How to get a payday loan refund

Did your payday loans cost so much you had to keep on borrowing?

The regulator says that means your loans were unaffordable and this was irresponsible lending.

You can get a refund of the interest you paid on unaffordable loans.

It’s easy to ask for a payday loan refund using the free template letters here. The letters work if your payday loans were repaid or if you still owe money.

Which lenders can you get refunds from?

Use these letters here to make an affordability complaint to most UK payday lenders including:

Sunny, Lending Stream, MyJar, Satsuma, Mr Lender, Moneybox 247, Piggybank, Ferratum, Uncle Buck, Peachy, CashASAP, Moneyboat, Smart Pig.

Also use these letters for the very high-cost sorts of “flexible credit”, including:

SafetyNet Credit, Drafty, Polar Credit.

But these letters won’t work if the lender has gone bust:

• QuickQuid – Quickquid - email them to put in an affordability complaint.
• the Money Shop, Payday UK, Payday Express – Complain to ICL these companies are all part of the same group.
• Wonga & Wageday Advance – it is now too late to make a complaint about these lenders.
• you can’t get refunds back from lenders that gave up years ago.

What are “unaffordable” loans?

Was a loan affordable because you managed to repay it? No! If paying a loan left you so broke you had to borrow again – from the same lender or a different one – it was unaffordable!

The regulator says:

“the borrower should be able to make the required repayments without undue difficulty, whilst continuing to meet other debt repayment obligations and reasonable regular outgoings.”

That means a payday loan is only affordable if you repaid it on time and you could pay your other bills and debts.

Payday loans are meant to be used to solve a short term problem. If you kept rolling a loan or repaying one then getting another loan soon after, the lender should have realised you were in difficulty and stopped lending to you.

Many lenders ignored even very obvious signs of problems such as your loans increasing in size, borrowing very soon after repayment, late payments, or lending a very large amount of your income!

How much compensation can you get?

In 2018-19, the Financial Ombudsman will see 50,000 payday loan affordability complaints. So we know what sort of decision is made about what a fair refund is.

A typical decision by the Ombudsman is to say the payday lender should refund all the interest you paid interest after the third/fourth/fifth loan. This is because payday loans are meant for short term problems and the lender should not have carried on giving you loans.

This may be earlier – from the first or second loan sometimes – if your first loans were rolled or topped-up or were very large.

You don’t have to calculate what a fair refund is. Just ask for a full refund from the lender and see what you are offered. This is simple and it works well.

So how do you claim a refund?

First, before you send in a complaint

Doing these four things now will make your life easier later.

Get a copy of your Credit Karma credit report and keep it. After complaints are started, sometimes loans are deleted and you may want the full report if you later have to go to the Ombudsman. Don’t get an Experian or ClearScore report instead – many payday lenders don’t use those.

If you can log-in to the lender’s website and see your loans, take a copy of them as sometimes they vanish when you complain.

If you still owe money to the lender:

• unless you can afford to make this month’s payment without borrowing again, cancel the CPA to the lender at your bank. Otherwise the lender may take the money and you will be in a mess.
• If you want to offer a lower affordable amount, add a sentence to your complaint letter saying this.
• if you have a lot of borrowing at the moment, read Government funded schemes to escape from the payday loan trap which looks at how a debt management plan can help you.

If your loan was sold to a debt collector you still complain to the original lender but also tell the debt collector that you are disputing the debt. Don’t skip this bit or a debt collector may go to court. It is a good idea to carry on making payments to the debt collector if they are affordable.

Step One – start your complaint & get loan details

Find the lender’s email address for complaints (list at end of this page).

Then send your complaint email saying:

This email starts off the affordability complaint. The clock is now running and the lender has to reply to your complaint within 8 weeks from when you send the email, not when they acknowledge it.

Step Two (optional) – send more details

When you have your loan details, you can send in more details about your complaint if you want. You don’t have to, your complaint is already underway.

I don’t know if many payday lender actually read the extra information you send them. But it’s pretty easy to do – you don’t need to calculate what refund you should get or quote laws.

Here is a template for you to change or add to. It needs to tell your story because everyone’s case is different.

I want to add some more information to the irresponsible lending complaint which I sent you on dd/mm/yy.

I have had x loans from you from [2013 to 2014].

The loan payments to you left me with too little money.

For this period my take home pay was about £x a month.

