With QQ just let them go to DCA and agree terms with the DCA. You can usually get them down to just the capital and one month's interest, and can pay in installments. With Wonga come to an agreement if you can. They will usually accept a plan that involves them freezing the interest but they nearly always need you to be paid up inside eight months. I don't know about Money Shop hopefully another Cagger does. With the two that are transferred to DCAs I would come to agreements with the DCAs for installments if possible. Assuming you have not been unfairly treated in terms of the interest charges. With Toothfairy NDR etc ... don't pay them and ignore their comms Also if you have not done so, lose your bank card and get a new one, and don't take out another payday loan

Just one more point, they do contact all addresses they have on file for you, even if you have changed address. They said that they had spoken to someone at my previous address - one I have not lived in since 2008 which they should have been fully aware of. As it happens an old family friend tried to contact me at that address and received a letter from the current owner saying that they had been hassled by NDR I believe ... can't believe they are contacting these poor people who have nothing to do with it. They even said they had spoken to someone at that address who had "spoken on my behalf" ... I don't even know that poor person and i am sure all they will have said is that I don't live there. But in any case, they know where I live I had to change my address with them to get the loan otherwise my card wouldn't have been accepted as it's registered at the address I've lived at since 2008

Hi Declain1992 I have been going through the mill with these guys too. I had a £400 loan from them last summer, which I didn't repay because I was stuck in the payday cycle and I had to break free of it somehow, and non-payment was the only way. To cut a long story short as Toothfairy and their related companies MHB (Marshall Hoares) and NDR (Northern Debt Recovery) refused to come to terms with me I paid off all the others first. In addition on previous loans they had overcharged me a total of £144, and if they went to court it is likely that they would only be awarded the capital (in my case £400) and one month's interest (£144). Therefore I have been offering to pay them £400 in full and final since last September and they are now saying i owe over £2200. The courts would take a dim view of them continuing to add such ridiculous rates of interest and therefore they would not win; they would also be unlikely to get their costs awarded. The costs you have detailed above, e.g. £150 for legal fees are not enforceable either. All in all they probably won't go to court. They will threaten to send people round to your place but they do this infrequently and have never done it to me and even if they did without a court order they cannot do anything. I spoke with them last night and they actually swore at me! They are a complete shower, and I hope they lose their license. The annoying thing is that I can afford to pay them the £400 but I don't want do so until they accept as full and final. I am thinking I will actually pay them the amount anyway as if and when they go to court they would only be able to argue on the £144 which isn't really worth their while going to court for. I have also heard they don't use credit ref agencies so they don't have a bearing on your credit file - but that's second hand info, don't quote me on it. Best of luck

Hi zelig33 - thanks for the advice. I have reviewed other people's posts about payday loan companies (in general as well as specifically lending stream). I changed my debit card and withdrew (in writing) any continuous payment authority consent that I may have given to them when I signed up to their terms. Having read horror stories about how some payday companies set up direct debits without consent I am still a little concerned, but I do have their agreement in writing, so I hope they will keep their end of the bargain. I know they cannot use my debit card now as all the details on that, including the security code etc changed. I will post back whatever happens

Thanks sillygirl1. Just in case anyone is viewing these posts and looking for support, I can confirm that I got Lendingstream to accept terms as well - I would say that they are much more professional in every way than Mr Lender based on my experience, but in Lendingstream's case they not only agreed not to apply late payment fees, they actually agreed to take a reduced amount compared with the amount owing - its a small one, but still saved me about £55 Cheers

Hi All just wanted to let you know, a new contact in Mr Lender's collections department finally got around to emailing me their acceptance of my reasonable offer to pay them £512 as full and final settlement. I hope this will be the end of the matter, but lets see what happens after I pay them next week Thanks for the advice all

Thanks Sillygirl1 I agree, I am just so surprised at the way they are interacting / not interacting with me, its ridiculous, especially as I have made such a reasonable offer - and even if email is an acceptable method of communication, text message is definitely not, they are a complete shower. Thanks for the advice

oh, sorry, also, I know its a really long post, but its not one letter, and the bank details were sent by them to me on text message - which I find ridiculous

hi sillygirl, no, they are their bank details, and yeah, probably am too wordy. As to being incorrect about the OFT bit, would you let me know why please? thanks

