Hi, After 5 months of us both being on low hours we got behind on our ctax. I'm finally back at work and now we owe £1250 on our council tax. I've offered them £275 a month which actually gets it paid off earlier than we would pay the council. However they are asking for a lot of info I don't want to give them unless I have to. They asked these questions in my reply to my email offer: Are you currently Employed? Full Time/Part Time? Wages? Who do you work for? - Dependent children - Does your partner work? - Rent or Mortgaged property? - NI Number - DOB What do I actually have to tell them? Thanks in advance

Send a FORMAL COMPLAINT and they legally have to communicate with you. It's on my to-do list this week to sort them out- been busy with work and we have had a new baby so been a bit busy. I've had a bit of email correspondence with Michael Lapides and they have finally agreed I don't owe anywhere near what they say. Admittedly it has taken a complaint to both OFT and Financial Ombudsman to do it. They get a certain amount of free investigations per year and then are charged over £500 for every other investigation by the FOS so get complaining. And make a point of telling them you are complaining. That will defo get the morons running scared!

Withdrawing my complaint will not be happening, that's not open for negotiation! I've been told by a lady at citizens advice that the FOS have been forcing quite a few companies into giving compensation recently so it could be more than the £550 investigation fee. Im not after compensation although we have suffered months of hell from this company. we were stupid and got into a mess with a lot of companies but these have been evil to deal with. I do find it it quite amusing that even if I pay them the £170 they want I will still have cost them over £150! My loan was only £200 and I have paid £220 already! But they are gonna have to fork out for my complaint! Karma for you!!!

But if you read it carefully its still conditnal on you dropping complaints against them. They are running scared and I'm betting that if you drop the complaint then they won't have keptnanrecord of it either somitnwill be like it never happened! Given the way they are starting to act vaguely reasonably convinces me more than ever that they are nearing the end and are close to being very publicly named and shamed and closed down!

I know they are. We have given a witness statement. I intend to make it very clear that whatever we settle for paying to clear the debt off my complaints remain and will not be withdrawn. They reckon that they did cancel the CPA when they said they would but they still bombarded me with daily texts and emails saying that they were going to take money and then when they couldn't. Surely this goes against that? And surely e Even if they did why cancel it why have they let me spend the last eight months thinking they are trying to take my money....I had already switched banks and cancelled with the bank so they couldn't anyway! And I am really hammering home the harassment thing? Wonder if I can mention the Harassmenf Act 1997 and remind them that I am entitled to take civil action?

How? It will help me reply if you could give specifics please?

I'm not sure? My big issue here is that I don't actually trust them enough to believe that £170 would settle it. They aren't exactly known for their honesty and for sticking to their word. Plus I don't want to withdraw my complaint to the FOS as its valid and could help other people. I won't have that as a term of settlement, that part isn't negotiable. The more complaints officially made about these people the better.

