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?
Olivia says
I got back from a week away to find FO has agreed my pduk case for the last 3 loans. thanks sara and everyone! Hope they don’t drag this out
Please delete previous comment with my real name, sorry
Matt S says
Was it the adjudicator or the ombudsman that agreed with your case?
My adjudicator ruled in my favour regarding my Payday UK complaint on 11th August, gave them 2 weeks to respond (25th) but I asked today and he had still not heard anything. Not holding out much hope so expecting it to have to go to the Ombudsman. Not sure how much longer that will take.
Sam says
The adjudicator ruled in my favour for Quick Quid and Wonga but neither replied so they have been with the ombudsman since 28/7, almost a month and I haven’t heard anything in regards to the outcome. My adjudicator said this can take up to another month!
With my sunny complaint the adjudicator did not find in my favour, however a lot of the information stated was incorrect and I went back to her with clarification on points two weeks ago and she still hasn’t come back to me. Quite disappointed with the fact I’ve been chasing and haven’t heard anything!
Sean - S18 says
First comment on this site after following all the information and getting emails out to lenders. Currently pursuing Wonga, QQ, PDUK and Payday Express. There have been other lenders but only for one or two loans so may not be worth the claim.
QQ were great and sent through my Statement of Account right away by email.
PDUK and Payday Express were not willing so I have no real idea how much I paid. I was using both each month for a very long time.
Wonga said a Statement of Account would take 12 working days which has now passed and they still cannot provide any idea of when I should receive this.
Complaints have been sent to QQ PDUK and Payday Express already so once the 8 weeks is up I’ll wait until the Wonga complaint has also “run out of time” I fear that none of the companies will come to a suitable resolution in this time frame.
I will trawl through bank statements and try figure what was paid in the meantime so that I have a better idea of my claim.
I noticed a section on the Wonga site today that I’ve never seen before, shows my loans within the last 12 months, over £700 paid on interest.
I’ve been using them since 2011 with only a small break in lending, most months around £600 – £700 whilst using other lenders, one of which was Minicredit.co.uk (the administrators have no record of my lending although interestingly I logged into Minicredit’s website and can see the loan summary dates but no details on the loan costs or borrowing?)
Minicredit will probably be included in my claim to FOS in the hopes there is anything that can be done.
Thanks
Sean
Karan says
Hi guys! Finally got an FOS decision and QQ have been made to refund all loans plus 8%! This website has literally changed my life! One question though! After numerous emails asking how much my refund would be I got a email today saying it was 2200 and it would be in my bank account. Going by the Statement of Account given to me I worked it out as around 3k. It’s already in my bank account but I 100% wouldn’t have accepted anything less then 2800-2900. What do I do?
fusionx212 says
Karan, your adjudicator is the person who takes this info from the lender, if the amount is not right contact your adjudicator and they will work it out if Quick Quid if it’s been done wrong
Margo says
I did have a big hope with PDUK but adjudicator ruled in their favour. Soo upset..how one adjudicator can say yes and another think otherwise.
Still waiting for Wonga to contact my other adjudicator if they agree with her findings. It’s taking so long.
Can someone tell me what should I respond about PDUK to adjudicator. Don’t really know what to tell her.
fusionx212 says
Margo, on what did the adjudicator find in their favour.
usually the the 1st loans are not affordablity checked,
if you had multiple rolly overs, along side late payments and defaults.
you need to be sure you’re using key words with your adjudicator, i.e how much this has affected you financially and how they trapped into a debt spiral you’ll need to prove your financials issues with credit reports showing you were not a suitable candidate.
now he has ruled in their favour, escalate it to the Ombudsman for review but ensure that you have really drilled home how these loans have affected yourself financially as well as personally i.e relations with family where you had to borrow to pay back.
Can you tell why he’s ruled in their favour?
Margo says
She said that PDUK did all checks, from what I said to them about my income that I should have enough to pay loans. But I didn’t give them 100% accrue information about my outgoings because I was so scared that if I will they will not give me what I need or maybe at all. That was very stressful time for me and my family. On my bank statements they can see three different PL. Taking one loan to repay another and take new one. I do think she didn’t bother to check my bank statements otherwise she would see in what mess I was. She said I didn’t have any late payments, defaults, or CCJs but my credit record had some defaults earlier on for sure gone by now from my credit record now. I don’t have any evidence. I am so upset, upset with everything and with myself. We are learning every day.
dan says
Hi all,
I have had 19 PDL over 2 companies (sunny and LS) on July 10th i submitted a complaint letter to both similar to the example above.
Sunny – I forwarded my complaint with a gentle nudge again on August 12th as i hadn’t even received a confirmation of them receiving my email. I then got a reply to say they were looking into my complaint and would issue their final response within the 8 week period.
LS- replied 2 days later with an account overview of my lending and then on July 27th with there final response. Which was them denying any wrong doing.
I decided to call FOS and was advised to submit my online complaint and even though i hadn’t heard from sunny they agreed to take both cases on, which were split separately, and continue with my complaint. I phoned FOS about 10 days ago just to see how they were getting on, i was told an adjudicator had been assigned and would be in touch soon.
Does anyone know how long this normally takes?
My borrowing pattern is very very continuous and would be 2-3 loans a month every month up until present. I have since stopped borrowing with LS and have also suspended my Sunny account with around £240 outstanding to pay. I have never missed payments but i have always had to borrow more to get by. I struggle with a gambling addiction also, so wanted to know if that would negatively effect my claim?
What sort of time period have people faced with these two firms and have people had much success with similar borrowing patterns?
I think my 8 weeks with sunny will be up on 4th September so hoping to hear soon, and have my adjudicator get in touch with me so i at least know the next steps and time scales.
Any help would be appreciated.
Meryl says
I just had an email off Wonga, 2 weeks before the deadline upholding my complaint and offering me full refund of all interest & charges on all loans. However they have missed out 2 loans almost a year apart (£216.00 interest & charges). Should I peruse these other two or take the money?? Any advice would be appreciated.
fusionx212 says
Hi meryl, if the terminology they have used says a full refund of all interest and charges on all loans and 8% statutory interest as well. then raise this with wonga, they arent the best at getting their facts straight which i’ve experienced first hand
Joe says
Hi guys,
Firstly a big thank you for this incredible advice, I happened to stumble across it a few weeks back and I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I have had been using payday loans for a number of years and was always embarrassed of the fact and didnt realise that the lenders should have intervened to help at some point. From about 2006 to 2014 I was borrowing circa £600 from each of Moneyshop, Cheque Centre and H and T. I was rolling over cheques / balances on a monthly basis for all 3 and at no point was I offered any help. On the contrary I often had my limit increased and encouraged to borrow more. Do you think this constitutes irresponsible lending? I put in a complaint to all 3 using your template 4 weeks ago today and I have been informed that all investigations are ongoing / in the queue to be looked at. Am I likely to get a final response within the next 4 weeks as promised?
Also, given that a lot of times I was going into the store to pay cash and roll over cheques, I assume this will be logged on their system somewhere?
Many thanks in advance.
Aga says
Hi Joe, yes rolling over cheques is recorded as well , Money shop is a long process , I placed my complaint in February this year still in progress , H@T the easiest , they will call you in order to ask how much you would like to claim etc and payment next day . good luck
Sam says
I have received my final two responses from the adjudicator regarding payday uk and payday express. He has found in my favour for both around £600 & £1600. I have requested that it is reviewed by the ombudsman as especially the payday express one he has only upheld from quite near the end of borrowing when there was 16 months of increasing amounts and repeated borrowing before that, which in my eyes should have been spotted before the date the adjudicator says (comparing the similar pattern I had with Wonga which was upheld from 8 months before that) He says it will more than likely go to the ombudsman anyway as the company probably won’t respond as they haven’t done so far. Just a complaint about bank charges to go then I’m finished. So glad I found this website as even if I only get back what the ombudsman has already said I have got over £5000 back and another £1400 written off my debt management plan.
Graham says
Just had a response from wonga after 13 weeks. I borrowed 40k over 66 loans. They are offering me 6200 in total and saying it was only a certain amount of loans that we’re unaffordable. I currently have a £1500 loan with them which I am in a payment plan with but they are saying I need to pay that off with the 6200. Not sure whether to accept or go to the ombudsman. Any advice would help
fusionx212 says
jeeze graham, 40k… I would say that’s a strong case for the Ombudsman. how much did you pay interest wise, think about it this way I borrowed about 15k over 25 loans and I got all interest and fee’s as well as 8% statutory interest £4700 BACK.
