
Hiya.
I had to claim my partners tax back via a self assessment form.
Rather complicated,but I put down a rough figure that I thought my partner was owed,and the hmrc paid out without any questions asked about proof.
I thought they may have asked for proof of letters,emails etc.
Vic
Steph says
I have around 8 complaints in with the FOS and today received my first tel call from an extremley lovely and friendly Adjudicator who took time to explain the process and his role etc. What he did say was that rather than 8 different adjudicators dealing with each complaint separately, he is probably going to deal with them all because its part of a bigger picture. Seems sensible to me.
Steph says
I’ve checked my credit report with both Noddle and Experion and out of about 18 payday lenders, only 2 exist as showing on my report??
This being the case, how on earth do I prove that I had numerous lending, rollovers and defaults going on at the same time? Is it possible then that a lot of payday lenders just didnt bother to log any borrowing. 2012 was my absolute worst year for borrowing and NOTHING at all is recorded for this time.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
In 2012 many payday lenders didn’t report loans to the Credit Reference Agencies :(
Good sources of data are:
– the payday lenders’ statement of accounts (though its good if you can double check these against your own records)
– emails
– your bank accounts.
Stuart says
I posted recently about 2 cases against PDUK and QQ. I’ve now received the £1900 refund from PDUK, I first lodged my complaint with PDUK in early Jan, no final response, escalated to FOS. Once it got allocated an adjudicator it all speeded up and took about 2 weeks mid-April from his taking up the case to getting a 2nd offer. Then a week to get payment early May.
My adjudicator rang me this week about the QQ loans and decided as 2 were outside of the 6-year scope he would not investigate further, and the remaining 2 loans he was satisfied that QQ had carried out relevant checks having seen their responses. I wasn’t expecting much from the QQ case, I would have been happy with just a goodwill gesture, but just be aware that the 6-year rule is being appied. Even though I used the “being aware there was a problem” extra 3-year clause it didn’t seem to carry much weight.
s williams says
Anyone know a complaint email address for Microlend UK – changed to possibly Payday Overdraft or WPPL in 2014? Haven’t seen any comments from anyone regarding Microlend…Thanks in advance!
Steph says
Omg, Microlend- my biggest borrowing from them. I so wish they were still in business i’d have such a claim with them!
Sara (Debt Camel) says
WPPL bought the loan book from Microlend. If you had any communications with them, you can complain to them – if an email there bounces back, ask the Ombudsman what you can do.
If you only had a few loans, you may decide it’s not worth bothering with this, but if you had a lot, then it’s worth trying!
Steph says
Thankyou Sara this is helpful but I wonder can this company be held responsible for previous mistakes made by MICROLEND just because they took over the loans?
s williams says
Looks like the answer is no unless you still had a loan when WPPL took over….this is the response from paydayoverdraft….
Apologies but we never had your loan and any complaints or requests must be taken with Microlend Ltd.
We have no information not did we ever administer or lend you money.
We also never took your loan on or have any history.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
OK, in this case you need to ask the Financial Ombudsman what you can do.
NB It’s worth being cautious if WPPL deny that they took over one of your loans as this may not be correct – see if you have ever had any emails from them and check your bank statements for payments to them.
Aga says
I just had conversation with H@T , they keep on insisting phonecall, didn’t like it at all the woman started asking question whether I notified them about financial hardship that time , that they didn’t have to do checks , I told her all they asked for was payslips etc, I was told I paid 2550 of interest and she is offering 1500 saying that Fos may not uphold or pay only for 3 years , I said I wanted all interest , don’t know what to do 1500 compering to 2550 is a big difference
Sara (Debt Camel) says
H&T do seem to prefer to deal by phone :(
Do you have a list of your loans from them? How many over what period and how long ago?
Aga says
2008-2013 , she took into consideration last 6 years , and said 2550 interest , I have no list Sara , she didn’t include 2008,2009 every month extending cheques , I have no list ,
Suzi says
Morning Aga
Well done for calling H& T who do prefer to deal by phone , they sorted mine out like that very quickly
I didnt have a list of cheque roll overs either , but i accepted the money which was in my account the same day once i had signed the acceptance and scanned it back.
As you say £1500 is a lot of money
My Quick Quid case has now been allocated at the FOS that one is only a small amount had 2 loans repaid 1 in full but the larger one i didnt they loaded a lot of charges on it then pass to DCA.
Well Done again for making the call
Lea says
Hi all,
Just another quick update from me. Payday UK have responded to my complaint after 15 weeks (no FOS involvement) offering £331 and removal of 6 loans from my credit file. I am going to accept their offer as I initially only paid them around £460 in interest. I know the amount is lower and the 8% is not added but I feel this is fair considering the loans I took with them were relatively small compared to other pdl’s that I borrowed from.
Thanks again for everyone’s help.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
That sounds an OK offer – the FO will often award only a refund from loan 3 or 4 anyway.