I have had a reply!!!!! OUR REF: xxxxxxxx Dear Ms We are sorry to hear that you have a complaint about the service you have received. The company attempts to treat its customers fairly in all circumstances and we apologise if you believe the service you have received falls short of your expectations in any way. Please accept this email as acknowledgment of your complaint. We have 8 weeks in which to try to come to an amicable agreement. If we are unable to come to resolve your complaint in that period, you will receive a Final Written Response. This will set out the company’s final position in respect of your complaint. If you are unhappy with the Final Written Response and wish to appeal further you have the right to make a formal complaint with the Financial Ombudsman Service. You must make sure you do this within six months of receiving the Final Written Response or you may lose your right to ask the Ombudsman to review your complaint. The contact details for the Financial Ombudsman Service are as follows: Financial Ombudsman Service South Quay Plaza 183 Marsh Wall London E14 9SR Website: www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk Email: complaint.info@financial-ombudsman.org.uk Phone: 0800 023 4567 or 0300 123 9123 You may also be interested to read their pamphlet, “Your complaint and the ombudsman” which can be found at www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/consumer-leaflet.htm We hope that you find the information contained herein to be helpful and that we are able to resolve your complaint to your satisfaction. I will respond to your points in turn: 1) Upon receipt of your cancellation of continous payment authority, your card details were altered so that it would be impossible to debit your account. Our system is designed to recover funds using CPA on a regular basis in the event that payment is not made as per the terms and conditions of your loan agreement. I can confirm that your card details were amended on 30th January 2013 so that any system debiting would be unsuccessful. A review of your bank statements since the loan’s inception (23rd November 2012) until now will show that no funds were debited from your account in relation to your outstanding balance. As payment has not been made since 31st December 2012 and you have not arranged another method of payment, we believe the firm has displayed a significant degree of forbearance by not reinstating CPA. 2) Your loan is owned by Easy Finance Club, a trading style of Web Loans Processing, with whom you had applied for the loan. The terms and conditions state that should the loan not be paid in full as per the contractual agreement, Easy Finance Club may subcontract third party debt collectors on its behalf. 3) The automated communications you have received in relation to nonpayment state that should the matter go to court and a judgement not be adhered to, court appointed bailiffs may become involved. The interest and charges on your account are enforceable and are contractually provided for by amount in your credit agreement. Nevertheless, the business is willing to apply a settlement discount with a view of reaching an amicable agreement. 4) This loan was taken out on a 14-28 day basis with £16 accruing weekly. As you had not repaid the outstanding balance in full by the end of this contractual period, nor an alotted two week grace period, interest and charges had accrued as per the terms and conditions of the loan agreement. You have stated that you wish to repay £42 to settle your account. As you had not repaid the outstanding balance during the contractual period nor the following two week grace period, we cannot uphold any claim that the outstanding balance ever was or is currently £42. 5) As you have not made repayment in approximately 8 months on your outstanding balance, the business had utilised your contact details you had provided and had given permission to use for its lending and collection purposes. Under OFT Guidelines, creditors should adhere to reasonable requests as to how debtors should be contacted. Thus, I have taken the liberty of freezing phone communications as requested on the basis that we communicate in writing. Your outstanding balance has accrued to £694. Whilst I can see from your file that you had historically made repayments, this amount did not satisfy the outstanding balance and interest and charges accrued as agreed. Due to the amount of time this balance has been outstanding and nonpayment since late December, we are unable to accept £42 as a satisfactory repayment, however, we are prepared to heavily reduce your outstanding balance to £170. This offer is made on a no-fault basis and in full and final satisfaction of your file. It is also made on the basis that no complaint be raised to the FOS and that any current complaint be withdrawn. In the meantime, your account remains frozen whilst we discuss an agreement in writing. Please let me know if you would like to accept our offer. Otherwise, please let me know what it is I can do further. I look forward to hearing from you. Yours sincerely, Michael Lapides Complaints Assistant Web Loans Processing Limited NOTICE: The contents of this e-mail are intended for the named addressee only. It contains information which may be confidential and which may also be privileged. Unless you are the named addressee (or authorised to receive for the addressee) you may not copy or use it, or disclose it to anyone else. If you received it in error please notify sender immediately and then destroy it. I have quite a few issues with this reply. The one that really annoyed me is that not only did the muppet get my title wrong he also have me a gender change!! I am in the middle of writing my reply to him now. Want to make it a good one!

I know they have 8 weeks to reply, but I'm not expecting one! They have had three formal complaints now and ignored all of them. I need this to be sorted. We are finally almost there with our debts. Repayment plans in place for all of them except this and mini credit but I have been putting the moment aside I'm willing to pay for them so could in theory clear both if they stopped adding bogus charges on. I just want it done now and to be PDL debt free by the new year which could be done. We have worked so hard to get to this point and I refuse to let a bunch of opportunist con men take that away from us by taking money they don't have any rights to! God they have me so angry!!!! But it has been good as well! I've just started saving with our local credit union and will probably volunteer with them when I have no kids at home with me!

