Wonga Complaint - Success

[citizenB]

So the adjudicator has issued her view of the complaint to Wonga. Wonga haven't responded to any of the requests for information so she has issued view based on what I have submitted (bank statements, income expenditure, other payday loans etc...) It's clear the loans were not affordable, however I was wondering if somebody who has won a case with FOS could advise.

 

On the last loan with Wonga I defaulted and this was subsequently sold on to a debt collection company. However the adjudicators recommended that Wonga repay all the interest and charges paid on the loans. However I have noticed different wordings in FOS decisions. Some say "interest and charges paid" and some say "interest and charges applied". Obviously these are two different things and important because the interest and charges applied to the last loan I took out with Wonga would more than cover the outstanding debt, however these were not actually paid by me to Wonga, but applied to the loans which were then sold on. I was wondering if anybody knows if the FOS mean the same thing when they say "applied" and "paid" because if they mean paid to Wonga I am still left with an outstanding loan which has been sold on with over £1100 worth of interest and charges.

 

Thanks

 

C

 

It might be worth asking the FOS to clarify that point - you want it in writing, whatever the decision.

[Pcunn01]

I got a final offer of £250 from payday uk but it has a 2 week acceptance time period. This does not leave me time to go to the fos. They will take more time with the number of complaints. Any suggestions?

[Pcunn01]

Can i also state my claim was under irresponsible lending. I had over 100 deferrals on my loans

[JEC1965]

I got a final offer of £250 from payday uk but it has a 2 week acceptance time period. This does not leave me time to go to the fos. They will take more time with the number of complaints. Any suggestions?

 

They typically offer 25% of total interest paid. If you think you have a good case, and with 100 deferrals I think you do then decline the offer and send it to Fos. They took about 8 weeks to look into my claim and I received all interest back plus interest.

[Pcunn01]

Thankyou JEC much appreciated. My total borrowings from payday loans was 52k over approx 5 years with 6 lenders!! Wonga was the worst as i borrowed £25k from Wonga who have 4 weeks left for a final response then onto the fos. Mypoundstillpayday were based in malta so i didn't get a penny. Mr lender i only had 9 loans. The fos did not rule in my favour. They said i didnt notify them i was having financial trouble. So i got mr lenders offer of £136.00. The other payday loans i am claiming irresponsible lending aswell. With wonga i had over 100 top ups. I was in a cycle of debt. I can't wait to get this over with for good. Lesson learned. No more payday loans.....ever!!!

[richard123]

Posted this on my own thread but bringing it here as it relates to Wonga - had an offer of compensation from them saying they could have done more to help me in the past. However they will only compensate me from late 2013 to early 2015. I had loans with them going back to 2011 and they've refused to refund the charges and interest paid on these, just the aforementioned ones.

 

I'm still thinking whether or not to accept the offer as I have a current debt for a couple hundred quid with them which they took away from the amount they were compensating me. As they have acknowledged they didn't help me as best as they could, should I request they write off the current debt as well? And if I accepted their offer, could I still take it to the FOS to get credit file markings removed and the old loans from 2011 reimbursed?

[JEC1965]

Have now sent my last 3 claims for irresponible lending to the Ombudsman. Companies are Lending Stream, Poundstopocket and Wageday Advance.

 

Had a call from adjudicator re Wagedsy Advance. Could tell by her tone she was siding with them mainly due to the fact they said on my original application I said I had £700 per month disposable income which is absolute rubbish. If I dif I wouldn't need to borrow from the She has now sent me her findings and rejected the claim due to the reason above. Her findings were full of inaccuracies. I have asked her what evidence did Wageday advance have to prove their claims. Just waiting for her response. I have mow dealt with the Ombudsman for 2 complaints, the first they found in my favour and cant believe the difference between the 2 adjudicators.

Not feeling too confident now for the remaining 2 complaints all for the same reasons. Have so far received refunds from 6 out of 10 lenders.

Will keep you posted.

[acid53]

jec1965, sounds very similar to my experience with FOS - some of the decisions vary wildly even though my circumstances were pretty much the same in all cases. My complaint was actually upheld against Wageday Advance for all interest and charges but had others were only some charges refunded...as mentioned elsewhere some of the adjudicators are very diligent, some will go just go through the motions and others downright lazy or incompetent

[Kevin_D]

Got an offer back via e-mail from Wonga last week. My math, makes it around 80% of all the fees/interest I paid on the loans that they were willing to look into.

 

Received the money in my account on Wednesday. Very pleased. Very pleased indeed.

[Crashed767]

Anyone know how long it takes for an ombudsman to make a decision after being passed the case from an adjudicator?

[JEC1965]

Have now sent my last 3 claims for irresponible lending to the Ombudsman. Companies are Lending Stream, Poundstopocket and Wageday Advance.