What is more surprising is that it was made without any FO involvement! Let’s hope their complaints logjam is unblocking and more people will be getting reasonable offers.
Nicole says
Received a email back from wage day advance on Wednesday saying I should get my final response by close of business today as my 8 weeks up on Sunday! We shall see tho!!!! X
John C says
Hi Nicole, my 8 weeks with WDA were up on a Sunday, and I didn’t get my reply till the Monday
I had success. I didn’t get a refund on all loans, and didn’t expect to. Some were older than 6 yrs too. I had argued that due to me rolling over one loan 10 times in a row by just paying the interest, then needing a 6 months payment plan to pay it off completely, I shouldn’t have ben able to loan again the following month. They upheld from that point, up till the loan system changed and it was a much smaller part of my income (think it was £58 per month rather than £600) Total refund was around £7k. They were very thorough and I did have a good argument from a certain point, but they didn’t refund anything earlier, or anything that was from the last year or so. I thought it was a fair offer and accepted. Money was in my account that evening in a number of separate payments
sarah says
had my 1st victory
To investigate your complaint I have reviewed the account opening procedures in place at the time. Having done so, I am able to inform you that we conducted creditworthiness checks, assessed your ability to afford the repayments which would fall due under the proposed agreements, and we considered how you were managing other debts at that time. Based upon these checks it was considered responsible to advance credit to you. However, having reviewed the information you have provided, there are indicators that the products may not have been suitable for you and with this in mind, I uphold your complaint.
In line with my decision, and to return you to the position you would be in had you not been granted a loan, I would like to offer the following:
• A full refund of all interest and charges paid in respect of your loans, totalling £1092.19 (you borrowed £722.43 and repaid £1365.82 with Sunny, and borrowed £250 and repaid £698.80 with Quid)
• Simple interest at 8%, calculated on the above figure, totalling £189.21 (£107.71 in respect of Quid and £81.50 in respect of Sunny).
• The record of your loans will be removed from your credit file, we will update Equifax, Experian, and CallCredit.
• The remaining balance of £62.30 has been written off, please cancel any regular payments you have set up in respect of the debt, either directly or through a debt management company.
i recieved this today and its for ALL loans. my 8 week deadline ends today to bang on time. if i am reading this correctly its £1281.40 for me yipee x good luck everyone.
wonga is with FOS and thats the big one for me. its been 12 weeks but with over 170 loans i am very hopeful
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Nice one – the Sunny group are pretty good at handling complaints at the moment, in time, clear responses, no daft offers and even adding the 8%s on.
Nicola says
Hi all. Ive recently started the process of trying to claim back interest on some of my payday loans, and have had some responses. Sunny have not upheld my complaint, despite taking out 24 loans in 15 months. They have emailed to say that they believe they carried out the correct checks, and that they will not be offering any refund. I still have a balance outstanding with them, and am hoping that they may offer to refund the interest on these loans, as they failed to respond to 7 emails I sent them asking to set up a payment plan, and therefore the balance continued to mount up until they finally froze the account when I mentioned the words ‘FOS’ in a later email.
I’ve had the same response from quick quid as most people…an offer of £150 as a goodwill payment to close the complaint. In total I paid back £10498.09 to QQ (£5674.52 principle and £4689.19 interest) and had a total of 13 loans over a period of 17 months. During that time I had two payment arrangements, and the last one took me 17 months to repay. My income was about £1200, and I was allowed to borrow up to £900 each time.
I am still waiting for Wonga to come to a decision. After a six week wait, I have received an email today asking for a further six weeks. I had 11 loans over a 19 month period, and the last two were both repaid under a repayment plan. After the first payment plan ended, I was allowed to re borrow again on the very same day. In total I repaid £5383.10 (£3503.03 principle, £1880.08 interest).
I’m not sure what to do now. I feel quite upset that Sunny rejected my complaint, and am not sure if I should forward to Fos, or to ask them if they will waive the interest on the most recent 3 outstanding loans, and come to a repayment arrangement. I’m hoping that they will take into account all the emails I sent them, which they failed to respond to, asking for help. I’m also worried that if I send QQ to FOS, that I may lose the original offer of £150, which although is no where near what I was hoping for, is at least something. I’m also unsure if I should go to Fos before awaiting the response from Wonga.
During the time I was taking out loans (mostly from 2012 onwards), I was gambling heavily and in a real mess. My credit report would’ve shown that I was roughly £28000 in debt, and I was also on a debt management programme. I was working part time and earning between £900 and £1400 per month. I’m hoping that they can see that I borrowed almost every single month, and once I’d repaid one, borrowed again straight away.
Tony says
Nicola
I would certainly go to the financial ombudsman re Sunny if you took out 24 loans in 15 months. That sounds quite obvious that it was unaffordable.