I have just submitted the following to the easy finance muppets. Wonder if I get a response. And I am deadly serious about invoicing them for my time. If they can send me letters asking for money they have no rights to then surely I can bill them for use of my time lol. And it would be worth the cost of a recorded delivery letter to see how they respond! FORMAL COMPLAINT reference xxxxxxxxx Please note that this message being typed is being recorded on a video camera as proof we have submitted it to you. We will only communicate via email and as such require a response from a non automated email account by close of business on Thursday 22nd August confirming receipt of this complaint. failiure to do so will be added to our portfolio that has recently been submitted to both OFT and Financial Ombudsman as a complaint about this company. 1) Use of Continuous Payment Authority. On Wednesday 30th January 2013 I received an email from Charlie Mason of Marshall Hoares Bailiffs following an email forwarded to them by this leg of the company. In this email you confirm that I have cancelled my continuous payment authority. However, since then you have attempted to use this authority, illegally, at least twice a week. I have emails confirming payment was unsuccessful to prove you have attempted. Are you aware that you have broken the law doing this? As such a full complaint is now being handled by the Financial Ombudsman and will probably cost the company more than the debt is worth due to the cost of being investigated. 2) Who actually owns this debt? I have been pursued by yourselves, NDR and Marshall Hoares. I would like to know who legally owns the debt and them i will communicate with them. 3) Misrepresenting your powers. You cannot take my goods, apply for an attachment of earnings or act in the powers of a bailiff. There is no CCJ with this account, and given the unenforcable charges you are trying to [problem] out of me, there is unlikely to be one. 4) The actual amount owed: As you can't agree on a figure (every email or text seems to show a different amount) I will enlighten you on what I legally still owe you. £42. This is my original loan of £200 plus one month interest at £72 minus the £230 already received by me. I am not avoiding my debt, I haven't tried to avoid it. I just refuse to pay more than I legally have to. When I have it in writing that £42 will clear my debt, my account closed and my credit report logged as debt repaid then I will gladly pay the outstanding amount. This is the only reason I haven't paid. In fact it has been sat in my ISA awaiting you starting to act within the law for me to repay it. Given how much I have already paid I think a court would agree I haven't been avoiding the debt. And the proof I can provide that I have offered legitimate repayment. 5) Threats and Harrassment. I again repeat I WILL ONLY COMMUNICATE via email. I demand that you only contact me this way. I know you have my email address as I receive emails from you on a daily basis about your attempts to steal money from my account. In this I also refuse to make an appointment with a doorstep collector. Any doorstep collector visiting me will be treated as a trespasser and politely asked to leave. failure to do so will result in the police being called. Please note that my time is valuable and taking the time out of my working day to repeatedly have to send the same message to your company is getting expensive. As such if I have to send these letters again I will be sending an invoice for £15 per communication attempt. I will be sending these on a daily basis (if you can harrass me then I'm assuming it is ok for me to do the same to you). Given that my debt is only £42 and I have already cost the company over £500 by my formal complaint to the Financial Ombudsman I would suggest that it would make financial sense to settle this matter with some urgency. I have your address to send all invoices to you. I look forward to hearing from you

Lending stream are hard work to set up a repayment plan with. I got their bank details from someone on here, and just started paying them. They are gladly taking the payments but I still get letters from Mackenzie Hall on an almost weekly basis saying I owe them money, always minus the amount I paid the previous time! Oh well, only 6 months left and I will have paid them off! The other alternative is to send them postal orders. They can't refuse any legitimate payment and if they do decide to go to court it will prove you are repaying them so they will be laughed away!

Separately as I had different issues with each company. In fact only one of the ten companies we stupidly borrowed from have escaped complaint. They were piggy bank. Borrowed £400 from them, defaultd, they gave us their bank details next day and agreed immediately to our repayment plan. As they played ball, didnt add any fees or charges and were decent we have actually cleared that debt. All the others have had complaints made and I hope we cost them money cos none of our loans, plus interest have been worth £550 so would be judgement in them.

I don't know because they won't respond by email. Apparently I need to ring them to resolve this which I won't be doing. Just don't see how owing £430 but now repaid £140 means I still owe £580 to them. I'm paying them another £350 maximum and then if they want any more they can take me to court for it. I can't see a judge agreeing with them, especially as I'm repaying it and haven't missed a payment. Plus it's way more than the loan plus one month interest.

Erm, no they haven't replied. Today I sent them a similar message but added that I have now complained to the Financial ombudsman about them and their failure to honour my request to cancel the CPA on my card. Reminded then that it would cost them £550 for that complaint to be investigated. Also told them I would be sending them daily messages from now onwards at a cost to them of £10 per time , billing them for use of my time. As my legal debt now only stands at £42 it could be expensive for them!!! Just by complaining about them I've made them a loss on my loan!

Complaints just been emailed off for 9 different PDL companies! Didn't take long! Everyone should do it!

Thanks, Going to draft them another email now and in it say that I am contesting all the charges and interest and telling them that I will only repay them another £350 which I think is more than reasonable. I am going to increase my repayments as well to £10 a week for now. Now I don't have any nursery fees to find I can afford to increase all my repayments meaning I could be PDL free by Xmas if they'd all play ball and stop adding charges and fees.

I went through all my old emails last night and on the date I defaulted I only owed them £430.92 from a £500 loan as I had started making payments. I have since made £105 worth of payments but apparently my debt still stands at nearly £600. I am not paying this much. And they are ignoring all my emails. What do I do now and what is a reasonable amount to repay them? I personally think I should only repay the £430 outstanding plus a default fee, minus the £105 I have already paid leaving me about £350ish to repay not £600ish. Would that be reasonable? How do I word an email saying they are taking the mickey?