 

Had a call from adjudicator re Wagedsy Advance. Could tell by her tone she was siding with them mainly due to the fact they said on my original application I said I had £700 per month disposable income which is absolute rubbish. If I dif I wouldn't need to borrow from the She has now sent me her findings and rejected the claim due to the reason above. Her findings were full of inaccuracies. I have asked her what evidence did Wageday advance have to prove their claims. Just waiting for her response. I have mow dealt with the Ombudsman for 2 complaints, the first they found in my favour and cant believe the difference between the 2 adjudicators.

Not feeling too confident now for the remaining 2 complaints all for the same reasons. Have so far received refunds from 6 out of 10 lenders.

Will keep you posted.

 

Adjudicator now replied and is basically saying as I stated I had £700 pounds left each month then they didn't need to do any further checks! I have asked her for the evidence Wageday Advance provided to support this. She said it was on a screen shot from their system and she can't send this to me. Is there any way I can get this information? What are my options now? Can I ask for someone else to look at my complaint?

[Guest]

Adjudicator now replied and is basically saying as I stated I had £700 pounds left each month then they didn't need to do any further checks! I have asked her for the evidence Wageday Advance provided to support this. She said it was on a screen shot from their system and she can't send this to me. Is there any way I can get this information? What are my options now? Can I ask for someone else to look at my complaint?

 

I had the same problem where the adjudicator wasn't budging from this position. In my complaint she did send me the budget that the lender (not WDA) said I gave them and it was ridiculously detailed and way off from my actual budget. I remember filling a small budget with about 6-8 boxes when I made the application but this one that they sent had about 30 boxes of information including smoking (I dont smoke), alchohol, restaurants, hair cuts, car insurance, road tax etc. It looks like the lender wasn't confident that what they asked for on the application was enough so they must have used some guesstimate to create a more detailed budget. I thought it would be easy to prove it wasn't genuine because on things like car insurance the budget the lender sent was miles too low because they had probably used an average figure that didn't take into account my age and driving history. I disputed the budget and sent my actual payments for car insurance to prove this budget the lender provided wasn't mine but the adjudicator didn't budge.

 

I also asked if I could change adjudicator because of mistakes she was making but was told this wasn't possible. I had 6 complaints go through fos, 3 of the complaints I settled before it reached an ombudsman. 1 of the complaints is still waiting for a final decision from the ombudsman and 2 have had a final decision.

 

Of the 2 that I've had a final decision on, on one of them (the one above) the ombudsman didn't contact me before making a decision and reached the same decision as the adjudicator and didn't upheld the complaint. On the other one the ombudsman contacted me with her initial findings (said she hadn't looked at everything) and her initial findings were the same as the adjudicator. But I was then able to point out all the inaccuracies and that a budget that the adjudicator said I provided to her (which suggested loans were affordable) was not provided by me at all! After re-sending some of the information I sent the adjudicator to the ombudsman, which obviously didn't get passed on, the decision was reversed and the complaint upheld.

 

I've made a service complaint against the fos on one of the complaints because the adjudicator made a number of mistakes including not telling me that she had asked quickquid to refund all interest and charges before I accepted a worse offer they made weeks before this. I've asked them to re-open this complaint now I know the adjudicator had an opinion on it and it makes the offer I accepted look unfair. I only found out about this because her manager let it slip when investigating other issues in the case. The senior manager investigating has delayed a response twice now but the last one said they had reviewed the case and were just deciding how to resolve the issues (suggesting it will be upheld). His line manager left a voicemail today saying she is hugely apologetic about what's happened and wants to talk tomorrow about how to put it right. It will be interesting to see if they re-open the case (QQ wont be happy) or pay the difference themselves.

 

Goodluck with your complaints JEC1965, hopefully the ombudman will contact you before the final decision so you can make sure everything has been passed on and your arguments get heard by the ombudsman.

[bd1972]

Today my adjudicator as upheld my complaint he as asked wonga to refund all interest and late fees from all my loans. It helped that wonga never even had the decency to answer his request for info. Im not sure how much but looking through my statements i had 11loans from them anywhere between 300 1200 pounds. Hopefully i will get that back but not holding my breath just yet...

[Crashed767]

My adjudicator came to the same conclusion after Wonga failed to respond. She said that Wonga are short staffed at the moment especially in the department that deal with FOS complaints. She said that its likely that they will respond now it is with an ombudsman. That was two weeks ago so just waiting for an ombudsman's decision now.

 

Today my adjudicator as upheld my complaint he as asked wonga to refund all interest and late fees from all my loans. It helped that wonga never even had the decency to answer his request for info. Im not sure how much but looking through my statements i had 11loans from them anywhere between 300 1200 pounds. Hopefully i will get that back but not holding my breath just yet...

