Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k custs

[meellis]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

Until bankruptcy my view of the credit world was through the respectable world of banks and credit cards but B/R changed my views and experiences on all of these things. Unfortunately people who use sites like this are all too aware of the debt trap and how it wasn't all their own fault but like me before B/R the general public aren't so still have the view we brought it upon ourselves. Since B/R I have learnt that banks and credit cards aren't as respectable as I believed. I have learnt how much we are getting dependant on banks but how much harder it is to get in with them. Being self employed stops me having a payday loan but I have been more than tempted when things have got tight. I have ended up pawning things which is a near equivalent but the only option available to me. Things need to change because decent financial products and credit are things that need to be available in the modern world but they need to be available at the right price and for everybody.

[andrew1]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

Interesting reading your comments from yesterday, these comments take me back to being a child (and I am now the wrong side of sixty). My parents divorced and mum had 3 of us, she worked and sent us up to a child-minder on a council estate early in the morning so we could be sent off to school just up the road.

We lived on the opposite side of the main road in the private houses and there was not the kind of community spirit and commaraderie found in the council families, but mum struggled just like everyone else financially even though she did work.

When she came up to pick us up in the evening I often heard her talking about this struggle and she was introduced to the 'Provident lady' - I didn't know who the hell the 'Provident Lady' was, but she was always asking for money when she came and many of the women knew this 'lady' on the 'pan' as we called the area around the house.

This was when I was a tot 50-60 yrs ago and people struggling borrowed money I since found out, from these moneylenders to get by.

Since then I have worked in the credit industry for 30 yrs, I learned a lot, made a lot of money and bought myself a fancy house on a private estate where one imagined nobody struggled.

With my background and experiences, one of the most annoying things I ever came up against on my 'private' estate was when people looked down upon others for being in debt, they had never been in debt themselves, didn't understand why others got into debt and had their noses so far up their backsides as to see nothing at all going on in the real world. Because of my profession I knew many on that estate who were in dire trouble, yet still silently carried on holding out everything was fine when it wasn't.

Attitudes don't change to people in debt over the years, the 'filthy debtor' attitude is still alive and kicking, but one thing we learn when we get into the nitty gritty of lending is how utterly disgraceful these lenders are behind their shop-fronts and their fancy offices and how well protected they are by the legal profession from top to bottom right the way to the bench itself. It's little wonder so many people fund this attrocity as I have done, even with my experience, I got stung by a company I knew nothing about (Swift) with an intended short term fix loan which ended up costing me a fortune in legal costs (70k +/-). We pay for this machine and its only when people like us who fight and bring these companies to be answerable using the power we have by exposing them do we get any kind of justice at all...even then, the fines imposed go back into the government coffers - no good to me when I was the one paying out their extortionate costs or fees - the lending industry needs this overhall, but by people like us, not the politicians who have their shares in these companies or chums working in the regulators or old boy's clubs sitting on the bench.

It's like fashion - it just gets recycled as a new idea in a new era and goes on repeat every so many years.......make people financially aware from a very young age, pay them proper living salaries for work they do, not these minimum wage nonsense, make buying on credit and credit cards a thing of the past and stop this housing price madness once and for all.

Then we might begin to get somewhere.

Cuppa time! Sorry to rant..

A1

[enaid]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

I loved your 'rant' and agree with every word you say..
Having recently lost my dad and having to go through paperwork he kept from the year dot (even Daisy the dogs licences from the 70s), I found loads of credit agreements and books where he had paid weekly 10/- till he could then borrow another £20 so we could get clothes.
There will always be a need to borrow and for many different reasons, it just needs to be fair and honest from both the lender and borrower imho

[andrew1]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

Kids should be taught to save and only buy what they have saved for, then start saving again for the next item....credit is too easy to get and it is a disease in the brain picked up far too early in life that drives this 'I want it Now' attitude.

If only ALL lenders were made to pay back like Wonga hundreds of millions of £'s for their theft, and that's what it is, theft, then maybe they'd begin to realise they are not a cash cow there for the benefit of screwing the public and businesses (my businesses were driven to the wall at times with charge upon charge when cash-flow hit rock bottom, not necessarily because my business was doing wrong, but a client going bust and not paying us and we had to fund that loss) the banks were a disgrace.

The tale is sad of finding those items of your dad recording his struggles and I hope my lad doesn't have to look back on my documents and find the same, it made my heart sink just reading your finding, you must have felt the same.