It sounds like you are having debt issues, i would go to the Ombudsman and make it clear to them.
you will have to usually pay back any outstanding loans from your compensation. the idea is to get you back into the situation before you took the loans.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
That is a lot of money. If you decide to take this to the Ombudsman, you won’t be risking this offer – the worst that can happen is that the adjudicator will say they think wonga’s offer is fair and you should accept it.
Do you know how much interest you paid in all? This would really help you judge the offer. If you have paid £8k in interest, you may feel this is reasonable, but if you have paif twice that than it obviously isn’t! it’s quite a personal decision as to what is reasonable.
If Wonga are refunding the larger loans, then this may be an OKish offer. But sometimes Wonga seem to select loans at random, missing off some of the larger loans :( And from the figures you gave it may well not be great.
The £1500 balance – yes it is normal for this to be deducted from the refund you will get.
Graham says
Hi Sara it was approx. £12k in interest in total, I could do with the money the now to start paying off my debts but at the same time I would hate to know I have threw away another 5-6k.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
You may not get a refund of all the interest if you go to the Ombudsman, but you would also get 8% statutory interest added. So that is a lot more than you are currently being offered.
It is hard to not grab that much money – but for a few months you may get quite a bit more.
Graham says
The issue is when I first started taking the loans I was on really good money about 4k a month self employed. after about a year my wages dropped half to about 2k and I never updated Wonga on this and I kept my wages the same. They have said the following: We are entitled to rely on the information you provide in your applications in order to make a decision regarding affordability and our review of your complaint is dependent on the information known to us at the time of application. If you circumstances changed and you did not update your details before taking a new loan then, without being aware of those changes, we are not in a position to include them in our assessment.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Two points:
1) do you think the Wonga loans were “affordable” in that first year when you were on good money? Affordable meaning you could repay them on time without borrowing any more money that month. If they were, then you are unlikely to get a refund for these loans. So work out how much interest you paid on the later loans as that is the “maximum” you should compare the wonga offer against.
2) of course you should have told them your situation had changed BUT they should consider all the info they know before lending, not just the income you reported. And in this case they should have been asking themselves why you kept on borrowing month after month… see https://debtcamel.co.uk/payday-lender-says-lied/ for more details.
Obviously wonga thing you have a pretty good case or they wouldn’t have offered you £6k!
Douglas says
I’ve had my adjudicator uphold my complaint with QQ and asked her to take on my Wonga complaint which she has. Makes complete sense seeing she has my credit reports and bank statements.
Suzy says
My adjudicator has emailed me and said he is asking for quick quid to pay me all interest on my loans taken out plus 8 percent. £2100 was loans and £1900 was a flexi account I payed £8000 back altogether and my adjudicator agreed I should not have been given these loans
I have payed quick quid just over £8000 it looks like half was interest but half was a flexi loan will I also get the interest back on that
quick quid had untill last Friday to reply which they didn’t now they have been given another 5 days to reply then it goes to ombudsman
also waited 14 weeks from money shop no final responce so just sent that off to adjudicator will it have to go to ombudsman
this has gone on for so long my adjudicator is really nice very helpfull
Sara (Debt Camel) says
QuickQuid – if the adjudicator has said “refund all interest on all loans” then this will include the flexi loan. If they said something more specific, you you type out exactly what that was?
The Money Shop are very poor about replying, so it may well be that this complaint has to go to the ombudsman level.
Nigel says
Moneybox 24/7 are now ignoring me completely. Anyone got any experience with them? 8 weeks is up.
Gordon says
Hi Nigel,
247 Moneybox use this tactic in order to portray there power, but in reality they don’t have any (only time)
If you haven’t already forward to the FOS and let them deal with it. In your position i was really frustrated at them and would email/call with no reply. It really is best to not let them get under your skin and let the process go through its motions.
The Adjudicator upheld mine, 247 didn’t reply, Ombudsman agreed and they had to pay the money +8% and credit file entries removed.
Its not a nice feeling while waiting but once its over you will feel the closure – don’t just settle for what they offer if your not happy.
Ian says
Exactly the same with me. No response despite constant chasing. They finally sent an offer of £200 on a Sunday after 9 weeks. I responded saying would accept £800 but received no more response. They haven’t responded to the adjudicator so she said that they should pay me over £1250. STill no response so it has been sent to an Ombudsman.
Suzy says
Sara ( debt camel ) quick quid have now made me a offer partial offer and have asked to see my bank statement if not just the partial offer £1600 so take £1600 or let them go through my bank statements why are they asking for them when adjudicator has already done his report
Sara (Debt Camel) says
They could be hoping to persuade you to settle for less just get the whole thing over and done with? or hoping you would feel scared and accept their offer? or just trying to drag it out for another few weeks?
william says
hello guys, i’m 12 weeks 5 days into my complaint with wonga, i had 31 loans totalling around £7000 with interest, I ended up with a payment plan on my 7th loan, paying this back, then after this I was subsequently allowed to take out another 20 +, the majority of my loans were after one another sometimes the same day, i was wondering what people think my chances are of getting something back? I did have some difficult circumstances at the time, family illness, heavy gambling problem and was also living away from home for the first time. I’d also at this point not had any credit before (I did mention all of this in my complaint letter) I was 18 when I took my first loan. I was just wondering if any of these factors will favour my claim? i mean in my eyes its irresponsible to be lending to an 18 year old with no fixed income than a casino win! Luckily I managed to turn a corner and touch wood have not taken out any loans for nearly 3 years!
Julie says
Hi
I have emailed Lending stream in regard to claiming a refund using the template to ask for a list of the loans I have had with them and got this response
We see that you are requesting to investigate your concern regarding the affordability analysis and credit checks conducted when the loans were approved. We would like to inform that such nature of query falls under the purview of SAR.
Please be informed, we are still ready to share the details for the above mentioned outstanding loan.
However, in order for us to provide you with the full investigation (including the closed loans), we would request you to send us a written letter addressed to Lending Stream with a £10.00 cheque (in favor of Lending Stream LLC) as per the Subject Access Request (SAR) requirements under the Data Protection Act 1998.
To ensure that you understand and agree to the terms and conditions of your loan(s), please refer to agreement(s) which was initially sent to your registered email address at the time of borrowing. We would request you to refer to our emails for all the information shared by Lending Stream with regards to your loan account(s).
Upon receipt of the request, we will be able to share the information within 40 calendar days. As a regulated organization under the FCA, we make sure that we treat our customers fairly and provide the appropriate resolution.
Do I have to send them money? And if not, how should I reply?
Thanks
Sara (Debt Camel) says
As you are complaining about Lending Stream you also need to look out for them rejecting your complaint saying that you had a good Experian credit score – often the score LS quote doesn’t seem right at all!
Ian says
Has anyone had any joy with EPDL (now Ecashwindow)? Can’t believe how they have managed to drag this out with my adjudicator. She upheld my complaint at the beginning of July, giving them 2 weeks to respond. On the last day they said they disputed her findings and had more information to provide. The adjudicator waited for this and found in my favour again giving them even more time. Still nothing.
Sarah says
Hi Sara,
Thanks so much for your help with this site.
I had 44 loans with Wonga, put my complaint in with them in early March, didn’t hear anything so went to FOS after 8 weeks. Adjudicator took a while but did keep me updated, Wonga cam back to me after 11 weeks to offer me £550. I didn’t accept. Adjudicator found in my favour and wrote to Wonga asking them to pay back all interest & charges on loans in 2012 & 2013 – about £3000 + 8% interest. Wonga were supposed to respond by 6th July but they didn’t so it was passed up to the Obudsman for a final decision. I then got an email a couple of weeks later saying:
Just an update on your complaint.
At the moment there’s some on-going discussion with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) – the UK’s financial regulatory body – about the compensation scheme that Wonga implemented.
Because this might impact what we recommend in cases, some cases aren’t being issued with a decision in the meantime. Unfortunately, I can’t say how long this will be. But as soon as I have an update I’ll let you know.
It’s now been another month and FOS have said there’s no further update on the above and they can’t put a timescale on it. Has anyone else had anything similar or does anyone know what is going on with FCA. Does this mean the FOS may go back on their finding in my favour?
Thanks for your help!
Sarah
Becky says
Adjudicator has sent his findings to Qq after I sent him statements and my credit file, he has come to the conclusion that only a few were unaffordable… Even tho some were continually rolled over and over. I just logged back onto my qq account to check which loans he was referring to and it’s now only showing 4 loans, slightly weird how the rest have dissapeared.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
A few people have been reporting that loans have vanished from their QQ online account – I hope you have a list of the loans?
