If you had doorstep loans from lender such as Provident, you may be able to get a refund of the interest you paid if the lender should have realised the loan was unaffordable for you.
Doorstep lending – also called home credit – is where a collector comes to your house to collect the repayments.
Doorstep loans are used by over 1.3 million people in Britain. Many people have been borrowing from the same lender for years.
Provident is much the largest lender, but everything in this article also applies to the other lenders including Morses Club, Mutual and Loans At Home.
Contents
What is an “unaffordable” loan?
The regulator says that a loan is unaffordable if you couldn’t make the repayments without borrowing again. This could be borrowing from the same lender, from someone else, getting deeper into your overdraft or by not paying a bill such as a utility bill.
So even if you always paid your loans on time, they could still have been unaffordable. Especially if you had several Provident loans at the same time or often had to refinance/top-up a loan.
Often the first few loans may have been just about affordable, but Provident should have realised their loans were making your life more difficult when you kept getting more loans.
If you were struggling, your agent should have suggested that you could repay the current one a lot more slowly with no extra interest being added. But too often people were just offered another larger loan.
That was irresponsible lending and you should get a refund back of the interest you paid.
You are very unlikely to get a refund for only one loan. But if you borrowed several times and if you took out a new loan when you were having problems paying an existing one, then complain.
How to ask for a refund from Provident or other home credit lenders
For the last few years, lots of people have been getting large refunds from payday loans, see How to ask for a payday loan refund. The good news is the process is exactly the same for doorstep loans – the regulator’s definition of affordability is the same for all sorts of lending.
And now people are having success with complaints about doorstep loans – see the comments at the bottom of this article!
The template letter here for doorstep loans is similar to the one for payday loans, but it has some extra points that matter for doorstep loans.
Template letter to ask Provident for a refund
As I do not have all the details of my loans, I want you to send me a list of them, 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. I would like you to send me a complete list even if you consider that some of the loans are too old to be refunded. [delete this if you already have your loan details.]
You should never have given me these unaffordable loans. I am asking you to refund the interest and any charges I paid, plus statutory interest, and to delete any negative information from my credit record.
[If any of the following happened to you, add a couple of sentences describing this. If the problems didn’t happen for all of your loans, add the words OFTEN or SOMETIMES. Delete any that didn’t happen to you.]
- I have borrowed from you continuously for [say how many years]. Every time I repaid a few payments my collector encouraged me to take a top up and refinance it. My collector never explained I would have paid less interest if I just took a new loan and carried on repaying the old one.
- I missed several payments and the collector knew I was in difficulty as I had lost my job/had my hours cut/benefits reduced but I was just offered a new loan. I was never told that I could have a repayment plan for my existing loan instead.
- When I asked my collector if I could pay over a longer period, he/she said I couldn’t unless I took a new loan.
- For the first loan my collector looked at my payslip but after that he never checked and never asked if I was getting the same money – I wasn’t.
- My collector said I needed to change some things on my application otherwise it wouldn’t be approved.
- My collector filled out the application and gave it to me to sign, I didn’t have time to read it.
I didn’t know that the lender was supposed to check that I could repay the loan without having to borrow more. I only found out in [say when and how you heard about these refunds – article in the Sun? Facebook advert? friend told you?]
Also include your customer reference number if you had one. And explain if you have moved address or changed your email so they can locate your account.
Contact details for doorstep lenders
- Provident & Greenwoods Use their online form: complaints to Provident and copy your complaints letter into the “message you want to send us” box.
- Morses Club & Shopacheck You have to write to them, see complaints to Morses.
- Loans at home email with COMPLAINT in the title to customerservice@sd-taylor.co.uk.
- Mutual email to complaints@mutual.uk.com.
- CLC Finance email complaints@clcfinance.com
- Compton Finance email mark.phillips@comptonfinance.co.uk with Affordability Complaint as the title
- Naylors Finance email with COMPLAINT in the title to admin@jrnaylors.com.
- Pinewood Finance C0 email tracy.evans@pinewood-finance.co.uk with Affordability Complaint as the title
- Short Term Finance (Birmingham) Use their online form and copy your complaints letter into there: complaints to Short-Term Finance.