[Include the following details if you know them, but if they varied a lot miss this out My living expenses were roughly: rent/mortgage £x. Council tax £x. Utilities and bills £x. Transport costs £x. Clothes £x. Food, toiletries, nappies £x. Child expenses £x Other debt repayments £x. Total £x per month.]

I could not afford these loans. When I paid you, I had to borrow again to get through the next month.

You should have realised from the number of times I borrowed that my debt problems were getting worse. It was not responsible to continue to lend to me. [Add more details eg how often you borrowed or rolled loans if you know them, how the amount borrowed generally went up etc]

[Include/change this if your credit record would have shown big problems: My credit reports would have shown all my other debts and problems including late payments/defaults /CCJs/debt management.]

You should never have given me these unaffordable loans. I am asking you to refund the interest and charges I paid, plus statutory interest, and to delete negative information from my credit record.

Good ways to improve this

Add any points that help you describe what happened to you. And delete any bits that don’t matter to you. Some examples:

• “I took out another loan with xxxx to pay you.”
• “Sometimes I borrowed to pay the rent and then had to top-up to get money for food.”
• If you only had one or two payday loans from this lender remove the bits about borrowing more often from the sample letter.
• If you weren’t treated fairly while you were borrowing add a bit about this. See Payday loans: what to expect from your lender if you’re struggling which was written by the regulator. That has lists of what a lender should not have done, for example suggesting you roll a loan or borrow more money. If any of these happened to you, mention them in your complaint.

Don’t worry that the lender will say you should have cut back on your living costs, just put down your normal expenses. You don’t need to include evidence about your expenses.

Should you send credit record and bank statements?

Some lenders ask you to send them a copy of your credit record, your payslips or bank statements. This is mostly to be difficult – the lender can check your credit record themselves if they want.

Don’t send payslips – they won’t help an affordability complaint and the ombudsman never asks for them.

You can send bank statements if you want, but think twice about the cost of copying and postage if there are a lot. Depressingly most lenders seem to ignore them if you do send them.

Some people feel these are personal and they don’t want to send them to a payday lender. If you don’t want to send them, tell the lender you will send the Ombudsman any information that is needed.

Step three – go to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS)

If the lender rejects your complaint or offers you a small amount, don’t be depressed. You may still have a very good case, they are just hoping you will give up!

Instead you can send your case to the Financial Ombudsman. This is easy and free.

Tens of thousands of these cases have been sent to the Financial Ombudsman where there is a higher success rate for these affordability complaints than any other type of complaint!

Give up, negotiate with the lender, or go to the Ombudsman?

Some lenders try to make your case sound bad when it isn’t. People have had thousands of pounds refunded after a complete rejection! Just ignore any of these comments, they do not mean you have a weak case:

• they relied on your loan applications and you didn’t give the full facts;
• you repaid some loans early – this doesn’t prove the loans were affordable, just that you were trying to save interest;
• your borrowing didn’t go up every time – irrelevant, what matters is that you kept borrowing;
• you had a good enough credit score or they didn’t legally have to check your credit record.
• your loans are over 6 years old – the ombudsman will look at these even if the lender says they won’t!

Will a lender improve an offer?

You may be wondering if you should go back and try to get the lender to give you a better offer. Most lenders won’t do this, but a few may if you make out a good case, for example if they have offered to refund some loans and you would be happy if they included one or two more, you can say why you think lons 3 and 4 should also be refunded.

A good enough case to go to the Ombudsman?

If you don’t know what to do, ask in the comments below this article. Accepting an offer settles your whole complaint – you can’t change your mind later.

Don’t worry that you will lose a small offer from a lender by going to the Ombudsman – this doesn’t happen.

Points to think about include:

• If you are offered a refund on only a few loans, don’t accept if you think you paid a lot more than that in interest. Some lenders offer a few hundred pounds to cases which eventually get ten or twenty times as much from the Ombudsman.
• An offer to write off your current balance may be good or it may be very poor if you should get a refund as well.
• If getting defaults or late payments removed from your credit record is important to you, are you happy with what the lender is proposing to do? Don’t assume your credit record will be cleared if the lender didn’t mention this.

One or two loan cases are hard to win at the ombudsman. It’s probably best to give up unless:

• the loan was rolled or topped up several times; or
• the loan was large. Here is a single MyJar loan case that was won even though it was an instalment loan and the borrower had a good income because it was for £3,600. And a single loan Sunny case for a loan of £1,000. You can win cases for smaller amounts if the repayment would have been a large amount of your income; or
• you still owe money.