Aga says
Hi Nicola,
QQ is the worse so go straight to FOS reg Sunny I am very much surprised, try to send them some docs proving that you had financial problem ,some shots of defauls , late payment , legal actions etc , I did that with WDA and finally they upheld from loan number 4
good luck
Nicola says
Thanks for the advice. I have emailed Sunny today asking them to reconsider their decision, based on the fact that they failed to respond to me when I asked for help, and that they allowed me to take out loans almost twice a month for 15 months. I have simply asked that they clear the outstanding balance, and close my accounts with them. I’m certain they will decline this, but it’s worth a shot as they tend to reply fairly quickly. I am unsure if I want to pass the QQ complaint (or sunny) to the FO….my bank statements will mainly show gambling transactions (not proud of this and am now attending gamblers anonymous), and therefore am worried they will say that if I hadn’t of frittered the money away, the loans would’ve been affordable. What a mess.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
If you can get a satisfactory offer from a lender that is good. But we have seen people have cases upheld at the Ombudsman with gambling showing on thier bank statements. If you borrowed often enough, the lender should have realised you had problems and stopped lending.
Glenn says
Just had a reply off lending stream and I don’t knew whether too too take it too FOS, bear in mind I had 2 defaults and was 6 months in arrears with 3 loans when I took this out , below is the email I got
We confirm that you had borrowed five loans (2046672, 2178940, 2246937, 2268984 and 2283656) out of which three of the loans 2246937, 2268984 and 2283656 were outstanding.
Please be informed that the loan accounts 2246937, 2268984 and 2283656 has an outstanding balance of £34.60, £527.90 and £36.25 respectively.
[standard guff]
After reviewing your loans, we note that you informed us about your financial hardship on 24th June’15 and we setup the payment arrangement on the loan accounts (2246937, 2268984 and 2283656). However, the last payment was received on 20th September’15 for the loan account 2246937 and for the loan accounts 2268984 and 2283656 we received the last payment on 20th August’15. Later, we did not receive any payment on the loan accounts.
Considering your current situation and relationship with Lending Stream, we are ready to close one loan account 2246937 with no further payments; thereby waiving the current balance of £34.60.
However, for the loan accounts 2268984 and 2283656 we did not receive the actual borrowed amount, hence, we are ready to offer you to pay the reduced balance after waving all the interest and charges levied on the loan accounts. For your reference, we have mentioned the loan details in the table below:
Loan ID Borrowed Amount Amount Paid Outstanding Balance Reduced Balance
2268984 £420.00 £167.36 £527.90 £252.64
2283656 £90.00 £80.00 £63.25 £10.00
Please send us the confirmation so we may make the necessary changes accordingly.
[edited out]
Sara (Debt Camel) says
This situation is never easy to decide. See https://debtcamel.co.uk/payday-lender-write-off/ for some examples.
The figures you need to know are:
– how much interest you paid on 2046672 and 2178940 (the repaid loans) and how much you have paid so far towards 2246937 (the one where they are clearing the small balance)
– what were the gaps between the loans?
How important is getting the credit files cleared to you? If you have a lot of other credit record problems it may not matter.
Tony says
Adjudicator for Wonga wont go back for more than 6 years from 29/1/16, but has said I should be repaid all monies and interest from this date so will be about £4k.
I have 4 other claims at adjudicator stage, and they are being dealt with by same lady, one of which is Uncle Buck. She seems to be looking back prior the 6 year thing, not sure if there are hard rules but should be to be fair
The other 3 may not be so clear cut and obviously these wan**rs can ignore at this stage but am feeling so much more positive and all that thanks to Sara
Alice says
I have a letter from an adjudicator that says I should have known to complain years ago and that although I can ask them too look again he believes any outcome would be unlikely too change, seems really unfair that one adjudicator will look and other refuses too, it should be consistent and not personal opinion, I have of course asked for it too be looked at again and I will continue to escalate, 22 consecutive loans from pduk all over 6 years, I’m not sure how we were too know we could complain, it’s like ppi, unless there is publicity and cases being won, none of us ordinary people know the laws a show we should/can be protected from things.
Steph says
Alice, I quite agree and i think those of us affected by this need to take a stand on it. The only thing I would say is the adjudicator did say to me that it can be difficult obtaining information from over 6 years ago because financial institutions aren’t required to hang onto the info. If you have old bank statements then great but in one of my cases with FOS is Uncle Buck ( 2008 -2009). I cant get a hold of any bank statements from this period and Uncle Buck say they don’t keep info beyond six years so in that respect there is quite simply no evidence or proof!
Peter says
After 5 week with the FO, QQ made me an offer. I had 3 loans with them but paid the 1sr back without rolling over/extending. The other 2 were rolled over on numerous occasions. They agreed that they should of noticed I was in financial difficulty when I started rolling over and have offered to pay interest from this point. Also they will remove the loans from my credit file and pay 8% per annum. This totals over £1100 which I have accepted.