- Skyline Direct complaints@skylinedirect.com
- Swift ivan@swiftdl.co.uk
Keep a copy of online complaints or letter sent – if you email it to yourself it’s easy to pass on to the Ombudsman if needed.
How strong is your complaint?
It can be hard to win a complaint for just a couple of small loans.
Two useful guidelines are:
- The more loans you had, the better your case. Borrowing for long periods by taking out new loans or refinancing existing ones shows you were dependent on the loans.
- The larger the loans became, the better your complaint is. The first few loans may have been affordable but if they kept going up, that is a sign of increasing trouble.
You should get a response in 8 weeks
You may get a list of your loans on its own. This is NOT the response to your complaint, that will arrive later. You don’t need to do anything with the list of loans, just keep it as it if the lender makes you an offer, it will help you to see how good or bad it is.
The lender should reply to your complaint within 8 weeks from when you send the email, not when they acknowledge it.
Provident is being very slow about replying to complaints and they often don’t make a good offer. They may ask for two more weeks several times… I suggest you send the case to the Ombudsman straight away after 8 weeks.
If the lender rejects your complaint or makes a poor offer
If you think you have a good case, don’t be put off if the lender rejects it. People are winning A LOT of these cases at the Financial Ombudsman.
It’s normal to not get the first few loans refunded. If Provident has offered you a refund of loans 5-12 that is probably a good offer. But if they have offered a refund on just loans 10-12 it probably isn’t – you may be able to get a lot more by going to FOS.
If you are offered a small amount, don’t worry you will lose this offer if you go to the Ombudsman. We have never seen this happen.
If the lender says the loans are more than 6 years old so you can’t complain about them, ignore this and send your case to the Ombudsman who is looking at older loans (but not loans before April 2007. you can’t get a refund on them).
I have written more about Provident’s low offers in 2020.
Sending a complaint to the Ombudsman
The easiest way to send a complaint is to use their online application form because that asks all the questions they need to know the answer to (most of these are easy, such as would you like to be contacted by letter, email or phone?).
You probably won’t get a refund back of all the interest you paid… but ask for a refund on all loans and let the Ombudsman make the decision about where your loans became unaffordable.
You don’t have to calculate anything or ask for a specific amount. If you don’t yet have a list of your loans, say you have asked for one but the lender hasn’t sent it.
What should you say to FOS?
There isn’t a separate template for this. You can just copy the complaint you sent to the lender. But here are some more things you may want to add.
It’s worth emphasising if you had a poor credit record, especially if it got worse as you carried on borrowing from the doorstep lender.
It is worth emphasising if you repaid some loans early because you borrowed more that month from the same doorstep lender. This is sometimes called “refinancing” your loan.
In this case you may have paid more in interest than you would have if you had just been given an extra loan because of the way the “early settlement calculation” was done. If this wasn’t explained to you by your agent (and I bet it wasn’t!) then you paid more interest than you should have.
It is also worth pointing out to the Ombudsman if it was always your agent suggesting you borrow more, perhaps because it was getting near to Christmas, or in August when you might need more money for new school uniforms, or because you had paid off a lot of a previous loan.
A lender such as Provident should only have offered you a loan if you had asked them in writing for it. The collector shouldn’t have sat in your home and offered new loans. So if this happened to you, mention it in your complaint to the Ombudsman.
Send your bank statements and credit report
Send your bank statements with your complaint. If you haven’t got them all, send ones you do have and set about asking your bank for the rest, then send those. You are more likely to win a complaint if you send them, especially if you only had a few loans.
If you have borrowed for many years and the pile of statements would be HUGE, it’s still a good idea to get them all now, but you could then wait and see that the ombudsman asks for.
Don’t be worried because your bank statements show a lot of gambling. Here is one case Ombudsman decision about a Provident case involving gambling which shows that FOS just accepts you have a gambling problem, you can still win these complaints.
Also get a copy of your free TransUnion Statutory Credit report and send it to the Ombudsman with your complaint. Don’t worry you can’t get an old credit report – the Ombudsman knows this isn’t possible.
What about your current loan?
If you are still repaying a doorstep loan, you can still complain. If you tell the lender you want a payment arrangement, they will allow you to pay less each week over a longer period without adding any more interest.