Don’t delay too long – there is a 6-month time limit after a lender rejects your complaint to send the case to the ombudsman.

How to send a complaint to FOS

Put in a separate complaint about each lender. So you don’t have to wait until all your lenders have replied before sending the first one to the Ombudsman.

One reader said: They couldn’t be any nicer. Caroline Wayman, the Chief Ombudsman, says:

It’s really OK to phone up and say, ‘I don’t think it was fair.” It’s not court; you don’t have to turn up with your ‘heads of claim’, you don’t have to write a fancy letter. Tell us your story and we will do the rest.

I like FOS’s “complain online” option which takes you through your complaint step by step.

Most of want you want to say may be in your complaint to the lender, so you can copy that. Add more details, for example, if you disagree with what the lender replied to you. Include a paragraph about having only just found out you could complain if some of the loans are more than 6 years old.

Things to attach:

1. the reply you have had from the lender.
2. bank statements if you have them. Ideally you want statements from 3 months before your first loan until the last loan was repaid or you defaulted on it. This strengthens your case, showing how unaffordable the loans were. You can still get bank statements even if your account is closed – if you don’t have them, start the process of getting them now, don’t wait until FOS asks for them.
3. a copy of your TransUnion/Credit Karma credit report.

What happens after you have sent a case

You will normally be contacted within a couple of weeks and asked for a copy of your credit record and your bank statements if you haven’t sent these. If you have sent these on one complaint, then when you complain about a different lender they will use the ones they already have.

After this initial contact, your case will wait for the lender to send FOS your case file and then wait to be picked up by an adjudicator who will make a decision on it. That won’t happen until the payday lender has replied – typically it is between 4-6 months at the moment.

The Financial Ombudsman has a two-stage process. Most cases are settled by the first “adjudicator” stage but about 10% go to the second “Ombudsman” stage.

A few problem cases

Don’t ask for a refund:

• if you are bankrupt now or have been bankrupt in the past – any refund will go to the Official Receiver, not you.
• if you are in an IVA as refunds will go to your IVA firm not to you. If your IVA has finished the refund may still be sent to your old IVA firm or it may be sent to you.
• if you are in a DRO now, getting a refund may mean your DRO is cancelled!

For non-UK lenders, different rules will apply. The main ones were Swift Sterling and Pounds Till Payday, see that article for your options.

Payday lenders – email addresses for complaints

If you want to get a refund for “unaffordable” payday loans, the first step is to complain to the lender. Often it’s simple as the lender has a Complaints section on their website, but some have been taken over or the website isn’t there anymore, so here is a list of their email addresses.

High Cost Short Term lenders – “payday lenders”

Anico Finance info@anicofinancialservices.com

Auden complaints@auden.co.uk

Cash 4 U Now info@cash4unow.co.uk (put COMPLAINT in the email title)

CashASAP complaint@cashasap.co.uk

Cash Converters customerservices.uk@cashconverters.com

Cash Float complaint.handling@cashfloat.co.uk

Cash Generators use the contact form on their website

CashPlus complaints@apsgroup.com

Clear Account a brand name of SafetyNet Credit, see below.

Credio info@credio.co.uk

Credit Star complaints@creditstar.co.uk

Dot Dot Loans no email for complaint, you have to write to them or use their contact form

Drafty (sister company to Lending Stream) complaints@drafty.co.uk

Early Payday Loans (EPDL) & ECash Window customercare@ecashwindow.com in administration but in February 2019 some readers were still getting refunds

Everyday Loans see Large Bad Credit lenders below.

Express Finance and Express Finance (Bromley) see Payday Express

Fast Loan UK complaints@fastloanuk.co.uk

Fernovo complaints@fernovo.com

Ferratum customercare@ferratum.co.uk (emails should be sent from your registered email address)

Fortress use the Sunny email

H&T (Harvey and Thompsons) complaints@handt.co.uk

Herbert Brown complaints@albemarlebond.com

Instamoni complaint@instamoni.com

In-Sync ics.complaints@in-syncgroup.com

Kabayan simon.roberts@kbnfinance.co.uk

Ladder Loans see the Money Shop

Lending Stream has switched off its complaints emails. You have to use their web form here . Read Lending Stream stops customers complaining by email for what you can do if you think this is poor behaviour from a big lender.

