You may have already read or heard in the news recently an announcement on 2nd October from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regarding changes to our lending criteria.*

We can confirm that you have been affected.*

The changes mean that we have new ways of testing whether customers can afford the loan they want to take out - these are called affordability criteria. Your recent loan would not have met the new criteria.*

What happens next*

This will depend on the status of your loan. Please see the relevant section below which applies to you:If you have not yet reached your repayment date:*Please continue to repay your loan as planned. We will then remove the interest and fees for this loan automatically by the end of October 2014.*

If you feel that repaying the loan as planned will put you in financial difficulty, please call us on the contact details below. We can set up a 4 month repayment arrangement to make paying off the outstanding loan amount easier. This arrangement will help you to clear the balance from which we will remove all interest and fees.

Please note, you can*cancel your Continuous Payment Authority*before the due date of your loan by contacting us or your bank directly.If you have missed your repayment date:We will reduce your outstanding balance to remove all interest and fees on your loan.*

If you already have a repayment arrangement in place, your agreement will continue as normal. However an amount equal to the interest and fees will be deducted from your final payments which will reduce the total amount you need to pay us. If you wish to change your existing repayment arrangement, please contact us on the numbers below.

If you do not already have a repayment arrangement in place, we can set up a 4 month repayment arrangement to make paying off the outstanding loan amount easier. This arrangement will help you to clear the balance from which we will remove all interest and fees.If you have already paid back your loan:The interest and fees of your loan will be automatically refunded by the end of October 2014. If you are experiencing financial difficulty, please call us and we will aim to have this refunded within 48 hours.We are working with the relevant credit reference agencies to remove records relating to this loan from your credit report. We will make best endeavours to complete this in three to four weeks. This will be done automatically and there is no further action required from you.

On behalf of our Chairman, Andy Haste, and the rest of the team at Wonga, we recognise that we may not have always made the right lending decisions, and we intend to be sure in the future that we only lend to customers who can reasonably afford to repay their loans.

You can find out more about these*lending criteria changes here. Alternatively, if you would like to talk to someone from our customer care team about any of the above options please call free on*0800*042*0210*or if you are calling from a mobile on0333*003*0830.Yours,

Tim Weller

Interim CEO, Wonga Group

The initial post from Wonga said ALL customers would be contacted to confirm whether they had been affected OR not.

They have now changed this to say that all AFFECTED customers have been contacted.

 

 

Nothing to challenge/clarify their decision. Very poor.

The fact my loan is in arrears 130 days is, I would say an indication their lending criteria were flawed in my case, yet no email. :-@

Read an article this morning... http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/10/wonga-loans-granted-write-off-dithers It mentions in there that at some (undefined) point, Wonga will contact EVERYONE regarding this matter, then the floodgates will really open with Complaints I expect! Get in now if you feel you have been incorrectly 'missed'.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/10/wonga-loans-granted-write-off-dithers

 

Wonga customers were anxiously waiting to find out whether they were among the 330,000 borrowers having their payday loans written off.

 

The UK’s best-known payday lender has been forced to refund borrowers after the City regulator discovered it had lent money without making sure borrowers were able to make repayments.

 

Those who should never have been given loans and have fallen more than 30 days behind with repayments will have their debts wiped entirely, while a further 45,000 who are up to 30 days in arrears will have their interest and charges waived.

 

 

Although all week Wonga’s website told customers it would be in touch “by 10th October”, it was late on Friday afternoon before the message was updated to say that emails had finally been sent out. Even after that some customers reported being told by customer services that it could be the end of the day before they received a message telling them that their debt had been wiped.

 

Borrowers who have used the company since its launch in 2007 had been in limbo since the news of the write-offs broke last week, unsure whether to make loan repayments that perhaps should never have been asked for in the first place.

 

 

Wonga said on Friday it had contacted the 375,000 affected customers to let them know what they needed to do next. It urged customers it had contacted not to involve a third party with their case: “It’s easy for you to deal with us directly. You don’t need to use a claims management company who will typically charge an upfront fee. In most cases we are forgiving your outstanding debt, rather than returning you with a payment, so you will be left with a bill to a CMC.”

 

The email from Wonga to the customers affected explained that the company “will automatically clear any outstanding debt you have with us and your balance will be set to zero. This will be done by the end of October 2014. You do not need to do anything.”

 

Up until last evening / first thing this morning, none of our caggers had been contacted.

WONGA seem very concerned that people might involve Claims Management Companies and CAG would also advise that it would be better for the Wonga Victim to make their own contact rather than involve CMCs.

I would imagine the main issue will be those not 'identified' will dwarf the number of those receiving a write-off, thus complicating any mass complaints, particularly if Wonga hold their ground.

I am concerned that Wonga are only contacting those people still remaining on their books - I would be interested to know what they are doing about those accounts they have sold / assigned to 3rd parties ?

My interest is for CAG - I am not, never have and never will have a Pay Day Loan.

 

Discussions between the firm and FCA are continuing, and many borrowers are hoping that redress will be extended to those who were able to keep up with repayments, even though they should not have been offered a loan.