If you don’t think the adjudicator’s offer is fair, then ask for it to go to the Ombudsman.
Hannah says
I’m just looking for abit of advice please I put a complaint in with wonga the only contact I got was they was busy please wait a further 6 weeks and I did
Today 14weeks 3 days into my complaint I got an email from them saying;
Their response
Before approving a loan, we carry out a credit reference agency check. This information is available to us from CallCredit and Experian and can be accessed instantly by us when we receive a loan application. When you applied, we combined that data with the personal data you provided to us including salary, employment, marital status, dependents, home ownership status, motor owner status amongst other information, and we also considered your repayment history. All of this information was entered into our underwriting system so we could carry out an assessment of affordability. You achieved an acceptable underwriting score and loans were approved on that basis.
But they say they can see that one loan wasn’t affordable based on my salary at the time and are offering to refund that one but it’s obvious I was stuck in a cycle for years borrowing from them, often borrowing on the same day I’ve just repaid to be able to get to the end of the month, I did have bad credit I defaulted other loans and was in a debt management plan at the time and throughout the years I borrowed with wonga
Should I reply directly to them? If so and say what? Or do I ignore this and go to f.o or will they just say the same?
Any help would be appreciated thank you in advance
Mitch says
If they admitted one was affordable, it is very likely an adjudicator will rule more loans in your favour unless they have a good reason! Take it to the FO
Anita says
Hi Sara, I have had 3 responses from 8 of my payday loan complaints 8 still open and 7 closed. Two have responded wage day advance and lending stream, offering to waiver the Chargers and interest and asking that I pay back now the original amounts borrowed. Wage day advance gave also admitted unaffordable lending on one loan. Quick quid have refused. I have forward all three to the ombudsman for there advice and consideration. I have done the right thing with wage day and lending stream or should I of accepted their offers? I am worried if the FOS doesn’t rule in my favour then I am back to square on having to pay interest and charges again or will the waivers still stand?
The adjudicator has asked for all historical bank statements too – to look at my affordability and expenses. I was never over drawn as I don’t have this facility and often borrowed from family members, will all this be questioned, re money going in?
Final question – all my complaints were sent of to the payday loan companies 8/7/ 16. What do I
Do if I still haven’t had a response by the 8th week ?
Thank you so much , I am finding this site invaluable.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Hi Anita,
it’s hard to tell if the WDA and LS’s offers were reasonable. If you only had one loan from them they would have been what the Ombudsman would suggest If you only had two or three, they may still be a reasonable offer – see https://debtcamel.co.uk/payday-lender-write-off/. But if you had a longer history of repeat borrowing from those lenders, then you may well get more back.
You don’t normally “lose” an offer by going to the FOS – the worst the adjudicator is likely to say is that they think you should accept the offer the lender has already made.
When you send the the bank statements in, make the point you didn’t have an overdraft facility so you had to borrow from family members instead.
If you don’t get a reply from a lender by the end of 8 weeks, put the complaint into the FOS straight away and say you haven’t had a reply within the 8 week limit.
good luck!
mark says
To add on to this, I have huge gambling transactions on my bank statement and large payments from friends and family, this has not once been questioned.
mark says
Hi guys, QQ came back to my adjudicator with an offer of roughly £1750 as the 6 and 7 loan they agreed were unaffordable,
My adjudicator wrote in his letter back to me he thought that was reasonable.
However, on one of the loans previous QQ reloaned to me after they have put a default for 3 months on my credit file for the loan before, I also had late fees associated with the loan before that so I have rejected the offer.
Guess what it so happens this loans is by far the biggest interest I paid back and almost double the offer they have made, no sense in what they have offered, I think they rely on people seeing a big offer and taking it however this could be almost £4k with this other loan so I am disputing.
zara says
Hi Sara,
I wrote to Mr. Lender a few days ago complaining to them about 5 instalment loans between 19/03/2014 up to the current moment in time. I wrote:
I currently have a balance owing to you, I would like to request for this to be written off.
I would also ask for any collection activity to stop whilst my complaint is being investigated.
I would like to ask you to refund the interest and extra charges I had paid.
They replied :
However after taking into consideration what you have stated in your complaint, as a gesture of goodwill we would be willing to write off the balance on your current loan of £341.61. This will mean upon acceptance of this offer you would have only paid Mr Lender back £273.93, which is less than the capital amount borrowed of £350.00 on your active loan.
This is our final offer in the hope of resolving your complaint. This offer will expire if it is not accepted by the 9th September 2016.
From all loans I had paid a total amount of interest only of 1488. Is it worth taking it FOS ?
fusionx212 says
Hi Zara, it’s worth asking them for a statement of account for all of your loans, or looking at your bank statements.
find out exactly how much you paid them and what interest and fee’s you paid.
you may get more, now they have offered you to wipe off the balance that offer stays, going to ombudsman does not mean you lose out on the original offer.
as far as I am aware, you have 6 months after their final offer to go to the FOS, i don’t believe they can put a time scale on you I wouldn’t be phased by the 9th of September part. you’ve got to weigh up is £350 a good offer and if you go to the FOS, you need to prove the loans were un-affordable. there is a lot of information at the top of the page. get a copy of your credit report, you don’t need to sign up you can ask for a £2 statutory report.
Zara says
Hi fusion, thank you for your comment, they have provided my statement of my account which i have now decided to submit my complaint to the FOS, as far as I can see and experienced it was unaffordable as my bank statements were plastered with other payday loans (QQ, PDUK, WONGA, My jar,) at the time and this info is evident on my credit report too.
Mr. L have put a timescale on their final letter regarding my complaint as follows,
‘This is our final offer in the hope of resolving your complaint. This offer will expire if it is not accepted by the 9th September 2016’
Total amount of interest only incl. fees I paid was £1488 from continuous borrowing for 2 years from Mr. L only, no gap in between.
Hoping it goes in my favour, whilst awaiting response for 5 others. I have a balance with one which I’m struggling to pay at the minute, it has defaulted once (last month). I’m just awaiting for my statement of account from them! !
Dominika says
Hi all i got question I made complaint against Mr Lender last year regards affordability it wasn’t successful even after going to FO … I had default ony credit report with them .. now when I check my credit report it’s not there anymore it’s marked as – satisfied ?? What does it mean ? Does it mean they sold my debt or what ?
Regards
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Either they have sold your debt
or they have decided to give up trying to collect it
or they have incorrectly updated your credit record.
I suggest you should check your credit records with all three CRAs (see https://debtcamel.co.uk/best-way-to-check-credit-score/) and see if a debt collector has added a debt for the same record.
Claire says
Does anybody understand how the amount of refund is calculated?
I previously had a refund from Peachy finance. I had taken out loans totalling £1,500 (obviously I paid back a lot more than this) and received £1,646 for a refund of interest and charges on all four loans with 8% simple interest added from Peachy.
With Uncle Buck, since 30 September 2014, I had taken loans out totalling £4,770 (again obviously I paid back a lot more than this). The adjudicator has upheld my complaint and says that he expects refund in the region of £1,800. I would have thought that with the huge difference in the amount of lending, that the refund would have been greater (although the adjudicator is not suggesting that they pay 8% simple interest although this wouldn’t alter the amounts that much)
Also, Uncle Buck have not accepted the adjudicator’s verdict so the case has now gone to the FO. Any idea how long this process usually takes the FO to make a final decision and any idea if the adjudicator’s findings are usually upheld?
Sorry for all the questions.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Hi Claire,
You can’t tell much from the number of loans or what you borrowed, because if you rolled any loans then you will have paid much more interest.
You need to work out how much interest and charges you have paid to UB. If you have repaid the last loan, this is simple – add up everything you repaid and take away what you borrowed. If the adjudicator is saying the interest should be refunded on loans after dd/mm/yy, only add up the borrowings and repayments for those figures.
How long the process takes depends partly on when an Ombudsman picks up your case but mainly on how prompt the lender is in replying to any questions from the Ombudsman.
In most cases the Ombudsman does agree with the adjudicator. Sometimes the Ombudsman decides that the refunds should be from a different point or cover different loans. Some changes can work in your favour eg adding the 8% interest on! It is possible for the Ombudsman to reach a completely different decision but that would be unusual if you have borrowed repeatedly from the same lender as you obviously have in this case.
Jimmy says
Hi all,
Quick update. I started this process in April and I have 3 complaints left; all sitting with the adjudicator.