How long does it take from accepting the settlement with the FO to QQ paying the money?
hannah says
Hi Peter
Great news. Mine was in my account 3 days later on a saturday
Kim says
I have accepted an offer from wonga yesterday after complaint being in 13 weeks and 2 days (included in offer was 25.00 compo for delay in dealing with complaint). This was direct from Wonga – I didn’t go to the FO.
Any ideas how long it will take to reach my account – I was told by them a week – I’m not convinced!!!
grace says
Refund received from payday express today £2k :) It was through the FO its taken 6 months! and a lot of calls and chasing.
I am just waiting on PDUK to give me a figure! then just lending stream and uncle buck to go :)
I have signed my settlement form for PDUK and rang them yesterday but they haven’t worked out the refund yet! has anyone heard of this ??
Melly says
Hi
I’ve had a response from lending stream basically stating they don’t believe they have acted irresponsibly but have offered to wipe the balance of my two remaining defaulted loans totalling 273 to close the accounts and end the matter.
I am not sure whether to accept this or refuse as they pointed out in their email I did not inform them I had entered a dmp and it was my responsibility to do so.
I had three loans in total all in succession the original amount was 120 the statement of account shows up to 2012 id paid 388 back and it’s now in a payment arrangement I don’t know how much interest as their statement only shows the repayments I’ve made and the dates, they only seem to have given me one loans statement
Sara (Debt Camel) says
You could reply you would like to see the statements for all of your loans so you can consider their offer?
Gordon says
Hi All,
I had my complaint with the Fo for around 4 weeks regarding 247 Moneybox. They advised me that they had everything they needed from the company and was looking into it. Spoke with him last week and he decided that they hadn’t done anything wrong looking at the 5 loans they has given me!! 5 loans was incorrect and i said it was 11 loans. I sent him proof that it was 11 and that changed the decision in my favor. How can a company provide misleading information in there favor? If i wasn’t listening properly – or even if the amount of loans wasn’t correct i would have took this decision and accepted it.
I still have to hear from 247 Moneybox and will see if they agree or not but they have been an absolute joke to deal with – not returning phone calls and one guy put me on hold at 5:40pm and was still on hold at 6:15, i hung up and tried calling back but they closed at 6! I sent my original.
Just be careful with the information the FO has and maybe check with them as this could have quite easily gone the other way for me and im sure they will do this again.
Bryan says
Hi, I have received statement of account from PAYDAY UK, but breakdown shows 8 loans deferred 40 times, over a 5 year period. Should be claiming back deferrals or just interest? Any help would be grateful.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
A deferral is just a label for charging you interest for another month – if you work out what you borrowed originally and then how much you repaid over the full life of the loan, then the difference between these figures is interest and any charges – which is what you should be asking for a refund of.
BUT you don’t have to bother to specify this amount in your complaint. Just say how many loans and deferrals you had over what period. Put in your complaint quickly so the 8 week clock starts ticking … then you can spend a happy weekend afternoon when it is convenient putting all the figures into a spreadsheet so you know how much interest and charges you paid. As a good rule of thumb, also work out what you paid on the last 5 or 6 loans, including the deferrals on these – the Ombudsman will often decide that that the first 2 or 3 loans were “affordable”.
Kay says
Hi All. I need a bit of advice please regarding Wonga.
So I waited patiently for 14 weeks and today received a response to my complaint. They won’t uphold my complaint and the reason wasn’t quite clear…. They stated in my complaint I stated my income was £1300 a month but on my applications I stated it was £1200 – £1500, they rely on me to be honest in my application and update my account if my income changes etc.
They offered me £50 as a gesture of goodwill for the time spent to reply to my complaint.
I have replied stating I accept the £50 for waiting patiently for 14 weeks for a response, however I don’t agree with the outcome of the complaint because I didn’t lie on my applications. My income changed on a monthly basis depending on overtime and was always between £1200 and £1500, the £1300 I put on my complaint is within that range. I then said I will take this to the FO this week.
So basically I want to know if you think I was OK to reply? Will they even look at it? I’m trying to avoid the FO but I guess I have nothing to lose by taking it to them. As I did borrow a lot from 2014 and 2015.
Thanks
Sara (Debt Camel) says
I think your point about your income varying sounds perfectly reasonable. This is not a good reason to not consider your complaint.
If they haven’t got back to your reply by Friday, send it to the Ombudsman!
Alan says
Hi has anyone had any success claiming from Cheque Centre? I am waiting on a response from them.
I had umpteen payday advances with them, over about 5 years. totalling around £18,000
rolling them over on lots of occasions. paying plenty interest.