Hi All its time for me to provide an update on my dealings with Mr Lender. Having heard nothing from Mr Lender following my letter dates 21st October 2010, in which I totally disputed their right to add any significant additional charges, and having received the aforementioned Default Notice I wrote to them again on 5th November 2010. In this letter I reiterated my offer of paying £512 - (£400 borrowed, £100 interest, £12 administrative charges for late payment) on 19th November 2010; I also requested their bank details. This is the response I got: Dear tripinit, Thank you for your email. Can I confirm you will be paying your outstanding loan of £570.00 in full on 19th November? Kind Regards, Laurence 020-8502-1288 / laurenceatmrlenderdotcodotuk This is a ridiculous response in my view and I responded with: Dear Sirs, Ref: Payday Loan arrears – total loan value £500 Thank you for your telephone message which I missed today due to being in a meeting at work. I dispute your opinion that I am avoiding corresponding with you; on the contrary, I have made an offer to settle my account with yourselves on 19th November 2010, and you have chosen to ignore this. I have enclosed the letter I sent you on 21st October 2010 for this reason. Since I wrote the aforementioned letter to you, on 27th October, you have emailed me a “Notice of Default Sums” which you say you have given in accordance with the Consumer Credit Act 1974. This is despite the fact that I have made, and you have received both verbally and in writing, my offer to repay the full loan amount of £400, interest charges of £100, and an additional £12 to cover your administrative charges for late payment (totalling £512.00) on the 19th November 2010, which is within a month of the time that you feel the original loan would have been due for repayment. Within your email “Notice of Default Sums” dated 27th October, you have added the following charges: - Original Admin Charges - £30.00 - Default Letter 1 - £20 - Notice of Default Sums - £20 You have stated that in your view the amount owing now totals £570.00 I dispute the fact that you can apply these charges for the following reasons: a) According to OFT Debt Management Guidance 2003 section 2.6F – you cannot force me to repay more than I can comfortably afford b) According to OFT Debt Management Guidance 2003 section 2.1D – you cannot add charges as a penalty for non-payment, other than to cover the real costs of collections activity c) I have not received any letter from yourselves, so “Default Letter 1” does not apply d) The terms and conditions which I signed up to with yourselves do not in any way indicate that charges will be applied to the amounts that you have detailed in your “Notice of Default Sums”. I also dispute the validity of the Default Notice as a whole as you have not enclosed a copy of the current OFT information sheet which since 1st October 2008 must accompany arrears and default notices under the Consumer Credit Act 1974 as amended. Let me make my position perfectly clear: I want to pay you £512.00 which settles my account with you; the earliest I can afford to make this payment is on 19th November 2010. I do not currently have a debit card, and I therefore need to make this payment using bank transfer, therefore please will you write to me confirming the bank name, bank sort code, bank account number and the reference you would like me to attach to the payment. If you choose not to provide these details on or before 18th November 2010, I will assume that you do not wish to accept my payment. Yours faithfully Would you believe that their response was a TEXT MESSAGE!!! Which says: Tripinit, you can pay by bank transfer. Bank: HSBC - Sort Code: 40-06-23 - Account: 3148-7639. Thanks So obviously I wrote back immediately with: Further to the email I sent you earlier today which is below, as the bank details I have received from you were sent to me via text message, I would like you to confirm that they are correct and valid via email or on official company headed paper please: Bank: HSBC Sort Code: 40-06-23 Account: 3148-7639 I have been advised that this is necessary as there is a potential of fraud (albeit I would expect / think it unlikely), in the sense that an employee of your organisation could use your SMS gateway and quote their own bank details for example. In addition, and as per my original letters, and emails including the email below, please could you ensure that you advise me as to what payment reference you would like me to attach to my payment to you as I would like to ensure there are no problems with reconciling my remittance at your end. If you could adhere to the above two requests on or before 18th November 2010, I will ensure I make the aforementioned payment of £512.00 on 19th November 2010, which will settle my account with you. Thank you very much for your cooperation Yours faithfully Well no response at all, despite me sending them further emails - so I have sent them this final letter - which I attached to email as PDF: Dear Sirs Please find attached a letter – please