[Crashed767]

Well... email from Wonga today "Under our new affordability rules you would not have qualified for this loan. So we bought your loan back from Motormile Finance UK Limited and have written it off.". This was roughly £800 loan that went up to about £2000 with interest and charges. Quite interesting as when I made my initial complaint they responded with "Having looked in detail at your complaint and the information we had access to when we made our lending decisions we have not found any indication that your loans were unaffordable. On that basis, we are unable to uphold your complaint.". So it looks like Wonga have bought the loan back and will try to offset any award from the FOS against it.

[invmatt]

Well... email from Wonga today "Under our new affordability rules you would not have qualified for this loan. So we bought your loan back from Motormile Finance UK Limited and have written it off.". This was roughly £800 loan that went up to about £2000 with interest and charges. Quite interesting as when I made my initial complaint they responded with "Having looked in detail at your complaint and the information we had access to when we made our lending decisions we have not found any indication that your loans were unaffordable. On that basis, we are unable to uphold your complaint.". So it looks like Wonga have bought the loan back and will try to offset any award from the FOS against it.

 

Just received that email too.

 

A while back I emailed them and had the same response, they said that the loan was affordable and they wouldn't uphold my complaint (this was a £500 loan when I was earning £850 a month) which soon sky rocketed to over £2000 when MMF took control of it.

 

A few days ago I had an email from MMF saying they're no longer chasing the loan and now Wonga has emailed saying the matter is closed as I wouldn't have met the criteria.

[Crashed767]

Did you complain to the FOS regarding the loan? I'm wondering what the ombudsman's view will be on this. Wonga wouldn't have done it unless they felt they could offset the award from the FOS against it so I'm just about to email the adjudicator to let her know & make her aware that I don't believe that any award should be offset - just not sure how to word the email.

 

Just received that email too.

 

A while back I emailed them and had the same response, they said that the loan was affordable and they wouldn't uphold my complaint (this was a £500 loan when I was earning £850 a month) which soon sky rocketed to over £2000 when MMF took control of it.

 

A few days ago I had an email from MMF saying they're no longer chasing the loan and now Wonga has emailed saying the matter is closed as I wouldn't have met the criteria.

[invmatt]

Did you complain to the FOS regarding the loan? I'm wondering what the ombudsman's view will be on this. Wonga wouldn't have done it unless they felt they could offset the award from the FOS against it so I'm just about to email the adjudicator to let her know & make her aware that I don't believe that any award should be offset - just not sure how to word the email.

 

Nope never complained, just put it back to one side until I had time to deal with it further.

[Crashed767]

That's interesting - I wonder why they have done it... I thought it was in relation to my complaint to the FOS, obviously its not.

[2ltr16valve]

Well... email from Wonga today "Under our new affordability rules you would not have qualified for this loan. So we bought your loan back from Motormile Finance UK Limited and have written it off.". This was roughly £800 loan that went up to about £2000 with interest and charges. Quite interesting as when I made my initial complaint they responded with "Having looked in detail at your complaint and the information we had access to when we made our lending decisions we have not found any indication that your loans were unaffordable. On that basis, we are unable to uphold your complaint.". So it looks like Wonga have bought the loan back and will try to offset any award from the FOS against it.

 

 

Have just had the same thing. My complaint direct to wonga resulted in them saying they did nothing wrong .... My complaint was with FOS anyway as they took over 10 weeks and heard nothing.

I then get email from motormile saying they have assigned my debt to wonga and it is written off ....

Then a phone call from FOS too tell me that wonga have written off£1500~ and will be Paying me just over £200 back.

[JEC1965]

Adjudicator now replied and is basically saying as I stated I had £700 pounds left each month then they didn't need to do any further checks! I have asked her for the evidence Wageday Advance provided to support this. She said it was on a screen shot from their system and she can't send this to me. Is there any way I can get this information? What are my options now? Can I ask for someone else to look at my complaint?

 

Had a call from the Ombudsman assigned to my case against Wageday Advance. She said her initial findings are that she doesn't agree with the adjudicator who rejected my claim. She has e-mailed them with her provisional findings and they have disagreed and raised a few points which she says she will consider before she gives her final decision but overall its looking positive.

[citizenB]

JEC, they should have provided that information within a Subject Access Request, did you send them one ?

[JEC1965]

JEC, they should have provided that information within a Subject Access Request, did you send them one ?

 

I didn't bur I did e-mail them and asked for a copy which they did send straight away. It was just a screen shot from their internal system and didn't prove anything but that seemed to be the only thing the adjudicator based her decision on. Thankfully the Ombudsman seems to disagree.

[bd1972]

Icame in earlier and receivd a cheque for 244.06. From cashgenie as redress for not sending annual statements and interest. It must have been automatic as i never applied for it but have used company previously. Happy days nice to have something when you dont expect it...

[Crashed767]

Icame in earlier and receivd a cheque for 244.06. From cashgenie as redress for not sending annual statements and interest. It must have been automatic as i never applied for it but have used company previously. Happy days nice to have something when you dont expect it...

 

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