Gordon says
I was offered £1200 ish directly from them – FO awarded the all but 1st 3 loans – nearly £5000.
sarah says
hi there, just after a bit of advice please.
on friday i was offered just under 1300 from sunny. it also offered to clear the outstanding balance. they asked me to accept via email and provide my bank details which i have done, but i have tried to contact them via email and phone to make sure they have received my details but am getting no response. i checked my sunny account and the balance has been cleared. i assume that they would have only cleared my account upon receipt of me accepting there offer, do u think this is correct? thanks guys
aga says
H&T got back to me just now saying they agree to refund full interest of 2550 I am over the moon , thanks to this website it might be they owe me more as I requested statement of account 5 times they never sent it , never mind 2500 right now is saving my life thanks again Sara
10 complaints more to go ( OMG)…
Suzi says
Hi Aga
Well done thats a lot of money i told you you would be glad you made that call …you will have your money very soon
Im so happy for you, your hard work is paying off as mine did with H & T ,
I have 2 more to go The Money Shop & QQ
The Money Shop with Ombudsman week 6 hope to hesr very soon as its been upheld
QQ just been allocated hope thats upheld to same thing no credit checks i had 5 defaults at the time so that proves it –
Onwards & upwards we go
craig says
Lending Stream
I had 22 loans with them from 2012-2015 total borrowed £1980 with £2253 paid in interest.
Loan frequency was usually every 2 months apart from the last 4 which were took out between 28 June 2015 and 20 August 2015 totaling £860
The last 4 loans with them defaulted and i setup a payment plan of £50 a month which I have been paying since August 2015.
They have wrote to me today with the standard guff that they made the necessary affordiblity checks etc.
However on one of my loans, that is now paid off, there was a procedural error whilst the loan was approved and would refund the interest paid on this. Therefore, instead of refunding all the interest and charges paid on the loan account 1221890, they offer to subtract the remaining principal balance of the loans outstanding from the refundable amount (£396.37) in order to close them. Post closure of the outstanding loans, the refundable amount will be £100.53.
This is not their final response. Any advice much appreciated
craig says
further update I called lending stream resolutions team and asked for more info on the loan which had a procedural error with as I could find no information in my loan history on their website nor any trace of the loan ref mentioned. the response I got was there was there is no history online for this ref as it was originally applied for with zebit before lending stream took over and no income/expenditure was on file for this loan application which was for £280 (£396.37 interest) thus why a refund has been issued?
I remember borrowing from zebit who lending stream advise took over from in 2012. The loans I repaid about every 2 months they were only paid late towards the end when I had 4 loans approved for between 28 june – 20 august 2015 totalling £890. prior to that it was small amounts up to max £150 every 2 months.
Jennifer says
Hi had the same thing with lending stream. The loan reference number which had a procedural error didn’t correspond to any of my loans I had with them. I have pointed that put in my reply but haven’t not had any response as yet. My loans have always been with lending stream not zebit so would like to see what their response would be.
Jimmy says
Some nice victories to read. It does keep me motivated to be persistent, yet patient! I’ve so far had:
247 Moneybox loan written off – only had 3 loans and still owed so happy with this. (took 10 days from start to finish)
Mr Lender refund of £220 – only had 3 loans and they deemed loan no.3 unaffordable (7 days)
Ferratum interest reduced leaving me with initial borrowing amount to pay- 1 loan only – deemed unaffordable (2 weeks)
Peachy & Lending stream are with the FOS and have been for about 2 weeks.
Many more to go as most have until mid-June to respond. Fingers crossed.
Lea says
Ok so I am absolutely furious!!! Wonga made me an offer at 15 weeks 6 days (last Wednesday) which I accepted on the Wednesday, I got confirmation by email early Thursday morning that the payment had been sent for processing and should take 3-5 days.
So I call them up just now, bit of a cheeky call really to see if they have processed it and they tell me they tried to send the payment Friday but that it got returned. He double checked my details with me and then stated they had the wrong sort code down for me… How? I’ve had the same bank account for 17 years and certainly the whole time I was a Wonga customer!! He then advises me he will have to send it back to the complaints team for them to put it forward for processing again, once received by them it’s going to be another 3-5 days for the payment to be processed!!!! I told him I felt that was very very unfair considering this is an internal error and not my fault in any way!! Ggggrrrrrr!!
I’ll be on the phone to them 1st thing tomorrow when the complaints department staff are back in but I’m unsure really what I can say to make them process my payment any faster.
Any advice Sara? Anyone?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
My advice is to consider whether to have a nice glass of red wine or white wine… sorry but although this is super annoying, you have done all you sensibly can,
grace says
i want to scream and shout I had a refund from paydayuk and the money appeared today!!!! just over £2k had confirmation this morning money in account this afternoon! lending stream and uncle buck to go – 6 months it has taken x
Louise says
247 moneybox have come back wanting more info. They are claiming there were no defaults on my credit file. I had a look and there was three from other payday lenders. In other news, quick quids 7 days are up today from adjudicator upholding, so hopefully will get an offer, but going by my previous experience and others on here I’m not holding my breath!
George says
I’ve received a statement of account from a lender and the amounts they’ve lent to me & the interest paid back is a lot less than the transactions from my bank statement. One loan says i borrowed £100 and paid back £130 yet my bank statement shows I only received £80 and paid back £130 all of the figures don’t add up to my bank statement.