But if you have other problem debts as well, talk to StepChange and they can see if a debt management plan would help. You can still complain if you are in debt management.
Need some help?
Your local Citizens Advice can help with writing these complaints, that will be free.
You don’t need a lawyer or a claims company. They take a LOT of your refund and you can make a better claim on your own than they can. A good claim involves telling your own story, you know what happened and a claims company doesn’t!
Comments or questions?
Hundreds of readers have posted comments below about how their Provident complaints are going and the successes they have had. If you have a question, ask it here!
Payday loan refund template letters
Too high a credit card or catalogue limit?
Borrowers are getting refunds from Amigo
mat says
Hi guys,
the 28 days has now past since my complaint to provident, they replied with what looks like a generic email that ive pasted below.
They did send me the details of my previous loans though.
My first query is does this mean that if i dont take it to the ombudsman theyll just shelve it and ill not hear anything back?
and if i do take it to the obudsman is there any better ways of filling out he boxes of how its affected me etc.
any help would be most appreciated.
Thanks
Mat
“We are sorry that we have been unable to resolve your complaint at this time.
We can assure you that this matter is still under investigation and is receiving our urgent attention. We expect to be able to provide you with a full response in due course.
If we require any further information or you feel you have any supporting information to help resolve your complaint we will contact you or please contact us using the details below. We would like to apologise for the delay and appreciate your ongoing patience.
In view of this and in line with our complaints procedure. You have the right to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service, free of charge, ………”
Sara (Debt Camel) says
This is their generic reply at 4 weeks. It isn’t the response to your complaint. You have to wait for 8 weeks until you can send it to the Ombudsman.
Mat says
thanks Sara, sorry i hadnt realised about waiting an additional 28 days.
im sure youve been asked a million times but is their any way of calculating what would be approximate a good offer if i get one in the mean time ? all my loans show the next one was taken out before completion of the previous and tbh some of the missed payments still show on my credit report
Sara (Debt Camel) says
How many loans did you have? How much did you pay in interest?
matt says
Hi Sara,
11 loans with total of £5708.11 interest charged from 2010 – 2018 all were refinanced whilst in arrears and before the end date from the previous loan.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Well a good offer would probably a refund from loan 3 or 4 say. You may even get from loan 1 or 2 from FOS, but that’s more unusual.
If Provident offer you less than a refund from loan 6. that is poor in my book.
but it’s your chopice whether you feel their offer is acceptable. It’s easier to make the decision with an actuual offer on the table rather than come up with lots of scenarios in advance.
mat says
thanks Sara ,
ill keep things updated on here as and when it comes through and once sorted will send a donation through for your site.
Fortunately these days im in a much better place with my finances, it was only when looking into mortgages did they highlight i had many many missed payments off provident which is what really annoyed me about them, ie if i missed a payment on week 6 of a 78 week loan i was never told i had to pay double the next week and it was implied as long as i paid by the loan end date it would be fine and chances are id be refinancing the loan before completion so that was fine just meant i lost a little bit when refinancing, but now i can see on week 7 when i made my payment they put it as week 6s payment and so on and so forth until the refinance, which resulted in me having insane amounts of missed payements marked on my credit report.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
ok, I don’t take donations, but it would be great if you can send a small one to your local Citizens Advice if you get a good result.
Mat says
Hi again Sara, i will gladly send a donation through to CA as advised once resolved.
Provident have just emailed an offer through saying theyll refund on one loan (the final loan) at £801
i think the response is too big to copy and paste into here and im not sure if its a generic response is their anyway i could send it to you to get your thoughts on it? no problem if not though appreciate your very busy.
thanks
Mat
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Just send it to FOS – that sounds like a VERY poor offer.
mat says
and just wondering do they have access to a more indepth credit report, theyve offered to amend my credit report but i cant go back that far for the loans but they have wrote:
“Having performed a detailed review of your credit file at the point these loans were issued and the way in which you managed your existing loans and specifically those directly prior to the loans I am defending, I believe we should have probed further in to your personal circumstances before these loans were issued to you. I cannot find evidence to suggest that didn’t happen but equally I cannot see that it did.”