I think these customers who have struggled, perhaps even taken out other loans or entered DMPs in order to maintain payments should at the very least have any interest wiped from their loans.

No Emails From Wonga yet.....

i had an email yesterday informing me, that the loan i had is being written off by the end of the month. as they failed to do proper credit checks and affordability checks

they have kinda sent an email out but is a bit vague as I have had many loans from them since last year and when I took out my 1st loan I had 2 CCJ's which were over 5 years old, they have now disappeared but I still have 1 small bad mark on my record from 5+ years ago and is due off next month but all my recent credit I haven't missed a single payment but as my post above shows I am one of the affected customers. so are they saying all my loans shouldn't have happened or just 1 of them ? they are still saying I will pay them back but without interest, however if they owe me back all the other loans interest's then they would end up owing me money which I could really do with at the moment - I just find their email to be a bit vague

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/announcement.php?f=84&a=288

CAG has been asking if anyone affected by this write off, would like to speak to the media. If they do, please contact a site team member and we will put you in touch with a journalist.

they have kinda sent an email out but is a bit vague as I have had many loans from them since last year and when I took out my 1st loan I had 2 CCJ's which were over 5 years old, they have now disappeared but I still have 1 small bad mark on my record from 5+ years ago and is due off next month but all my recent credit I haven't missed a single payment but as my post above shows I am one of the affected customers. so are they saying all my loans shouldn't have happened or just 1 of them ? they are still saying I will pay them back but without interest, however if they owe me back all the other loans interest's then they would end up owing me money which I could really do with at the moment - I just find their email to be a bit vague

actually ive just logged in on my Wonga account and seen they are letting me have a huge loan nearly every month and including the interest on what to pay back according to what I put into their site the payment taken off my monthly income would leave me only £200 a month to pay all my bills etc... so can blatently see why they have probably said im one of the affected customers - which would mean most of the loans would be the same and not just my current one, howver im about to start seriously struggle so the timing of this couldn't be better for me, however I feel for all the others who are worse off than me.

I just don't understand how a typical bank loan of 19.9% vs payday lenders of 1,000%'s of percents- why not just 150% or even 200% - it just plainly shows they are ripping people off and putting extra strain on the most vulnerable as at the end of the day that's the only people who really want or need their loans as the normal good credit rating of most people mean they can get a normal bank loan or overdraft or have options. theres just a lack in the market of anything between a bank loan to a payday loan and at that I think payday loans should be a minimum of 3 months with a reasonable interest rate so it doesn't mess people up with paying out a huge sum on their payday

I am concerned that Wonga are only contacting those people still remaining on their books - I would be interested to know what they are doing about those accounts they have sold / assigned to 3rd parties ?

Well, it does give a hint to the absolutely staggering size of the iceberg.

375000 Customers that should have never been lent any money sounds bad enough, but we now know its nothing more than the tip of the iceberg, as most affected loans will have been sold off, so how many million customers that should have never been lent money where lent money?

And that is before we even consider that Wonga had among the "strictest" lending criteria among the various PDLs, there are certain PDLs that never even had a procedure for lending criteria (like the one that got caught on National Television deliberately handing out flyers outside a job centre, or the one that even lent to a reporter who told them right in the face he needed the money for hist drug habit).

 

there are certain PDLs that never even had a procedure for lending criteria (like the one that got caught on National Television deliberately handing out flyers outside a job centre, or the one that even lent to a reporter who told them right in the face he needed the money for hist drug habit).

For real ?? I missed that one.

For real ?? I missed that one.

There has been plenty of horrible practices exposed on TV, for example in this report on Channel 4 alone they have Quckquid exposed for lending to an undischarged bankrupt guy, the same guy also got a 7th loan from txtloan despite having had problems paying off the 4th, 5th and 6th loan he had from them, plus a guy who used to work for a PDL admitting openly that his bosses told him that credit checks would be too time consuming and expensive so they didn't bother with them...

And there is tons more in related videos.

Thanks for the link, Nao..

actually ive just logged in on my Wonga account and seen they are letting me have a huge loan nearly every month and including the interest on what to pay back according to what I put into their site the payment taken off my monthly income would leave me only £200 a month to pay all my bills etc... so can blatently see why they have probably said im one of the affected customers - which would mean most of the loans would be the same and not just my current one, howver im about to start seriously struggle so the timing of this couldn't be better for me, however I feel for all the others who are worse off than me.

 

 

I just don't understand how a typical bank loan of 19.9% vs payday lenders of 1,000%'s of percents- why not just 150% or even 200% - it just plainly shows they are ripping people off and putting extra strain on the most vulnerable as at the end of the day that's the only people who really want or need their loans as the normal good credit rating of most people mean they can get a normal bank loan or overdraft or have options. theres just a lack in the market of anything between a bank loan to a payday loan and at that I think payday loans should be a minimum of 3 months with a reasonable interest rate so it doesn't mess people up with paying out a huge sum on their payday

This is where credit unions are so much better. http://www.abcul.org/credit-unions/borrowing-from-a-credit-union