Quick Quid: Adjudicator found in my favour and QQ sent their business file to her and wanted to see my credit report. My Adjudicator asked me if I was happy with this and they now have until 30/8/16 to respond. At least they haven’t been silent but i’m still anticipating it to go to the ombudsman. I only had 3 loans, one of which was a flex-loan so I am quite happy she found in my favour on all loans. I am expecting about £1500.
PayDay UK: My largest. I had loans with them from 2010-2013 continuously; rolling over most loans at least 6 times before taking out another. My adjudicator recently found in my favour from loans 4 onwards. PDUK did not respond to her to provide any details so she went on info I sent her. They have until 9/9/16 to respond. Again, i’m not expecting them to respond so will be going to the ombudsman. I am expecting just over 5k.
Uncle Buck: My adjudicator is now looking into this so will expect development over the next week or two.
For all interested, these 3 complaints we picked up 6 weeks after sending in the complaint form. They were picked up by the same adjudicator I had for an earlier case with Peachy.
It’s been a long process but overall i used 13 different companies. 2 complaints were rejected (Lending Stream for 3 loans and Satsuma for 1 loan), 8 were settled before FOS involvement. I am about 6k up from my complaints.
Thank you to Sara and everyone whose story has inspired me.
PJ says
Sent my complain to QQ who initial reject my complaint as according to them they did nothing wrong and my credit score fits there scoring system.
I then Sent my complaint to FOS, I was then allocated an adjudicator who requested a copy of my bank statement and credit report. However my adjudicator have now said that QQ have made an offer of £1361.
I took 4 loans and they are refunding part of the 3rd and full interest on the 4th. Adjudicator wants to know if I want to accept or would I need to send my BS/credit report for her to fully investigate.
Does this seem reasonable ?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Hi PJ, do you know how much interest you paid on each of your loans? Was the first and / or the second loan rolled? What was the gap between the first and second loan? And between the second and third?
PJ says
[edited – list of loans]
Those are the loan date and amounts that I retrieved from my account history before QQ deleted it all. As you can see consecutive all consecutive months although list not in order. However QQ said I only had 4 loans which to be fair corroborate with my BS (money coming in) so I assume the rest was all roll overs which trigger a new ID number; from memory QQ allowed you to make payments in two instalments on some loans.
Adjudicator email
Further to our conversation today, Quick Quid have confirmed that you took out four loans with them and these were taken out on:
1. 12.05.2012
2. 29.06.2012
3. 28.07.2012
4. 28.02.2013
In addition to this, the offer which Quick Quid have made is as follows:
v A partial refund of interest and fees for the 3rd loan and a full refund of interest and fees for the 4th loan. The settlement offer is £1,311.80 and Quick Quid have said that they will deduct the outstanding balance of £144.00 from this. As such, the total offer of refund is £1,167.80
As discussed, please let me know if you would like to accept or decline the offer. If you would like to decline the offer then please confirm by which date you will be able to get the credit report and bank statements to me, as I will need these to assess your complaint and decide whether Quick Quid did anything wrong.
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
The unsettled amount is all BS and lies as this wall paid back in full and I have evidence plus updated credit report. Concern is whether this appears to be a fair amount as QQ have being dodgy from the outset based on my experience and feed back on the site.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Well sorting those into order and trying to match against the “QQ 4 loans” gives my best guess as:
loan 1 -12/05/2012 Loan Amount – £400
roll 25/05/2012 Loan Amount – £400
loan 2 -29/06/2012 Loan Amount – £800
loan 3 28/07/2012 Loan Amount – £800
roll 31/08/2012 Loan Amount – £800
roll 30/09/12 Loan Amount- £800
repay part & roll 26/10/12 Loan Amount- £800
repay part & roll 30/11/12 Loan Amount- £720
repay part & roll 21/12/12 Loan Amount- 648
repay part & roll 21/01/13 Loan Amount – £583.20
Loan 4 28/02/13 Loan Amount- £800
Roll 27/03/13 Loan Amount – £800
Roll 26/04/13 Loan Amount – £800
Roll 24/05/13 Loan Amount – £800
repay part & roll 28/06/13 Loan Amount – £720
Does that look right to you?
If it does, then probably you wont get a refund for loans 1 and 2, the next thing is you have to work out from your bank statements what you repaid to loan 3 and 4. Can you do that?
laura says
So I sent my complaint in to Wonga on the 9th of July , so they 8 weeks will be up on the 3rd of September , just received the e-mail below , they now want 8weeks!!! dated from 3rd of September ? this is doubling the time given to them to reply – anyone else been in this situation ?
“”We apologise for the delay in responding to your complaint. We are currently experiencing a high volume of complaints so our normal timely response has been delayed.
We thank you for your patience and aim to respond within the next 8 weeks. The attached letter confirms the status of your complaint as well as providing you with important information regarding your rights. We would like to reassure you we take your complaint very seriously.
If you have any questions please call us on 0800 316 6745.
Kind regards,
Complaints team
Wonga.com “”
kelly says
I put in my claim to Wonga on 27th May too.. as soon as it got to 8 weeks I received a letter asking for 6 weeks. I’ve already submitted to the FOS and they have confirmed they’re writing to Wonga to request further information. I am hoping this will encourage a quicker but resonable response out of Wonga sooner rather than later.
I really can’t stress it enough to anyone reading… please refer the FOS as soon as possible as the delaying tactics some of the payday lenders exercise are ridiculous and you have nothing to lose by referring at the first available opportunity.
Meryl says
Wonga requested a further 6wks so I went to FOS. 2 wks later I had an offer off Wonga for full amount. No FOS involved.
Gill says
They will not reply within that timescale, I have now waited 18 weeks and they no longer ask for the time to be extended they just don’t bother replying. Waste of time go straight to FOS
mark says
Seems like the comments have slowed down a touch I guess everyone is just waiting, I have a question I was wondering if anyone could answer, does the ombudsman publish all of their judgements as I have noticed there are not really that many over the last 3 months against say Instant cash loans but often the feeling is that lots and lots of people are having to go past the adjudication stage to the ombudsman. With not many published judgements I was wondering if it’s a case of the ombudsman only publishes cases if the claimant agrees or not many are getting to the final stages as the companies are heading them off before a judgement is made?
I have had settlements from:
Wonga offered – Direct offer after 14 weeks not everything but enough to seem ‘fair’ originally logged 18/02/2016 .
Payday Express – Ignored the adjudicator sending no information while I was waiting for it to be allocated to an ombudsman for final ruling they made a fair offer which I accepted at 27 weeks originally logged 01/02/2016.
Money shop – Ignored the adjudicator sending no information while I was waiting for it to be allocated to an ombudsman 25 weeks in also refused to send a statement originally logged 03/03/2016.
Ladder Loans – With the adjudicator awaiting an initially ruling originally logged 26/04/2016.
Barclaycard – Just passing off to the FO now after they resolved my complex financial difficulties and irresponsible lending claim in under 48 hours obviously in their favour.
Stay in their everyone and thanks to Sarah for helping so many people out.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
I think the holiday season has slowed things down a lot.
“I was wondering if it’s a case of the ombudsman only publishes cases if the claimant agrees or not many are getting to the final stages as the companies are heading them off before a judgement is made?” AFAIK all Ombudsman decision are published, but there have been a couple of people who have reported getting good offers, or the lender accepting the adjudicator’s offer when it has been passed to the Ombudsman. I suspect most of these won’t be published as the Ombudsman hasn’t had to sit and write a decision!
Dorice says
Hi guys,
My adjudicator called me on the 20th and said he will pass my PDUK complaint to an ombudsman and if i need to add any information do it by the 29th.
Does this mean that its gone to the ombudsman on the 20th or the 29th?
thanks
Matty says
I would like to thank you for the very useful tips and information your website has provided me, I received a refund of £450 back from H&T using your template and adding a few lines about my personal circumstances at the time of the loans. Wonga are looking into my claim with them so fingers crossed and Payday Loan Express are making it as hard as they can to get the revelant infoamtion from them., but il get there in the end. Thanks again, power to the people!!!
Jackie says
I’ve just received a final response from Wonga regarding my affordability / criteria interest refund
They say some loans are over 6 years and that the rest only constitute a small portion of my income (over half of our household income was used to pay back each month) – I was on benefits / my husbands income was on form – I would borrow a few times per month every month then pay back at end of month then immediately get another loan
I was one of the people who had their last loan removed due to affordability / criteria in Oct 2014
My loans were 2010 -2011 – at the end of 2011 I was introduced to a money advisor due to my mental health problems at the time they worked out my total debts with other companies totalled £43000 ! I was shocked and ashamed .
