right. i have a reply from Lending Stream. Its poor to say the least. my original letter was complaining about 8 loans between 2013-16. They have sent the following:

Dear

This is in reference to your correspondence dated 15th April 2018 about a complaint questioning the affordability of certain loans taken out with Lending Stream. We have reviewed your accounts and would like to share our findings.

Before doing so, we would like to highlight that Lending Stream conducts rigorous affordability assessments for all its customers on each and every loan application. Furthermore, we would like to clarify that Lending Stream does not offer payday loans where the full amount is due within a thirty-day period, nor do we allow for rollovers. The Lending Stream product is a monthly installment loan, with a typical tenure of 6 months, designed specifically to lower the monthly repayments and allow the customer to repay the loan over a longer period of time.

Our Findings

Between 9th November 2015 and 9th November 2015, you borrowed one loans from Lending Stream with Loan IDs -. One loan was successfully closed In-fact one loan was pre-closed before the original loan term. Below, we highlight the affordability checks conducted on each loan which was offered to you.

Loan was approved for 100 GBP on 9th November 2015 based on the following affordability information and checks:

· Your stated monthly income was 1290 GBP and you confirmed that you were in full-time employment. We also independently verified this income with third party sources

· Your stated monthly expenditure was 630 GBP, leaving you a monthly disposable income of 760 GBP. Furthermore, we asked you to subdivide those expenses into specific categories, where you provided the following breakdown:

o 230 GBP for Mortgage / Rent

o 50 GBP for Utilities

o 100 GBP for Food

o 100 GBP for Transport

o 100 GBP for Credit Expenses

o 50 GBP for Other Payments

· Using national averages for expense categories where data is available as a third party verification of your submission, we revised upwards your total stated expenses and this still resulted in a viable disposable income

· The loan amount approved was 100 GBP which resulted in an average monthly payment to Lending Stream of 31.73 GBP, well within the overall disposable income

· A credit worthiness check was completed and the third party credit reference agency confirmed a rating which was satisfactory for the loan obligation

Based on the above information we conclude that proper and proportionate affordability checks were conducted on Loan .

Based on all the loan by loan information provided above, we conclude that proper and proportionate affordability checks were conducted at the time each loan was approved. One loan was successfully closed In-fact one loan was pre-closed before the original loan term. We received no calls or emails from you at any point during this time indicating financial difficulty or distress. If you have any additional information that would be helpful in investigating this complaint, please send that to us. Otherwise, please consider this as our final response on the matter.

You have the right to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service, free of charge – but you must do so within six months of the date of this email. If you do not refer your complaint in time, the Ombudsman will not have our permission to consider your complaint and so will only be able to do so in very limited circumstances. For example, if the Ombudsman believes that the delay was as a result of exceptional circumstances.

For further information, please visit http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/

Should you have any unaddressed queries, you may email us at [email protected] or call on 0203 365 0138 from Monday-Friday, 7AM-10PM (call charges apply).

Regards,

Lending Stream Complaints Department

do i go back to them advising they have not inestigated properly or as they are quoting a final response go straight to FOS?

FOS now

Thanks DX. Will get to FOS now. thats 2/4 gone straight to FOS. think it willl be same for all

quick question, as per Satsuma. i still owe them money. do i inform i am logging complaint to FOS and to keep paying my token payment of £1?

Hi SB sorry i missed your post.

Dont mention to Satsuma you are making a complaint - If you want to continue paying them then please do.

hi fkofilee, ive sent off FOS complaints for satsuma and lending stream. not told either.

im maintaining my £1 to satsuma whilst this is being looked into.

given lending streams poor response, im expecting them to chase me for money as the payment plan is due to increase to £29 this month.

do i keep paying them £1 a month token payment or email them to put the account on hold? they have not even acknowledged the complaint for the loan that is outstanding, der!!!

pers i'd stop cant harm you any

3/4 of 4 responses now in. acknowledged i had other accounts open but no judgements. there were defaults at the time:

You believe Uncle Buck did not perform the correct affordability checks prior to approving your loan applications.

Our Investigation and outcomes

You made your first application on xx January 2016, for an amount of £100.00, to be repaid over three monthly instalments of £52.93. Your application went through a credit check performed by the credit reference agency Call Credit, which confirmed the monthly income you provided of £1 290.00, was accurate. You were also subject to a work verification check, to ensure you were employed as stated on your application. The results confirmed you’d provided accurate employment information.

As part of the application process, we asked you to provide details of your monthly income and expenditure, in order to assess your affordability. Alongside your monthly salary of £1 290.00, you provided monthly expenditure which amounted to £300.00, this left you with a disposable monthly income of £890.00.

Having met our lending criteria, your application was approved. We received payment in full on 29 February 2016.

You made your next application on 29 February 2016, for an amount of £350.00, to be repaid over three monthly instalments of £177.67. You reapplied using the existing customer section of our website, confirming your monthly income remained unchanged from your previous application. You provided monthly expenditure which amounted to £500.00, including £100.00 towards other credit commitments. This left you with a disposable monthly income of £890.00. We also confirmed your application with you telephonically, during which you confirmed you were not considering, seeking or involved with any debt management, and the loan was not to repay other debts. Having met our lending criteria, your application was approved.