Do you think they’ve done this on purpose or could it be a mistake? As their records show I paid £200 in interest but my bank accounts shows around £600 should I report them for this??
fusionx212 says
if the numbers they are providing are wrong then you should challenge them about this.
give them the change to review and rectify the issue.
if they refuse then you have a good case of data manipulation by them on your accounts and i’d speak to the FOS and quite possibly the FCA due to fraudulent activity by a business.
fusionx212 says
I’ve had a reply back from quick quid regarding my refund, they have confirmed they are willing to recall the debt back from PRA group and delete the record from my credit file.
I have stated the account has already been paid with them and I have already had the default removed from my credit file due to incorrect data.
quick quid are being pretty poor here.
I have re-offered my terms I am willing to accept a refund of £174 (lower than all of the loans total) and all of the entries removed, I phoned them up at which they said they would need to speak to the debt collection company to clarify if I had paid them ( was paid back in 2011) pretty frustrating to be fair.
wonga i phoned to chase them up again, to be given a half message about a further 4 weeks email being sent to my self. which I did not recieve. guess it’s just a waiting game.
I’ve chase sunny and myjar too still awaiting a response.
redfraggle says
Had a response from Safetynet Credit.
They are willing to:
Write off the current balance
Refund me £1986.00 in charges
Mark my credit file as fully satisfied
I worked out that I had paid circa 3k incharges with them and currently have an unpaid balance of £1400 with them (I requested that no action be taken against this balance as I had made a formal complaint. I had originally referred to the FOS and I haven’t had a response from the FOS yet, just this from Safetynet as an offer now the whole process has been started.
I’m tempted to accept given that they are writing off the £1400 as well as providing the refund of just over £1900. Would appreciate some input from anyone in the know as to if this is a decent enough offer to accept, or if I should leave it with the FOS.
(Just a side note – they were not going to mark as fully satisfied on my credit file, only partially satisfied until I pushed them on it)
Timescales: I made my original complaint with them on 29th Feb. They came back to me within about 4 weeks stating that they didn’t think they’d done anything wrong, the fact I regularly repaid showed I was managing my credit limit etc etc. I refused this and asked tehm to reconsider. They sent me a final response stating the same thing on 5th April so I responded with a courtesy email to let them know I was referrin to the FOS. Referred to the FOS on 8th April and got a response on 25th stating the case had been assigned. Got the offer email this weekend just gone and have been negotiating with them this week to ensure the account was marked as fully settled and that the refund was in addition to them writing off the balance. Got all that agreed yesterday so just waiting for confirmation that the refund has been processed now. They reckon it’ll take 3-5 days to get the funds to me.
The main thing I will say regarding Safetynet is stick to your guns. They will say they’ve done nothing wrong etc etc and even now they state that the refund, write off and credit record stuff is all “a gesture of goodwill and implies no wrongdoing by the company” Keep pushing them, refer to the FOS where you need to and you’ll get there in the end.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
It depends on how large the loan was that is still outstanding – the larger the loan was the better the offer is. But even if the loan was only a few hundred, it still sounds like an OK offer to me, as the FO will often only suggest the refunds start from a few loans in.
redfraggle says
Sara – The loan oustanding is £1400 which they have agreed to write off in full in addition to the refund being offered. of the £1400 being written off there was £1000 borrowed and £400 in fees so I’m relatively happy with the outcome.
They were more like a constant rolling credit facility – You got a limit with them each month and you logged in to request how much you wanted to borrow up to your agreed limit. In my case the limit was £1000 when I was on a monthly wage of £1200. So to begin with I’d only borrow a couple of hundred and then as time went on I was increasing my borrowing more and more due to paying interest and charges etc…
To complain I downloaded my statements from them and added up all of the interest and fees paid. I then used the standard template letter stating from what date the account was opened and how much I had paid in charges. I pointed out my records showed clearly that I was increasing my borrowing with them month over month and that my credit limit was clearly unaffordable given my wage and outgoings. I asked them to refund charges, write off current loan and remove default etc from my credit file.
Intially they were only going to mark my file as part satisfied but I pushed them for a fully satisfied and they have said that if I accept their offer they will mark as fully satisfied from about my 3rd borrowing with them (which is when they deemed it to have become unaffordable)
Dave says
Hi, a bit of advice if possible. I am currently in a payment plan with Wonga and Uncle Buck, I have made formal complaints against both. Is it worth asking them to freeze the payment plans, i.e. me not make any further payments, until it is resolved? It may push them towards issuing a final response sooner?.
I was worried that this tactic may have an adverse effect on the amounts outstanding with both companies
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Hi Dave, if you can’t afford the current payments, then you should ask for them to be reduced and supply an Income & Expenditure sheet to back this up
But if you can, then there isn’t much point. If you get a refund, then it will be larger if you have carried on with the payments. If you don’t get a refund then it is better to have carried on chipping away at the debts.