I’m only now able to deal with this as a) my health is slightly better but feeling frail b) I’ve only just found out you can ask for refund
I can’t remember what Qs Wonga asked in 2010 – can anyone else remember – they say they “checked whether we owned a house, car etc 8000 checks and dealt wth by algorithm ” surely this is the new criteria NOT back in 2010
I’ve referred it to the FOS but am now very anxious – I don’t know what info to give FOS to back it up ?
I’ve just got this feeling that the FOS are going to agree with Wonga – I’m ashamed to say I can’t honestly remember what was going on in 2010 due to my health
Any advice ?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Please don’t feel ashamed of not remembering what happened in 2010 – it’s ages ago! Even people with no mental health issues struggle to remember that sort of detail after so many years.
Your case will be assigned to an adjudicator at the Ombudsman – this will probably take a few weeks. They usually ask to see your bank statements – if you don’t still have them, the adjusdicator can get them direct from your bank. If you have any correspondence (letters? emails) from the Money Adviser you saw in 2011 that may summarise your finances – that would be helpful to show to the adjudicator. Also anything referring to your mental health issues – possibly a letter from your doctor?
The FO is currently deciding if it can look at loans more than 6 years old – but even if the decide “no”, you have a good reason to be treated as an exception because of your mental health problems.
Nigel says
HI. So had a final response from Moneybox 24/7. Really is a joke. Can anybody please advise of the experiences with them, are they worth bothering with to negotiate or should I go to FOS now? Also anybody had cases with them at the Ombudsman? how did you fair? Any comments really welcome
Lilly says
I did do well with them. They offered me £250, I said no way, was not even half of the interest etc. They then went to £500, I again said no not a chance, and said I would not be accepting anything less than £750, gave my reasons as to why and they then offered me the £750, I had the money in the account the next day.
Dave says
Hello all, I have been given an offer for Wonga from the 5th loan onwards, is it worth asking an ombudsman to review the case as it was consistent borrowing increasing amounts the day after repaying the previous loan. I would have thought that a pattern of borrowing appears from the 4th loan? There doesn’t seem to be much consistency with decisions across the board. Let me know your thoughts guys.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Is your complaint already with the FOS?
The first 4 loans, were any of them rolled? How much did the amount go up?
How much interest did you pay on the 3rd and 4th loans?
There aren’t any set guideline about when a pattern “emerges” – it depends on your case and the judgment of the person looking at it.
Dave says
Amount borrowed Date Amount paid back Date Interest and charges total
£200 05/08/2013 £268.05 20/08/2013 £43.05
Top up £25 (£225 total) 16/08/2016
£296 20/08/2013 £322.61 27/08/2013 £26.61
£408 30/08/2013 £500.34 20/09/2013 £92.34
£603 21/09/2013 £772.80 18/10/2013 £169.80
£500 21/10/2013 £657.15 20/11/2013 £157.15
£1001 23/11/2013 £1278.26 20/12/2013 £277.26
£1083 21/12/2013 £1415.05 20/01/2014 £332.05
this continues for around another 20 loans.
Yes Sara, an adjudicator has made this decision. I was thinking about asking an ombudsman, what do you think?
Thanks
Sara (Debt Camel) says
So a refund from after loan 5 would be more than 5k?
I don’t think I could be bothered going to the Ombudsman in the hope of getting a few hundred more. But it’s up to you to decide if you think the offer is fair or not. This is obviously an excellent case, but there are no set guidelines as to where the refund should be from.
Sarah says
Has anyone had success at the FOS when QQ rejected their complaint? They are stating I met all criteria even though it took 6 month to pay back one loan.
In total there were 36 loans from 2008 but my letter reached them in May of this year so 19 if applying the 6 year rule … Some of these were roll overs though … QQ loan history has a separate loan Id for each one but I think it was a roll over on some. My loan history has been deleted by QQ now but I did take screen shots of it.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
That sounds well worth taking forward. Roll overs are good for a complaint as they show you couldn’t repay it on time and had to roll!
Aga says
Ajudicator uphold’s my Money Shop complaint:
I can see Miss Z borrowed a total of 28 times. It seems her income was between £1300 – £1624 and her expenditure was between £100 – £299 (2 September 2011). I can see a credit check was carried out and a credit limit of £750 was issued – I think this was affordable at the point of the initial application, and I think Instant Cash Loans carried out sufficient checks for this limit. However, I’m concerned with the number of times Mrs Z borrowed and the number of extensions she had. I can see she had a total of 123 extensions over a three year period – this is quite concerning.
In 2010 there wasn’t any guidance on the maximum number of extensions on a loan. However, I do think Instant Cash Loans could have looked at the number of extensions, each time a new loan was issued. Also, although I can see credit checks were carried out over the three years, I think it would’ve been reasonable for the Instant Cash Loans to have taken into consideration the two defaults (26 May 2012 and 17 July 2011) that were on the credit file. I think this was another indication of Miss Z’s difficulties to repay credit.
I can see Instant Cash Loans have offered to refund £401.93, however I think more should be refunded. I think it will be fair to refund all interest from 21 April 2011. I think at this point there was a clear indication that Mrs Z’s couldn’t repay her loans. Also, for the next five months, Mrs Z didn’t make any payments, instead she rolled over 26 times. ”
————————————————————————–
OMG how messed up I was!! 123 extensions ; thanks to Sara and this website I am getting back slowly out of this mess , Sara I can`t be more thankful
Pete says
Hi there after taking advice from your site i have recived an email from the ombudsman adjudicator, how long will it take for the ombudsman to put his/her final approval on it? And how long do lenders have to pay out? Response:
This Service requested the business to send its business file to us, but this has not been forthcoming. Therefore, I have to base my decision on the information available.
Payday UK states in its final response letter, dated date 2016, that it received information regarding Mr Blogs income and also carried out an external credit and identity check when he took out his first loan. I have no evidence that this was carried out, but I also it does appear that the business requested Mr Bloggs to provide details of his expenditure. The business has also stated that he deferred repayment on seven occasions over the course of 21 loans. On date 2013, Mr blogs informed the business that he was in financial difficulty, so the business froze the interest until the account was settled in full on Date 2013
I have received no information from the business to demonstrate that it carried out any checks. Also, it appears that Mr Bloggs borrowed an increasing amount each time he applied for a loan. Furthermore, I do not consider it reasonable for the business not to question Mr Bloggs finances further, considering he took out 21 loans over a space of three years.
Therefore, to resolve Mr Bloggs complaint, I recommend the business refund all interest and charges it applied to all of Mr Bloggs’ loans from date 2010. Also, the business should remove all adverse information on Mr Bloggs credit file in relation to all the loans he took out with the business.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Hi Pete, from here PDUK will be asked if they accept the decision. If they do it doesn’t go to the Ombudsman level.
If they don’t accept it or just ignore the email about it, it will be passed to the Ombudsman. This happens with quite a lot of PDUK cases.
It takes a few weeks to be picked up by an Ombudsman. And then they have the frustrating process of trying to get PDUK to talk to them.
Sometimes the lender will then come back with an offer which you are happy to accept before the Ombudsman reaches a decision. Have you added up how much interest you paid on these loans?
Pete says
Thanks for your response Sara, I have an approximate figure of the interest paid over the course of the 20 loans it varied between £80 and £120 each time so an average of about £100 = £2000 plus 7 defaults which from what I remember I paid about £70 each time so an approximate total figure of £2400, PDUK won’t give me access to my account to check this out properly, kind regards.
I was thinking in the region of £1800 to be a fair offer.
S.D says
Next week will be 9 months since I lodged complaints against QQ and MR lender
Escalated to FOS 7 months ago
1 adjudicator not found in my favour now with ombudsman
Other adjudicator upheld my complaint but waiting on an ombudsman to be assigned.
I’m very polite with FOS and they must be busy.
I have absolutely no idea where the delays are, but 9months … Seriously ?
I’m fed up
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Well to be fair during this time you have had £5,000 back from Wonga and £1000 from Wageday Advance and some from other lenders? I agree that some firms are trying to drag things out for as long as possible, which is very annoying, but this doesn’t always happen.
David says
Hi All,
Adjudicator found in favour for me with QQ and Wonga, QQ accepted the findings and i actually got paid within 2 hours of speaking to the adjudicator which was great, Just waiting to see what Wonga say but i am willing to wait now. Thanks for this site i have now managed to sort myself out.