could you read and action immediately? Having been accused wrongly by yourselves that I have been trying to avoid corresponding with you, I find it incredible that you either ignore, fail to respond or otherwise avoid answering the points made in my correspondence. The letter is pasted below in case you don’t like attachments. This is my final letter to you, failure to provide the details I have asked for will put the debt into dispute, and I will fight any attempt on your part to collect on what you feel is owing. To be absolutely clear, based on your own documentation, I now feel that you have been fraudulent, and I will involve the police and / or other authorities if you do not rectify the situation immediately. Yours faithfully Dear Sirs, Ref: Final Settlement Offer - £512 (£400 Loan Value, £100 interest charges, £12 admin charges) After my previous letters dated 21st October 2010 and 5th November 2010, as well as emails dated 6th and 8th November 2010, I am very disappointed not to have heard from you. I would like to reiterate the following: 1) I am prepared to make a payment via electronic banking on 19th November 2010 of £512.00 in full and final payment in order to settle my account with you 2) I need you confirm that making said payment on 19th November 2010 will settle my account and that you will not seek to either apply any further charges or to try to debit my account for any additional monies 3) I need your confirmation that you will adhere to my email dated 6th November in which I withdrew any consent to your company using any Continuous Payment Authority that you feel you may have from me – in other words you may not seek to take monies from my bank account via my debit card or via direct debit 4) Following your text message (SMS) which I received on 8th November, I need your confirmation in response to my email request of the same date that the bank details you have provided are correct (please confirm via letter or email or on official headed stationary). 5) In order to make payment on the 19th November 2010, I need you to confirm any payment reference you would like me to attach to the payment, and I do not want to find that you subsequently have difficulty in reconciling my remittance 6) I do not accept the additional charges of £70.00 which you have added to my account. At the very least these charges constitute an Unfair Agreement, and actually put the entire debt in dispute which means that you may not continue with any efforts to collect the loan. Please could you remove these charges from my account? Looking at the online portal, I also note that you have added these charges as though they constitute part of the original loan, which they do not, and I believe that by doing this you are committing fraud – please rectify this immediately – on the next page / below is a screenshot from your online system that I took today. In summary please could you do the following? 1) Confirm that a payment of £512.00 which I will pay on 19th November 2010 will settle the account 2) That you will not seek to withdraw funds from my bank account using either debit card details that you hold on file, or by direct debit – I withdraw consent from you doing either of these. 3) Send me confirmation via email or on official letterhead that your bank details are as follows: Bank: HSBC - Sort Code: 40-06-23 - Account: 3148-7639 4) Provide me with the payment reference that you would like me to apply to my payment Please could you do the above as soon as possible, or at least by 18th November 2010, otherwise I will put the entire loan in dispute, and if you seek collect any part of it, I will consider doing so as fraud, On a final note, I feel that I have been extremely poorly served by yourselves; your representatives state that they will try to help those in financial difficulty, but they employ bullying tactics including telephoning completely random extension numbers at my place of work causing me severe distress when these calls are reported to me by colleagues in completely different departments. I would also add that on two occasions when collecting my previous loans, you have split the repayments into three or more segments, and I have been out of pocket for up to 10 days on each occasion because a transaction has failed (you didn’t get an authorisation code) and you didn’t tell your bank this as quickly as possible, causing the funds to be unavailable to me during that timeframe. This is extremely poor practice, especially when you consider the type of customer that would be most likely to use your service . I also added a screenshot of their online account screen which states specifically that the loan amount is £570 - this is complete carp, if they had put balance £570 or loan amount £500 with £70 charges then I might not be threatening them with the fraud accusation, but they are a complete shower. Having dealt with other lenders like lendingstream, Uncle Buck, QQ, PDUK, PTP and Wonga, I I am sure these are the worst I have dealt with. Thanks all I will send another update if when I hear from them