Liquid Advance no longer trading. Try their debt collectors: Capital Resolve debt collectors, they have handled one reader’s complaint: complaints@capitalresolve.com

Loan Pig info@loanpig.co.uk

Mini credit If your loan was sold to Kapama/Opos, complain to them: complaints@oposlimited.com . If it wasn’t then you can talk to the Ombudsman but so far as I know Mini Credit has gone bust.

Miss Payday Customercare@Miss-Payday.co.uk

Money Boat complaints@moneyboat.co.uk

Money Hive info@themoneyhive.co.uk

Money Platform charles@themoneyplatform.com

Money Shop in a Scheme of Arrangement, see below.

Monkey Dosh complaints@monkeydosh.com

Month End Money see the Money Shop

Mr Lender complaints@mrlender.co.uk

My Finance Club support@myfinanceclub.com and put COMPLAINT as the subject

My Jar generalcomplaints@myjar.com

MyKredit info@myKredit.com

My Mate now called Different Money

NextCredit info@nextcredit.co.uk

Oasis Finance / Oasis Payday use the Sunny email

Oakam complaints@oakam.com

Payday Advance a brand name of CFO, see above.

Payday Bad Credit complaint.handling@westerncircle.co.uk

Payday Express / Payday UK / PDUK in a Scheme of Arrangement, see below.

Payday First – see CFO.

Paydayloansnet / PDNET complaint.handling@paydayloansnet.co.uk

Payday Store – see the Money Shop

Peachy complaints@peachy.co.uk

Pera Loans complaint.handling@peraloans.co.uk

Piggybank complaints@piggy-bank.co.uk

Polar Credit a sister brand of CashASAP complaint@polarcredit.co.uk

Provident – see Get a refund for doorstep lending as the complaints are a bit different. Contact details in that article.

Pounds Till Payday part of the Malta-based Northway group, see Swift Sterling loans before December 2015.

Pounds To Pocket complaint@poundstopocket.co.uk

Quick Quid complaint@quickquid.co.uk

Quick Loan Shop info@thequickloanshopltd.co.uk

Quick Loans Express complaint.handling@quickloansexpress.co.uk

Quid.co.uk use the Sunny email address

Quidie complaints@quidie.com

QuidMarket customercare@quidmarketloans.com

Safeloans no longer trading but complain to customercomplaints@sllcapital.co.uk

Safetynet Credit complaints@safetynetmail.co.uk

Savvy info@savvy.co.uk

Satsuma onlinecustomercare@satsuma-loans.co.uk

Smart Pig team@smart-pig.com

Speedloan see Herbert Brown

Speedy Cash part of the Wageday Advance group, now in administration. Use the link below for Wageday Advance.

Stagemount see Quidmarket

StepStone Credit customerservice@stepstonecredit.co.uk

Street UK see Track Loans

Sunny help@sunny.co.uk (if you are complaining about another brand, make it clear which one)

Swift Money Complaints@SwiftMoney.com

Swift Sterling loans before December 2015, these were from a Malta-based – see Swift Sterling & Pounds Till Payday article for more details as the procedure is not the same as for UK lenders

Swift Sterling loans from 2016 onwards these loans are from a different UK lender complaints@swiftsterling.co.uk

Tappily (a sister brand to SafetyNet Credit): complaints@tappilymail.co.uk

The One Stop Money Shop (not related to The Money Shop): apply@theonestopmoneyshop.co.uk

The Quick Loan Shop info@thequickloanshopltd.co.uk

Think Finance – use the email for Sunny

THL payday@thl-uk.com

Tick Tock customerservice@ticktockloans.com

TM Advances info@tmadvances.co.uk

Toothfairy – in administration, see below.

Track Loans loans@trackloans.co.uk

Txtloan – a trading name of MyJar so complaints@myjar.com

Txt Me Cash – see Cash Genie

Uncle Buck info@unclebuck.tv

Wage Day Advance now in administration – the deadline for complaints has passed.

WageMe customer.services@wageme.com

Wizzcash complaints@wizzcash.com

Wonga in administration – the deadline for complaints has now passed.

Zebit trading name of Lending Stream so complaints@lendingstream.co.uk

Zippa complaints@zippa.com

1 month loan / 1 month money use the Sunny email

100Pounds support@skyquid.co.uk

247 Moneybox customer.services@247moneybox.com

How to ask for a refund from Provident or other doorstep lender

The template letter here for doorstep loans is very similar to the payday loans, but it has some extra points that may be important for your provident claim.