Jack says
Hi Sara,
I’m in a bit of a predicament with my cases. I have been assigned the same adjudicator for all my Payday Loan companies. I have 9 currently outstanding. One was fully supported and they agreed that one payday loan company lent irresponsibly. At the same time, 2 have been not been upheld. One that frustrated me a bit was Wonga where they felt that Wonga had not lent irresponsibly, even though I had taken our 12 loans over a period of 1.5 years. I feel that Wonga should have made more checks, but he stated that Wonga didn’t need to perform such indepth checks. I find it frustrating, especially as I had 14 pay day loans coming out all the same time of the month when it got to the worst part in May and June 2013.
My concern here is that if I disagree with the adjudicator, I might annoy him and he will find me argumentative and that might blur his judgement…
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Hi Jack,
I sort of see why you are worried. But on the other hand you know that so far the adjudicator seems to be looking at the cases individually, which is what you would expect him to do as a professional? Can you see why he said the first case should be upheld but the Wonga one shouldn’t?
Also how does the Wonga case compare to the other cases that he hasn’t decided yet?
Kelly says
Hi Jack,
I’ve had a similar experience. They’ve taken the interest from the highest paid loans. If they’ve provided you with your loan history you can probably work it out the difference. In my case the difference was £800!
Dave says
I have finally had an offer today from Wonga for the interest and fees on 2 loans from a total of 14 – £1,300. However, I have no idea if the amount offered is realistic.
A number of the loans were rolled. Mostly I would pay them back then take out another loan the following day for a higher amount and that was for about 6 months on 2 separate years.
Should I accept the offer or push for further compensation? I’ve just logged onto my Wonga account but the history of my loans have been removed. What should I do? I contacted FOS a couple of weeks ago but haven’t been assigned an adjudicator as yet.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
If most of the loans had little or no gaps and some were rolled, you may well get a lot more from going to the Ombudsman. hard though it is to not take £1300.
Dave says
That’s what I was thinking. I’ve sent my adjudactor the email from Wonga and asked his point of view and sent him all the evidence. I’m going to add up the interest for the other 12 and see if it’s worth pursuing. If it’s £500 more I’ll go for it but if only a couple of £100 I’ll accept
Emily says
Had success with Sunny a few months back – they refunded me all interest charged plus 8% statutory interest totalling just over £1000 and wiped all trace from my credit file. Payday UK however is a completely different story. Complaint been going on since April this year. Very unresponsive and eventually issued final response saying that they have no control over a customers financial behaviour and that is is my own responsibility when I raised the point that I was having to borrow more each month AND from other lenders. Referred to ombudsman who assigned an adjudicator who requested bank statements. Received a response from the adjudicator yesterday saying that it would be unfair and unreasonable to ask Payday UK to refund the interest charged after reviewing my bank statements!! Said he couldn’t see rent being paid on my statement (which is clearly shown weekly) and that my outgoings were only £350 so the loans were affordable – well one Payday UK repayment was £437.50 alone so not sure where he got those figures from!! I’ve asked him to review the situation and explained what the rent payments show as and have asked where he got his figures from but not hopeful!
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Hi Emily, where you have an adjudicator who doesn’t seem to be “getting” your bank statements, one good approach is to pick a month in the middle of the borrowing sequence at random – avoid Xmas or February ( very short) or any month with anything very odd happening – and analyse it in detail. Go through and categorise all your bank account entries for that month – weekly rent payments, council tax, utilities, grocery shopping, car expenses, kids expenses, other non debt. Then list all the debt borrowing and repayments. And obviously if you went overdraw, or had DD unpaid list those.
Db says
Hi all, my adjudicator has agreed that all 6 of my complaints were unaffordable. He just sent to all the company’s that a refund shold be given, the company’s were,
Pounds to pocket
Quick quid
Express
Payday uk
Leading stream
Peachy
Has any had experience with these company’s where the adjudicator agrees with the complaint, do they general accept the adjudicators final response or take it to ombudsman?
Glen says
Hi, I’ve just had an email and a letter from the ombudsman saying that he goes in my favour for 3/4 loans totalling about 1400 altogether from when I was younger,
It does say I should be refunded the interest plus 8% stat plus removal of credit file etc which I’m really pleased with, although the in terms of the interest and the 8% I don’t actually know what that means!
Im just glad it’s sorted, anyway I was just wondering if yourself or anyone else on here had any idea from when the decision has been made by the fos how long does it take to get actioned he’s given them till the 8th to respond, is it likely they’ll drag their heels?
Thanks in advance – well aware my questions are vague :)
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Hi Glen, the “interest” you will be refunded should be all interest and charges on the 3 unaffordable loans. If you know what you borrowed and what you repaid, you should be getting back the difference between this two totals.
This article explains what the 8% extra interest is https://debtcamel.co.uk/interest-payday-loan-refunds/.
I am guessing your decision is from someone called an adjudicator? If so, the lender (who is it?) can choose to reject or ignore (!) this, in which case your complaint gets passed to the second level, an Ombudsman.
Mags says
Hi Sara
The adjudicator handling my complaint against Uncle Buck upheld my complaint and set out how the complaint should be resolved.
Got a letter this morning saying that Uncle Buck do not agree with the findings and so the case is off to the Ombudsman.
Has anyone else had this happen with Uncle Buck? What should I expect?
Looking on the FOS site, most complaints are upheld. I am trying hard not to be too hopeful.
Fingers crossed
Mags
Tony says
Mags
The adjudicator upheld my complaint with uncle buck but they refused and gave reasons to the ombudsman, who then asked the adjudicator to look into it again. She has come to the same decision yesterday, so another wait unfortunately but such is life
Claire says
Hi, exactly the same has happened with me and my uncle buck case and it’s now been with the ombudsman for almost 3 weeks. Got my fingers crossed.
dylan says
Hi ive been reading up on all your posts about payday loans and claiming money back, i like many found myself in difficult times and struggled with paying my debts. I hade 6 payday loans going on and was struggling making ends meet. I’m very ashamed about putting myself in a situation like this but thankfully i got myself out of it. im thinking of writing to the 6 pay day loan companies and asking for a refund etc.
below is an example of one of the pay day loans i got in a rutt with lasting almost three years. Wonga loans was one of the biggest outgoings. please if you have time would you read through the dates and costings of my loan below and let me know if you think i stand a chance of claiming anything back or at least whiping it from my credit file. you can probably tell it got out of hand as the same day i was paying the loan off i was taking another out from the same company. I had missed payments and set up payment plans on 2 separate occasions.
20/05/2011 loan accepted £125.00 interest £18.37 owed 01/06/2011
22/06/2011 loan accepted £120.00 interest £7.98 owed 28/06/2011
28/06/2011 loan accepted £400 interest £17.50 owed 05/07/2011
13/07/2011 loan accepted £400 interest £53.49 owed 25/07/2011
05/08/2011 loan accepted £400 interest £109.49 owed 31/08/2011
31/08/2011 loan accepted £400 interest owed £125.48 owed 30/09/2011
01/10/2011loan accepted £600 interest owed £184.66 owed 01/11/2011
11/10/2011 loan accepted £60 top up interest owed £19.07 owed 01/11/2011
Payment due 1/11/2011 £863.73 failed payment
01/11/2011 loan accepted £600 interest owed £178.69 owed 30/11/2011
06/11/2011 loan accepted £230 top up interest owed £61.25 30/11/2011
29/11/2011 payment plan set up as in difficulties. Over 12 payments
02/12/2012 payment plan finished.
13/12/2012 loan accepted £100 interest owed £13.82 owed 21/12/2012
23/12/2012 loan accepted £300 interest owed £29.61 owed 31/12/2012
27/04/2013 loan accepted £400 interest owed £113.49 owed 24/05/2013
24/05/2013 loan accepted £400 interest owed £133.48 owed 25/06/2013
08/07/2013 loan accepted £701 interest owed £125.61 owed 25/07/2013
25/07/2013 payment plan set up as in difficulties. Over 12 payments.
£1191.91 interest paid.
Note – failed payments multiple times.
X2 payment plans set up yet borrowing still allowed
Joanna says
Hi there
The other important part of this is your credit file. How can you check that the payday loan company has actually removed this from your credit file? How long does the removal take? I say this because most things remain on your file for 6 years.
I’m in the process of claiming my refunds, but I also want to repair my credit score so that my money/finances are all in order.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Here is how to check your credit records with all three credit reference agencies: https://debtcamel.co.uk/best-way-to-check-credit-score/
Firms normally send monthly updates to the credit reference agencies. If you are using one of the free report checkers such as Noddle, they only update their report to you every 30 days. If you can still see the loans which should have been deleted after 2 months, I suggest you should get back to the lender and ask why they haven’t deleted them.