Hi Zelig33 - would you be able to let me know how you got on with Lendingstream - any update since your last post on 18th Oct please? I have two accounts with them, which I have offered to clear over the next two months. After some messing about I got an email today accepting my payment plan along with bank details to make the payment - the concern I have is whether they will still seek to use my debit card or set up direct debits etc etc - any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks

thanks robjam, your prompt response is much appreciated. If anyone can answer the my points regarding whether they can really send a default notice by email, and whether or not I am correct in insisting they write to me in letter form I would appreciate it Thanks very much

Hi agree with cooldude and robjam, I also sympathise as I have been through this, and only just getting over it now, (although I do have a problem with one such company). They only thing I wanted to add was in relation to PDUK - a year or two ago I agreed a payment plan with them over three months; the final payment was to be £313 which they were supposed to take out of my account - wierdly, although they took the two previous monthly installments, they didn't take the last one - I was so skint I didn't chase them, but neither they nor any third party has ever come after it - and I have not changed my home address or anything. Actually if they got in contact now I am almost out of the trap, I would pay up, but there isn't any mention of them on my credit file so I am not minded to correct what looks like their own internal error. . . . hopefully you will be as fortunate - and best of luck, honestly the payday trap is a nightmare - I would rather it were simply illegal

Hi All, I'm a newbie to this forum in that I don't think I have posted anything before, although I have found the advice on here pretty useful in the past - so thank you. I have multiple payday loans and I am successfully clearing most of them in the next couple of months. I have been doing this by effectively only paying them what I can afford and getting them to stop applying additional interest. This is working / has already worked for three of these companies but I have a real problem with one of them who goes by the name of Mr Lender - they are part of PDL Finance. I was due to pay them either £100 in order to rollover the loan or £500 to repay the loan in full (£400 being the original loan amount)on 20th October. My intention was to pay them slightly more than just the interest charges but not the whole amount. Unfortunately, one of the other creditors took out more money from my account than I was expecting (my own fault - I had misread that creditor's correspondence) and so when Mr Lender tried to take the money from my account the payment failed. On the day the payment failed I had numerous telephone messages from Mr Lender, a couple of emails and numerous text messages. I didn't want to speak with them until I could see where the other payments had gone, and my online bank statement was not up to date as some of the other payments had gone out via debit card. On the day after the due date, they repeatedly phoned my work, my mobile and home phone. Getting my voicemail each time, they then started calling random extension numbers at my work, until they eventually got through to my boss who called me to her extension to take the call - this was extremely embarrassing - especially as the two or three people that informed me at work that these guys had spoken to them all said that the people they spoke to were incredibly rude. I spoke to Mr Lender and said I would write to them to suggest a payment plan in the next two days or so - their rep said that this was not acceptable and that I have to deal with them over the phone - she said she would put me through to someone who could help me . . . . when I spoke with the next representative, he started by saying that he would help in anyway possible; I said that I would pay on or before 19th November (i.e. 30 days after the original due date) in full - in other words the full £500. He said that I had to make a proper payment immediately and that this offer was not acceptable as, as he put it, "we are not a charity". He said if I didn't pay I would incur charges of at least £175 before 19th Nov. I said I thought that that was excessive and unfair, but that could he please put their position in writing. His response was that he would email me, and I said I wanted a letter, to which he said that they don't do that. I should add that whilst their Ts&Cs make some mention of charges for late payment they definitely do not equate to £175 in a month! I asked this representative repeatedly to put their position to me in a letter, and he kept saying that they would not do so. So I wrote to them stating my position, that I would happily pay a maximum of £512 (£12 being what I would perceive as being reasonable admin charges for the late payment), on 19th Nov. They stopped calling me last week, but I have not received a written response from them yet. However, the next thing I know is that I get a text message saying they are sending me a default sums in accordance with the consumer credit act 1974. I then got an email (not a letter) stating that in accordance with the CCA 1974 I owe them £570 - no OFT fact sheet was included, not even as a PDF. So, sorry about the very lengthy post - but can anyone tell me: a) Do I have a right to insist that they state their position and all correspondence in hardcopy form? b) Are they allowed to call my work and guess at extension numbers - as there is no way they would have spoken to my colleagues in other departments otherwise! c) Can they serve a default sums notice by email? d) Should they not take a commercial view as I've used their service for months, and a cost of at least £100/month - if they add all these charges, then they loose the business e) If I pay them the £512, can they actually chase for any additional sums that they think they can? f) Am I missing anything - is there anything else I should be doing in terms of my dealings with them? Thanks all for your help, and again sorry its such a lengthy post

I paid them by visa debit card, but I have written a letter venting my frustration at Talk Talk, who have actually caused the issue - interesting that Talk Talk kindly provide a forum for their users, but seemingly not people who don't have an account - monkeys!