I don’t think either firm is likely to speed up their complaints handling because they aren’t getting a small payout from you each month!
Chris says
Today I’ve just recieved a final offer from wonga (6 weeks after them asking for an extra 4 weeks) their investigation found that all loans of £1000+ were unaffordable and have refunded the interest paid on these.
So all in all I’m looking at getting £5300 back which Im delighted about! Overall I’ve found wonga the easiest payday loan company to deal with – I lodged a complaint with QQ around the same time 14 weeks ago and have heard nothing back!
Massive thanks to this website!!
Matt S says
Decided today to make a spreadsheet using all statements I’ve received and going back through emails for all loans I had between taking my first in March 2012 and entering debt management in May 2013. Over these 15 months I had 45 loans, 54 deferrals, 17 monthly instalments on loans and a loan from my employer of £3000. Cant believe how quickly I went from being in a reasonably good financial position to being completely reliant on these loans. Its actually sickening. Makes it all the more surprising how companies like Wageday Advance (who had 5 of these loans and 7 deferrals) can refuse my complaint and say that they believe all checks were correctly done and the loans affordable. Will be giving the FO a copy of this spreadsheet to help my case.
Rav says
I’ve received this final response from quickquid, shall i take this to the FO?
Dear xxxx
[edited]
According to our records you borrowed 7 Pay Day Loans with Quick Quid. You
received a total principle amount of £8,269.97 which has been paid back. For
this amount you were charged £3,945.63 in interest. However, you have
received a total of £434.94 in credits reducing the interest charge to
£3,510.69. You were assessed only one late fee of £12.00 due to a payment
not being received on time according to your contractual agreement which is
outlined in your loan terms before funds were lent to you.
Further review of your account establishes that the amounts lent to you in a
single loan never exceeded an amount that would be beyond your scope of
affordability according to the financial details you provided on your
application or the credit checks ran prior to issuing you funds. Your claim
of monies being lent to you irresponsibly by Quick Quid has been denied.
It was flexi credit, so i’d pay them back on my payday and then take the available money out again on the same day. I was in a spiral of debt with 5 payday loan companies all at once, basically i was just borrowing to pay back another company. This should have reflected on my credit file. So clearly proper checks were not carried out. Should i take this to the FO?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
I’ve edited out the general stuff about how great their credit checking is :)
Repaying and borrowing again the same day for 7 loans – definitely worth taking to the Ombudsman.
Allison says
Hi there…After a long battle with wonga , who continued to ignore me for 12 weeks so I went to ombudsman. Yesterday I found out I’m getting a refund of 3700 off wonga. Been going on since January. I sent the signed settlement form back to ombudsman yesterday.
Gordon says
247 Moneybox are back to there old tricks.
Called them to discuss the complaint that has been upheld by the Ombudsman. Cannot speak to the account manager as he is always busy! Tried calling again as i was promised a call back and haven’t received one – spoke with an operator who said can i put you on hold for 1 min, currently on hold 27 mins with no acknowledgment – Hmmmm what type of company is this – Think i will be doing a lot of review filling in later. Normally i wouldn’t be that bothered about a company been run so bad but this one must be the worst. As long as i stop at least 1 person borrowing off this company i will be happy.
Nicole says
Not a happy bunny, wage day advance did not uphold my complaint!!! Grrrr!!!! Apparently all loans were affordable with rollovers and deferals on about every loan!!!
Had twenty six in the last 28 months – Off to the fo I go!!!!
Shaun says
I went the full 8 weeks with WDA. They asked for another 4 weeks, but i passed it over to the FO. Anyhow, 3weeks and 5 days later i recieved a letter from them saying:
I had 12 loans (some rolled over)
I owed the around £300
They agreed to wipe off the £300 and refund me £830.
I e-mailed them the next day to accepted, and the cash was in my account (in 2 parts) late the next day.
Stuart G says
Hi guys and girls! I just wanted to share some of my success so far. In the past 7 days, Lending Stream, Mr Lender and 24/7 Moneybox have wiped the outstanding amounts I owed them (they were passed to MMF) but they’ve recalled all debt and are removing the marks from my report.
I’m still chasing the big ones though, Pounds Till Payday, CFO, Wageday Advance, Payday Uk and Payday Express – I don’t owe them anything but I’m fighting for refunds on the interest and charges.
Keep fighting folks, the worm has turned!
grace says
Ok guys bit disappointed with outcome today regarding Lending Stream and FO think 10 loans were affordable to me! and because LS refunded two loans and rest were affordable as sporadical :(
one more to go then this nightmare is over – I cannot thank Sara and this site so much I have been able to pay off debts, I don’t dread each month how I am going to pay my bills etc and I can finally breathe! All in all I have received nearly £10k back from this vultures – it is a long long road but at the end of the day its money you never had or thought you would ever see again!!! keep going my lovelies xx
Angie says
this is a reply I received from 1 month loan today. they have offered me all the interest I paid back. it seems quite fair, wondered what others would do.