NB this isn’t an area that people here have had a problem with – when a firm agrees (or is told by the Ombudsman) to delete loans from credit record, they do.
Joanna says
Thank you very much Sara.
That’s very helpful.
Thank you also for setting up this website. It’s great, it cuts out all of the jargon and goes straight to what people need to know :)
Jason says
Hi Sara and everyone hi quick quid have been told to pay me interest on one loan and 8% will they argue this and appeal to ombudsman or will they pay as its only one loan of many ? And if they don’t argue when will I get paid out ? As all other claims I have had companies appealed and lost but I waited months ?
I’m not gonna argue as its been like Christmas last few months thanks to Sara lol
Emma says
Hi
I have sent off my emails today and was wondering what people’s experiences were on these companies? And how long it took.
Wonga I have had about 50 loans with them
Satsuma
Peachy
Lending stream
Wage day advance
Sunny
didn’t know what I’ve taken out but I think it’s about £10k with wonga over about 50 loans and had at least one new loan a month so was obvious I was struggling. Do they often just decide to give you a refund or do you have to go further?
Pesto says
Sunny and wage day advance both upheld my complaint on the last day of 8 weeks.
Cyn says
Lending stream wrote off my balance after a couple of weeks
My wonga case is with ombudsman as they asked for more time at 8 weeks that’s my big one and I didn’t want to wait
Sara (Debt Camel) says
It sounds as though your Wonga claim is the big one for you? Read up some more about Wonga claims here : https://debtcamel.co.uk/asking-wonga-refund/
If the Financial Ombudsman wants to see your bank statements, they can get old ones from your bank if you don’t have them.
Kelly says
Hello all,
So some goodish news… Wonga have offered me £900. They’ve taken into account loans of up to 6 years from the date the complaint was made however only considered 2 out of 18 loans but included interest. I’ve done the maths and I think the claim is worth £1600. Its currently waiting to be allocated by an adjudicator.
I’ve written back to Wonga and asked them to reconsider adding 9 of the other loans as an early resettlement. This will bring my settlement up by another £500.
Fingers crossed as I’d hate for this to drag out any longer.
Still, I’m happy to get my 1st mini victory after years of financial problems. Thank you Sara & everyone that has posted.
Al says
Hi Sara,
I’ve had several of payday loans over the last couple of years after getting myself into credit card debt and battling with a gambling addiction. If I’m asked for my bank statements by the Ombudsman, I would be incredibly embarrassed/ashamed to send them but obviously will if it means it will help with my claim. Will my past excessive gambling cause a problem with my claim? I’m just wondering if it’s worth persuing.
Thanks in advance.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
We have had quite a few people win payday loans complaints at the Ombudsman with gambling showing on their bank statements. If you just had one or two payday loans from a lender with no rolls, this may not be worth pursuing as your income may have looked large enough for the amount borrowed. But if you repaid then borrowed again from the same lender several times, or rolled loans, then the lender should have realised that you were in trouble and couldn’t afford the loans and its well worth making a complaint.
I can’t tell from what you write if your finances are now OK. If they aren’t and you have debts you can’t manage, I strongly suggest talking to StepChange now, see https://www.stepchange.org/. This is not instead of making payday loan complaints, it’s in addition to them. getting your monthly finances on a sustainable footing without any more borrowing is the most important thing you can do.
Lilly says
This is what my adjudicator said to me when I said I was worried about the gambling on my statements when she was about to look at my cases, thought it may help – Regarding your worries about being “judged” in any way, I can assure you it’s the lender’s actions we’re looking at, not the consumer’s. If your discretionary expenditure exceeded your income, then it doesn’t make any difference what it was spent on for our investigation. The question we look at is whether the lender was acting responsibly in continuing to lend to somebody who may have become dependent on payday lending.
Liam says
Hi,
My gambling was the sole reason for me taking payday loans in the first place and they really compounded the problem and started the spiral.
So far Wonga have upheld my complaint as have lending stream. In addition two separate adjudicators have combed through my disasterous bank statements which are just a list of payday lenders and online bookies, they have both found in my favour.
Basically, don’t worry and start off your complaint. Be open and give the FOS as much info as possible.
aga says
Hi guys , i had online gambling enteries for 5 years , my statements were 15-20 pages long every month , I had 4 different adjudicators , only one of them stated ” if you had problems , you shouldn’t have taken loans – but none of them mentioned online gambling , so good luck and make your complaints and if asked send your statements
Emma says
Just out of curiosity Liam how long did Wonga take after receiving your complaint to get back to you and agree. Also, did you take out lots of loans with them? I’m just concerned that my income would have covered everything but was still taking out payday loans each month
Liam says
Hi Emma,
I think it was 27 loans with Wonga. I got the standard letter at 8 weeks asking for a further 6. (At this point now my advice would be to start the process with the FOS, Wonga will continue to look at it) They went over the 6 extra weeks by a few days but agreed to refund all loans over a certain amount + interest. i could’ve maybe got more going through the FOS but I personally felt the offer was fair and at the time the money came in handy. Once I accepted the offer, the cash was in my account within 48hours.
Based on this site I think I was fortunate and got a sensible offer.
Hayley says
Hi everyone
Just a quick question if somebody would not mind answering please,
can benefits such as child benefit/working tax benefit be used as part of disposal income on a payday loan?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Hi Hayley, yes they can. Of course the disposable income calculations also need to take into account your childcare, school uniform, school lunches, kids clubs, pocket money and similar costs…
aga says
Hi guys , whoever had roll overs extensions and late payments , just try put your complaint in , you might be lucky , My Cash Conveters claim didn’t look that strong , small amounts but 10 loans and 1 instant loans for 6 months and , I received e mail from
adjudicator 1 day , he introduced himself to me and next day he sent e mail saying the company agreed to pay full interest plus 8 % statutory , I was shocked , they didn’t ask for statements or credit history etc nothing , so you never know
Matt S says
Getting so frustrated with Payday Uk and Payday Express. Been paying small amounts to them via debt management for the last 3 years to clear my outstanding balances. Currently have around £100 left to pay to each.
Put my complaint in to them in February, which they denied after around 12 weeks and so complaint went to Ombudsman. Adjudicator ruled in my favour on both but neither responded to the adjudicator and so they have gone to the Ombudsman to rule on.
However as I have had some other successful complaints with other companies, I now have less to pay through debt management and so my debt management company have contacted all my creditors with higher offers. Both Payday UK and Payday Express responded to them within a couple of days.
How come they can completely ignore contact from the Financial Ombudsman when it will mean them paying out money, but respond almost straight away when it comes to them receiving more money.
So annoying!!
Emma says
Has anybody had any experience with Peachy. I emailed my complaint yesterday and they have come back today with a final decision to reduce my outstanding balance by about £50 but said I basically lied in my application regarding my outgoings and that i can be reported for fraud! Ever so slightly concerned
Sara (Debt Camel) says
They often say that to people! See https://debtcamel.co.uk/payday-lender-says-lied/ for more about this sort of situation.
Morag says
Hi
They said that to me, I took it to the FOS and was awarded all the interest, although they have rejected this and it’s with the ombudsman
bow says
Frustrating update – my adjudicator upheld my complaint, he wrote to quickquid on 16th August to inform them, they didn’t respond within the 2 weeks given , so he gave them another week in which they have responded on the last day of that week to say they don’t agree with him, however he still upheld my complaint and has now sent them my credit file to reconsider their decision in which they’ve been given another week if not it’s off to Ombudsman to make a final decision. Has anyone had where the Ombudsman has not upheld the decision after the Adjudicator has ?? ( this complaint has been going on since April with quickquid! !!)
Rachel says
It is frustrating but stick with it mine is now with ombudsman told to expect up to 8 weeks for decision and probably wouldn’t hear before 4 weeks. I first put the original complaint in March so I think the timescale is pretty standard from what everyone else says about slow quid
Douglas says
I’m in the same position so would be interested to know what the likelyhood of the ombudsman overturning the adjudicator’s decision. QQ have disagreed with the adjudicator so waiting for it to be assigned to the ombudsman.
Also waiting to see if Wonga agree with the adjudicator too.
kim says
the ombudsman did not agree with the adjudicator in my case – the adjudicator said all loans were unaffordable with lending stream and that I should be refunded with 150.00 compensation – this ended up with the ombudsman who did not agree and ruled that only one loan should be refunded with 8% interest and no compo. very disappointing!