"Trade your way out, not borrow" was a voice boomed out to me once....What mum did tell me was look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves....pity she couldn't find that kind of comfort in her own life.....I know what you mean enaid, credit is always needed, but how to remove it from this world is another challenge this world has for the better of your childrens children. ( Our children are already stuffed by the bankers and the gov't who'll be paying their evils back for many decades to come) so it's our grandchildrens children who might just stand a chance - time to get teaching now!

Oh to have a dream.

A1

[righty]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

I could take out a payday loan tomorrow. I can't afford to and would end up in the poo completely but when things are so tight and anything slightly out of the ordinary happens (like some little sh*ts kick our wing mirror off the car) it'd be so easy just to get a PDL and fix it, or weeks when we just don't seem to be able to manage to stretch to paying the rent and council tax because we've had the heating on...so tempting...... or when the car tax is due (like ours is yesterday!)......or kids need a new blazer for school.... or shoes etc etc etc you get the idea.....

I agree I'm certainly not in favour of PDL (may they all rot in hell) I was simply surprised that you stated they need protecting from themselves. I pointed out (not that it needed to be) that most of those who do go to the likes of Wonga do so out of desperation and NOT because they have a choice most don't certainly not since the SS stopped giving crisis loans

I wouldn't have a sodding clue where to go to find an illegal loan shark who'd threaten to break my legs, and before PDL's I wouldn't even have considered it anyway, the advertising is in your face, and everything is NOW NOW NOW.

We've discussed before about the gap left by crisis loans and social fund loans. Because we're in that horrible place where we are JUST not entitled to any help, with anything, other than credit cards and catalogues and sh*t like Brighthouse, there's no option other than to get by and if something comes up to just cope with it, which is hard, and having TV adverts and internet adverts and texts all the time offering you money would be, if I didn't happen to run this website, extremely tempting.

So I'm more than happy for the FCA to step in and protect me to some degree and when I talk about people who are vulnerable to these lenders I include myself.

I agree with you & I certainly have no time for PDL's (may they all rot in hell) I was just surprised at your comment about protecting them from themselves

Almost all who use a PDL do so because they have no choice, certainly not since the SS stopped giving crisis loans. The best way to 'protect' such people would be 1st to cap the % rate and 2nd make it much easier for people to borrow from the local CU by funding them so that can stay open much longer (some like ours are only open Wed morning & Sat morning from 10-11am

[Amethyst]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

CU's I totally agree with, again it's a matter of accessibility.

Credit Unions need to have members of a common purpose don't they, so could an online community have a CU ? Just think ways to bring CU's up to date.

[righty]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

The police do & I think that a case has already been made for on-line groups to become CU's I think it was decided that they MUST have a common interest

[Amethyst]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

I'm sure there was some discussion over it at high up levels ....... my closest one is 36 mins drive away so not exactly convenient.

Think there was a thread about this ref Leeds credit union, as they put sliders PDL stylee on their site - http://www.leedscitycreditunion.co.uk/

[Amethyst]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

Ahhh was just me talking to myself again - http://www.legalbeagles.info/forums/...ay-Day-Lenders

[meellis]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

Its a tricky one because after all I have been through I know there is a need to control credit but also a need for that risk that enables somebody to come up with something that benefits us all. Where would the Sugar's or Bransons be if they were never able to take a risk with somebody else's money. I think the one thing that is really needed is for the actual people behind these schemes to be held accountable for their actions. The reason they have their large salaries is for the apparent stress and risks they take but I cannot see it. They do wrong, the company they work for get fined, they might get a dressing down in line with the benefits they have brought to the company, the company makes a loss so finds another revenue stream to plug the gap and the fine levied against them goes to the government. You and I, the actual victims, rarely get compensation from the fine or company but we do get the costs increase to pay for the fine so we end up paying the fine imposed for causing us harm in the first place. The actual perpetrator gets away with it all to come up with another scheme to rob us blind and the cycle starts again.

[andrew1]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

Never said a truer word meellis..it all goes around and around....

[Debt Camel]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

CU's I totally agree with, again it's a matter of accessibility.

Credit Unions need to have members of a common purpose don't they, so could an online community have a CU ? Just think ways to bring CU's up to date.

here you are > http://www.dotcu.org.uk/creditunion/

[Amethyst]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

here you are > http://www.dotcu.org.uk/creditunion/

Thank you DC xx

There's a thread on MSE about DotComunity and Enterprise The Business Credit Union Limited http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/...munity&page=10 if anyone is interested looking at this CIC.

[EXC]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

Water companies caught at it now http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29599359

[enaid]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

"These letters are about increasing the level of aggression to get payment and they're made on the assumption that people won't pay rather than actually many can't ."

If ever this sinks in to the tiny brains of the 'on another planet' nob eds who run this country we may just about have achieved something.