Sara (Debt Camel) says
no, but if you have asked them for a copy of all your personal information, you should be able to see what they saw
Mat says
all they provided for my data request was a table showing my loans nothing else was attached in it. Will send to fos no problem thanks again
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Then send it to FOS and also ask Provident for the details of the credit checks and affordability assessments they did for each of your loans.
Vanessa McGowan says
How far back can you claim ?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
back to April 2007
Dean says
Hi Sara,
I’ve just been lurking on this website for the last few months but decided to finally post something just to say thank you. I don’t think I would have been able to make a claim for my mum without help from this website. Again thank you and keep up the good work.
Alex says
I sent your complaint letter template to Provident on the 16th of October. They asked me for evidence of my claims so I reminded them that I had requested the information of my loans. I was told that they will have this with me within 28 days.
It’s been 28 days and I’ve not received the information yet they state they are planning to deal with my complaint by the 9th of December? What is the best thing to do now?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Wait for their response and send it to the Ombudsman if it doesn’t arrive by 9th December. Provident’s offers are often poor at the moment, no point in waiting longer for a poor offer!
Alex says
Ok, thank you. I just thought it was funny how they expect to resolve it when they haven’t done anything I’ve asked. I’ll wait till the 9th and Sen day it to the Ombudsman as you have suggested.
Ash says
How long have people waited for cheque to arrive once Provident have agreed with FOS? Says allow 4 weeks. I’m on week 3.
Jayne says
I rang provident and got the breakdown the day after I’d called them, the cheque followed day after breakdown
Anon says
Hi should I recommend to my sister to take her reply to the ombudsman? 5 loans from 18/213 to 4/11/13 final one paid off 5/6/17 the final one was for 600.00. They state in the letter that at the time of the loans she declared income of between 98 and 250.00 per week and that credit file stated she had an average disposable income of 59.50. They use the work ‘in your home’ many times in the reply yet most times she would meet the agent in her car at the back of the property where she could not been seen by family as she was ashamed (she later admitted this to us after she broke down and opened up).
Any advice would be much appreciated as I would like to continue supporting her through this to the end.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
So they have rejected her complaint? If she feels the loans were unaffordable, causing her to have to take another one, then yew, send the case to the ombudsman and let FOS make the decision. A very large percentage of Provident cases are being won at the Ombudsman – provident are not making decisions in line with the way FOS does.
Anon says
Yes they rejected it. Thank you I will get her to do that.
Beckie North says
Hi,
Out of 41 loans from 2010-2017, they have only upheld 1, I have now sent this to the Ombudsman. They are sending me a cheque for the 1 loan, can I cash this cheque or will it be a case of I can’t take this further if I cash the cheque.?
Thanks
Sara (Debt Camel) says
You can ask them if you can cash the cheque and still send the case to FOS.
J says
Just a quick update on my Provident complaint.
After Provident went back to the FOS following an adjudicator decision (in my favour) I was so stressed, I was thinking the worst and hating on myself because I’m a mess right now with Covid and everything.
I just received an email from the Ombudsman this morning confirming that Provident have agreed to compensate me in line with FOS recommendations! This is such a huge relief, I don’t really have much in the way of debt (everything is well under control now) but wow! Psychologically this is a huge relief as I was getting really anxious about the whole thing but now I can relax, safe in the knowledge that the hard part is over :)
I have the original breakdown from Provident, I think it will be about £6k ish? But whatever it is, this will be an amazing end to 2020 or start to 2021 :)
Big thanks to you Sara and this amazing site!
Ash says
I must be the minority when it comes to getting your settlement. I’m going into week 3 since FOS advised provident are upholding all loans and my breakdown and cheque will follow. Have just rang prov for an update and was told it hasn’t been picked up yet! It’s so frustrating! I waited 3 weeks for morses to payout after giving my bank details. How are people getting their settlement so quick?
Shirley says
Im nearly on 18 months and still waiting its so frustrating. 😉 good luck
Ash says
What? After them agreeing with the FOS decision? I think you need to chase that up! They have 6 weeks to send my cheque (as stated in my email) and I will be straight on to them if it doesn’t come by then!
Shirley says
Haha no from first sending my claim sorry beg July 2019 year😹