Kris says
Hi everybody/Sara
Would just like to say thank you for all the advice on this site- I’ve had a provisional decision from an ombudsman today with my QQ complaint and she is upholding my complaint from loans 5-50 over a four year period. This is after an adjudicator agreed that they should refund charges from loans 7 onwards after I declined their initial offer of 4K for 9 loans- so just goes to show its worth holding out for the ombudsman decision. QQ now have up until the 20th to send any further information, however I would think they would’ve sent any further evidence when the ombudsman initially contacted them 7 weeks ago when it was passed over- so I am feeling hopeful. Still expecting to wait for at least another month yet, however after 8 months the end is nigh!!
Anyway, thanks again!!
Dani says
Hi Sara,
Just looking for some advice really. I have had a final reply from Quick quid basically saying they are giving me £150 as a good will gesture and will take this off my final amount outstanding.
The email as you can imagine is very long but they are saying they have not received any correspondence from myself with further details:
“Upon receipt of your complaint, we asked for additional information in order to fully assess your complaint; unfortunately, we never heard back from you. Therefore my investigation is based solely on what we have on file for you.”
which is not accurate as I did email them back from the email address I asked them not to email several times. They have looked at affordability and dependency. They mention credit model scores:
“Looking at your record, I see that your credit model score was never under the minimum approval threshold for any of the loans for which you were approved. For instance, on 02/12/2010 you had a credit model score of 0.4385 when the minimum approval score was -0.15. Your credit model score is substantially higher the minimum approval score which shows that our affordability assessments properly ran per our internal policy”
Also they say:
“Your repayment history shows that you made repayments before the contractual due date. In 2 instances, you made early repayments which is evidence of a strong financial history. In addition, the principal amounts borrowed fluctuated throughout your lending history. If there was dependency we would expect to see constantly increasing amounts in order to cover the prior loan interest and principal. There were several instances where the loan amount you applied for actually decreased from the previous loan which shows that you were not relying on one loan to repay the previous loan. In fact, there were large gaps in your borrowing history. There were 182 days between your 11th and 12th loans, further demonstrating that you were not simply taking out one loan to repay the next one.”
What they fail to understand within my complaint is I was not only lending from them but three other payday lenders.
Do I respond or go straight to the FOS? What do you think my chances are?
Cheers
Dani
Sara (Debt Camel) says
how many loans did you have from them over what period? Were any of the loans rolled?
Dani says
Hi Sara,
1/11/10-25/11/10 200 232 32
2/12/2010-28/1/2011 200 272 72
31/1/2011-31/3/2011 200 270 70
1/4/2011-28/4/11 100 120 20
3/5/2011-26/5/2011 150 180 30
1/6/2011-28/7/2011 300 405 105
29/7/2011-27/10/2011 300 480 180
27/10/2011-29/1/2012 400 648.57 248.57
29/1/2012- 26/4/2012 800 1280 480
29/6/2012- 29/11/2012 800 880.59 80.59
29/11/2012-29/11/2012 800 800 0
30/5/13- to date 800 1464 664 still paying this off in a dmp
Total 5050 7032.16 1982.16
It is loan amount, total paid back and interest
As you can see some were rolled over for up to 5 months.
Cheers Dani
Sara (Debt Camel) says
the 10th line looks odd, that is very low interest for such a long loan?
The two big gaps of 64 and 182 days near the end are a nuisance for your claim, but there was a clear pattern of repeat borrowing long before then so I would say this is well worth taking to the Ombudsman. I don’t see any point in going back to QQ and arguing about this.
The stuff about repaying early is a nonsense – it looks to me as though you repaid when your payday was, which is what would be expected.And there was only one point at which the loan amount dropped, their argument made it sound like it was all over the place.
Dani says
Thanks Sara, I will take it straight to the ombudsman. When I have had a look at the dates from the SOA i have dated that loan wrong. It should be July 2012. Do you still think I could have a chance?
What I don’t understand is why a company who don’t admit fault would offer a gesture of goodwill, its crazy.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
The interest still looks low for that loan?
They offer a gesture of goodwill in the hope that some people will feel off put and not take a good case to the FOS. If you had no case at all, they wouldn’t have offered you anything!
Dani says
I think they are just clutching at straws. Unfortunately what they can’t see is that some months we were paying over £3000 to payday lenders which was way over our salary. Can’t deny I was a bit disheartened but I just need to see it as progress so I can go to the FOS quicker. The didn’t need to respond until the end of the month so thats a bonus.
Thanks for all your help
K101 says
Guys, persevere!
I too had the standard garble off quickquid quoting exactly the same as you Dani. I too was offered £150, I have referred them and 3 other companies to the financial ombudsman who I must say are excellent! Be prepared though, I have probably taken a day and a half going through my online bank accounts to show when loans were taken out, how much, who with and how much was repaid.
In my situation I got into the spiral, started off with just 1 loan and then it was all downhill from there, I ended up taking out over 70 loans and reloans in a 2 year period. (WHEN YOU LOOK BACK OVER IT DON’T BEAT YOURSELF UP LIKE I DID, JUST REALISE IT ISNT RIGHT AND FIGHT FOR WHAT IS RIGHT….YOUR MONEY BACK)
The template above for your complaint is a great place to start but once you do start don’t give up, keep going, if you couldn’t afford the loans and suffered as a result, get your money back. Make a note of when you need to have had a reply (8 weeks after letter is sent) and then you can refer it to the ombudsman.
I have had success with one company who have refunded over £2000 without having to go to the Ombudsman.
Good luck folks.
Matthew says
Thankyou for this site Sara, I didn’t realise my pdl problems went as far back as 6 years! (Discoversed by trawling my online banking since qq have deleted my records online ).
since finding this site last Friday I’ve been in touch with several lenders and Lending Stream have been very efficient-again they quoted the high experian report as justification for lending. They allowed me to take two loans at once, one I paid more than the principal but acquired charges, the other was underpaid by £17. They have agreed as a resolution to write off. Also had a fast initial response from CFUN but they got dates wrong in summary of accounts + they sent threats of visit without help advice. Anyone had experience with Cash 4 u now? (Sorry for long post, been a busy 5 days!)
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Writing off £17 doesn’t sound an adequate response from lending Stream if they gave you two loans at once – their quoted experian scores often seem to be unbelievably high…
Tara says
Hello,
In May I submitted l complaints with Wonga and Mr Lender (PDL Finance). Both came back with low offers after the 8 wks. I referred them to the FOS and an adjudicator took 6wks to rule in my favour. All charges plus interest from Wonga £3500 and all charges from loan 3 plus interest from Mr Lender £1500.
The companies had 2wks to respond, both deadlines have passed. My adjudicator said he will refer to Ombudsman now. Does anyone have any idea how long that takes?
Have claims ongoing with QQ, Lending Stream. All with FOS although I doubt I’ll have any luck with Northway.
Thanks for all your help Sara!
Margo says
After weeks of waiting Wonga agreed with my adjudicator (lovely lady), got more then expected :-). It took them less the one week to pay the money.
Thank you Sara so much!
Still waiting for Ombudsman about PDUK, it’s been 2 weeks so far so hopefully not long now. I hope it will be positive one as my adjudicator didn’t agree with me. She said that it was my responsibility and that payday lender did everything properly.
S.D says
Today I have finally had closure on my QQ complaint.
It’s been almost 9 months. With the FOS for 7 months.
QQ dragged their heels from the off.
Adjudicator originally felt that I had no claim, but changed her mind after getting all the bank statements and after I provided evidence of the other lending I had.
QQ disagreed and it went to an ombudsman who was less than 2 weeks to rule in my favour in all loans after the 3rd.
Ive had success from
Wonga after ombudsman decision
Payday express after ombudsman decision
Cheque centre after adjudicator upheld
Wage day advance resolved by their own team no FOS
24 7 money box resolved by their own team no FOS
QQ ombudsman decision
In total approx £10000 refunded, even after outstanding balances settled.
1 to go MR lender waiting ombudsman decision.
Advice
Give all the information to the FOS from the beginning hide nothing.
Don’t accept the adjudicator decision if it goes against you and you truly believe you have a case.. They listen to your appeal and explanations .. Explain clearly the reasons why these companies were wrong, back it up with facts and loose the cloudy bits. Make it easy for them to rule in your favour.
Be patient. This is not a quick process
Ultimately … NEVER BORROW FROM PAYDAY LENDERS AGAIN.
Thanks to SARA and debt camel for giving us this forum, giving us our voice, and supporting the people on the journey. Great work
Claire says
I have stupidly accepted the adjudicator’s decision on a few cases that there is no complaint to be upheld with both QQ and Wonga. Now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t have ?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Possibly, but I’m afraid there isn’t anything you can do now to change this.