I'm really struggling with wonga at the moment. I took a £400 loan out with them in November and I did start repaying it early in order to reduce the about owed. However I did default and started repaying my loan in January at the rate of £5 a week. Not a huge amount but better than nothing. However I have just been online and it says I still owe them £589.27. Surely this can't be right? How can I go about getting this reduced because I've worke out they must have had over £200 already from me. I've just emailed them saying I have been repaying a per our agreement and it isn't being reflected and asking for a full breakdown of all charges and all payments reviewed by them on my account. Please help because I'm not paying any more than I have to which I thought was the original loan, one month interest and one default fee? Is that right?

We let all calls go to voicemail and let them leave a message, which is always rude, full of illegal threats and part of my ongoing complaint to the oft. I only owe them £42 now but they claim its £700. Get a complaint to the oft. The more people that complain the sooner they will be shut down for good,

Having got sick of these money robbing unethical idiots I decided to get just as aggressive today and sent them the following message: To whom it may concern, Please note that to prove we have sent this we are recording it being sent and adding the video evidence to a portfolio we are forwarding to the Office of Fair Trading. I wish to place my account reference ********** in to dispute with to regards the outstanding balance due to the illegal and non-enforceable charges you have made. My debt should be £272 (original loan plus one month interest) minus £230 already paid leaving an outstanding balance of £42 which I am willing to pay when I have it it writing that this is all I owe and that you will close my account once this is received. I also wish to complain about the manner in which you are harassing me. Emails, texts and phone calls several times a day from yourself, Northern Debt Recovery and Marshall Hoares Bailiffs. Only one company can legally own my debt, and legally pursue it. I suggest you decide which company legally owns the debt, then tell me who owns it and I will corresponde with that company, and only them by email only. Any further phone calls or text messages received from today (11/08/2013) will be seen as harrassment and reported to all relevant authorities. Please note I have video evidence of making this request. I am also concerned by the way in which Marshall Hoares like to claim they are bailiffs when they have no legal powers to do any of the things a bailiff can. I have no CCJ against me with regards to this debt, and therefore cannot have failed to stick to a court agreement so any doorstep visitor has no legal power. As such I withdraw all rights for them to visit. Should they visit from this date it will be deemed as trespass and the police will be called in necessary. I also believe that trading as bailiff and allowing people to believe you have bailiff powers is misleading advertising and something I am sure trading standards will be very interested in hearing about. I also have in writing via email confirmation from your company that I have withdrawn permission for you to debit my card via the continuous payment authority, which I have also cancelled with the bank, yet you still attempt to take money via the CPA. This is something that you cannot do, and especially not now the debt has been placed into dispute. This is something the I am aware the OFT are cracking down on and could result in this leg of your company losing its credit licence. If I do not hear from you via an email that can be replied to by the close of business today confirming that you have received my complaint I will have no choice but to forward my complaints to higher authorities. If I do not receive a satisfactory response to this complaint, particularly with regards to harassment and the amount owed then I will take my complaint as far as I possibly can. I look forward to hearing from you, and please note I KNOW where I stand legally with regards to what I still owe and will not back down, and should you wish to go to court we have plenty of evidence of your company's illegal and unethical practices. I have tried being nice to them so getting them back in the same manner they have me. Wonder how long it will take them to agree! Off to fight OPUS now as well while I'm in the mood for it!!!!

Our £270 loan with minicredit has now been transferred to OPOS who say we owe £1540. I think not. I'm willing to pay what I legally owe at a rate I can afford which is £10 a month at the moment. I've been putting that away in an ISA since January. How likely are opos to agree that I owe nowhere near that amount and agree to the £10 a month repayment plan? I finish paying off two them loans in Sept and can increase to £20 a month then. Want to be clear of PDLs by this time next year but when they hike on charges like this I can't see it happening. Anyone dealt with these people and got advice on how to handle it?

How long is that likely to be? I'm not complaining though. I'm earning interest from them, easy finance and mini credit whilst they refuse to play ball!

What do I do about the money I owe speed credit. They wouldn't accept we only owe them £210 (our original loan, one month interest minus what is already paid!) and I've been putting the money into my ISA for when they see sense. I havent received any proof that Marshall Hoares legally own the debt so I'm not willing to pay them and then be told that I still owe money further down the line!

Barclays gave me an account with bad credit and I've heard that the coop do a basic account as well that's good.

We have! They were without a doubt the easiest of all the companies to deal with! I told them what we could afford and they agreed it straightaway. They sent me their bank details in that email. I just had to confirm I'd set up the SO and they email me weekly with my new balance. They also froze it at one month interest and no default fees and if I stick to my replayment plan won't register a default on my credit file!