On xx March 2016, you contacted us and requested an early settlement figure. We advised you it would cost £431.20 to settle your loan which you accepted and paid, and your account was noted as repaid and closed.

You made your final application on xx May 2016, for an amount of £800.00, to be repaid over three monthly instalments. You reapplied using the existing customer section of our website, confirming your monthly income of £1 419.00. You provided monthly expenditure which amounted to £440.00, this left you with a disposable monthly income of £979.00. Having assessed your affordability, we offered you a reduced amount of £700.00 to be repaid over three monthly instalments of £342.92, which you accepted.Having met our lending criteria, your application was approved.

On 12 May 2016, you contacted us to advise your scheduled repayments would not be affordable as your working hours had been reduced. We asked you to provide your updated income and expenditure information and confirmation of your reduced working hours, in order to agree a repayment arrangement.

On 6 May 2016, you contacted us to advise the income information you provided to us at the point of application was incorrect as you included possible overtime. Having reviewed your updated income and expenditure information, we agreed a repayment arrangement with you.

We received your complaint on 16 April 2018. Your account was placed on hold while we investigate.

Investigation Conclusion

I have decided the outcome of your complaint based on the evidence I have to hand. I am sorry to tell you that I do not uphold your complaint.

When assessing your loan applications, we conducted a credit check to assess your creditworthiness. As a high risk lender, even if your credit file contained certain adverse information, we would have still considered your applications. In addition to a credit check, we base our decision to lend using data held within our internal risk scorecard.

During our assessment of whether you were able to afford the repayments, we took into account the monthly income and expenditure you supplied on your applications. You indicated on your applications that you had enough disposable income to pay the loans back. The figures you provided did not highlight that you were experiencing financial difficulty at the time.

Uncle Buck believes that in addition to our responsible lending policy, customers ought to employ an element of responsible borrowing. To assess any loan application, we rely in part on the information provided by customers in respect of their income and expenditure.

As there is no independent way to check a customer’s expenditure, we expect customers to provide us with true and accurate information in this regard. I do not find it unreasonable that we relied on figures you provided as part of our lending decisions.

In addition to the above, I remind you that upon confirming your monthly income and expenditure within the loan application, you specifically agreed to the following disclaimer: “I agree that the financial information provided is accurate and I have considered potential and future income and outgoings in determining my ability to repay the loan requested”.

We understand our responsibility as a lender is to ensure each loan we approve is affordable and I am of the opinion that the checks performed in respect of your applications were both adequate and appropriate. We only approved your loans once we had checked and were satisfied you could afford to repay them.

I have reviewed the credit searches which we obtained at the point of application, they show you did not have any active judgements. In addition, they show you only opened a maximum of six accounts in the previous six months, which would suggest you were not reliant on short term lending. There was nothing within your credit file which would have given us reason to decline your application.

Whilst you have taken out a number of loans with us, I do not consider our three month instalment product allows for consecutive borrowing. It is specifically designed to ensure consumers do not enter a cycle of borrowing. We do not allow a customer to make a new application after the first or the second instalment is repaid but rather when all three repayments have been paid, therefore you could only make a new application at the very least every three months. The point of this is for each loan you were able to repay the first two instalments without borrowing again, which - in my opinion – evidences the loans were affordable for you and breaks any potential borrowing cycle.

I feel it is important to highlight that your ability to repay the loan was impacted by a change in circumstances, your reduction of income, rather than the loan itself being unaffordable. I am satisfied that we acted sympathetically when you advised us that you were experiencing financial difficulty by agreeing a repayment arrangement.

In summary, I am satisfied we assessed your affordability at application correctly and it was your subsequent financial difficulty which hindered your adherence to the original loan agreement.

I note that you have a balance outstanding which you were repaying through a repayment arrangement. I will continue to hold your account until the close of business on 25 June 2018 to allow you to contact the Collections Department on 01959 583 979 to reschedule your repayment dates. Please be advised that if we do not hear from you within the above timeframe the hold will expire, and recovery action will resume.

If you are currently experiencing financial difficulty I have included a list of organisations who may be able to assist you:

The Money Advice Service

Telephone: 0300 500 5000

http://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk

as you are an expert at this why not help FK and me advising others here recently

we are getting snowed under sky?

Wouldn't say i'm an expert but i'm certainly learning on the job. thats 3/4 of the companies ive not logged to FOS. just waiting on responses.

But, more than happy to update my progress and chip in and help absolutely. would love to get some good results out of this and give something back to this wonderful site.

update on uncle buck. now logged to FOS. will keep minimum payments at this stage.

you are doing amazing but it bogs the siteteam down doing the mundane things like heres the PDL IRL link this how this happens etc

and we wont critise either if you get things wrong ..not what cag is about

if you've not found your way around either look at threads in this forum and their titles

or use the SEARCH CAG box of the red top toolbar

irresponsible lending or whatever.

we often find newbies come here with a PDL issue and dont even know about IRL.

regards

dx

thanks for the kind comments, appreciate it.

I will update any news i have

Hey, have you had any good news from FOS?