Bearing in mind the above, I am unable to uphold your complaint, as we believe that the aforementioned checks were proportionate and responsible. Initial assessment of your application accounted for some of the adverse information held at the credit reference agencies and as a consequence you were offered a small amount of credit relative to your stated income As a gesture of goodwill, we will repay the difference between what you borrowed (£325) and what you repaid (£463.82) which is £138.82, and will refund this to your chosen bank account. Please can I ask that you provide me with your account number and sort code so I can arrange for the refund to be processed.
aga says
Hi Angie, I was offered only interest from Sunny and I accepted it
Bob says
Hey everyone
just put in my complaint to the FO regarding my SlowQuid Complaint, I sent my complaint to them on the 22nd March by email which they didn’t respond to until the 29th March with their standard template.
I spoke to them yesterday as I emailed last week asking if the complaint would be responded to by today as its 8 weeks today and they believed they had 8 weeks from when they emailed me on the 29th March and said it would be by the 24th May, I tried correcting them on this but they were not having it – at the end of the day its not my problem if they take 1 week to respond to my email if they are short staffed etc….
If this had been Wonga I would have been happy to wait until next week or whenever knowing that they seem to be dealing fairly with their complaints but as SlowQuid only seem to offer £150 / £250 etc… I wont give them a minute longer than I have to.
so the wait is on for the next stage…. how long does it usually take from the day you submit your complaint to the FO ??
also debating if I should put in a complaint to peachy as I only had 3 loans of 200 repaid 2 weeks later 200 repaid a month later and 250 which I borrowed 6/7 weeks later and was repaid over 5 payments but this was at the same time as having 2 other payday loans of about £1,000 each and 1 of about £375 and increasing credit card and other debts. I’m guessing peachy might be a hard case to win as total interest was about £291 but then surely it would be cheaper for them to settle this than pay the FO £550 as I will take it to them if they decline me ?
What has been the general outcomes from Peachy ?
Graham says
Hi Bob, my QQ claim was escalated to the FOS over a week a go, I expect to wait for a final resolution to my complaint within 6 months, I can wait and have been very patient. QQ will delay as long as they keep getting away with it. Stick with It.
Shaun says
I was a bit cheeky with taking one loan with Peachy to the FO. Anyhow, the loan was for £400…Peachy agreed to reduce it to £140. The adjudicator said this is a good deal! (i agreed). So another success.
Myjar with the Ombudsmen (upheld 26 out of 29 loans).
PDUK has until 20th May to pass their business file to adjudicator. (another biggish one).
Jimmy says
Hi Bob,
I have sent my Peachy complaint to the FO. I had 3 loans (borrowed £1000 and paid back £1549 with the last loan entering a repayment plan). It’s all paid off but took me 12 months to do so. They declined my case within a week so it’s now with the FO. I’m hoping thats loans 2 & 3 were at least unaffordable. Good luck.
sophie says
Hi Guys,
Its been a little while since I have posted on here, but I have just received the best news ever. The Financial Ombudsman has found it in my favour against SafetyNet Credit/Indigo Michael. This has been a very slow process, I originally put the complaint in on the 4th March 2016, an adjudicator had been dealing with my case up until the 24th March. She had found in my favour that they had been irresponsible and advised them to repay me back any interest charges from the 23rd March 2014 to August 2014, giving that I have outstanding amount the total amount to be repaid would cover this, anything left to be repaid back to me. The details to be removed from my credit file and to be paid £100 compensation. SafetyNet Credit/Indigo Michael rejected this and argued the case that they are not a “payday lender”. The adjudicator then sent my case the Financial Ombudsman who yesterday found in my favour and have ordered SafetyNet Credit/Indigo Michael to repay back ALL interest charges approx. £900 +8% interest, including £100 compensation, clear the outstanding balance and removed details from my credit file.
I still have to wait a few more weeks, as the offer from the Financial ombudsman is different to what the adjudicator had giving they class this as a provisional offer. They have to allow both parties to agree to what has been said. The adjudicator did mention that once the financial ombudsman has been involved with a company, its not very likely that they reject it, unless they have any other evidence which should have been provided in the very beginning that will back their argument up.
So the moral of the story is guys, keep sticking with it, you will get there in the end! frustrating as it may.
:)
Sara (Debt Camel) says
So the Ombudsman has awarded more than the adjudicator suggested!
Fingers crossed this is all finalised soon!
LAM says
I have an account with SNC that I am currently making reduced payments to – on what grounds would the lending be considered unaffordable? I started with a small credit limit of £150 around June 2015, which increased steadily until it hit around the £800 mark, and I took their credit every single month since June 2015.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Just ignore SNC saying “they aren’t a payday lender” – the affordability rules are the same for all lenders. If you have borrowed every single month, its definitely worth putting an affordability complaint in.