Template letter to ask Provident for a refund:

Contact details for doorstep lenders

• Provident & Greenwoods Use their online form: complaints to Provident and copy your complaints letter into the “message you want to send us” box.
• Morses Club & Shopacheck You have to write to them, see complaints to Morses.
• Loans at home email with COMPLAINT in the title to customerservice@sd-taylor.co.uk.
• Mutual email to complaints@mutual.uk.com.
• Short Term Finance (Birmingham) Use their online form and copy your complaints letter into there: complaints to Short-Term Finance.
• Naylors Finance email with COMPLAINT in the title to admin@jrnaylors.com.

Keep a copy of online complaints or letter sent – if you email it to yourself it’s easy to pass on to the Ombudsman if needed.

How strong is your complaint?

The more loans you had, the better your case. Borrowing for long periods by taking out new loans or refinancing existing ones shows you were dependent on the loans.

The larger the loans became, the better your complaint is. The first few loans may have been affordable but if they kept going up, that is a sign of increasing trouble.

Some people have had Provident loans for a very long while. You can’t get a refund for loans before April 2007.

If you think you have a good case, don’t be put off if the lender rejects it. People are winning these cases at the Financial Ombudsman. The payday loan refund link above describes how to send your complaint to the Ombudsman, what details to include etc.

If you are offered a small amount, don’t worry you will lose this offer if you go to the Ombudsman. We have never seen this happen.

You should get a response in 8 weeks

This letter or email starts off the affordability complaint. The clock is now running and the lender has to reply to your complaint within 8 weeks from when you send the email, not when they acknowledge it.

Provident is being very slow about replying to complaints and they often don’t make a good offer. They may ask for two more weeks several times… I suggest you send the case to the Ombudsman straight away after 8 weeks.

If the lender says the loans are more than 6 years old so you can’t complain about them, ignore this and send your case to the Ombudsman who is looking at older loans (but not loans before April 2007).

Sending a complaint to the Ombudsman

The easiest way to send a complaint is to use their online application form because that asks all the questions they need to know the answer to (most of these are easy, such as would like to be contacted by letter, email or phone?)

You probably won’t get a refund back of all the interest you paid – most refunds are for recent loans. But ask for it all and let the Ombudsman make the decision about where your loans became unaffordable. You don’t have to calculate anything or ask for an specific amount.

What should you say?

You can just copy the complaint you sent to the lender. But here are some more things you may want to add:

It’s worth emphasising if you had a poor credit record, especially if it got worse as you carried on borrowing from the doorstep lender.

It can help to show the links between your loans if there were a lot of them. Something like this can explain your case:

I took loan 2 out as soon as I repaid loan 1 and it was for a larger amount. I then took out loan 3 whilst loan 2 was still going. After a few months I couldn’t afford the payments so my collector suggested I took out a loan to repay off the loans 2 and 3 and spread the repayments over longer. So loans 2 and 3 were repaid early only because I borrowed more. etc etc.

It is also worth emphasising if you repaid some loans early because you borrowed more that month from the same doorstep lender. This is sometimes called “refinancing” your loan.

In this case you may have paid more in interest than you would have if you had just been given an extra loan because of the way the “early settlement calculation” was done. If this wasn’t explained to you by your agent (and I bet it wasn’t!) then you paid more interest than you should have.

It is also worth pointing out to the Ombudsman if it was always your agent suggesting you borrow more, perhaps because it was getting near to Christmas, or in August when you might need more money for new school uniforms, or because you had paid off a lot of a previous loan.

A lender such as Provident should only have offered you a loan if you had asked them in writing for it. The collector shouldn’t have sat in your home and offered new loans. So if this happened to you, mention it in your complaint to the Ombudsman.

Send your bank statements and credit report

Send your bank statements with your complaint. If you haven’t got them all, send ones you do have and set about asking your bank for the rest, then send those. You are more likely to win a complaint if you send them. Don’t wait to be asked!

Don’t be worried because your bank statements show a lot of gambling. Here is one case Ombudsman decision about a Provident case involving gambling which shows that FOS just accepts you have a gambling problem, you can still win these complaints.

Also get a copy of your free Credit Karma report and send it to the Ombudsman with your complaint. Don’t worry you can’t get an old credit report – the Ombudsman knows this isn’t possible.

What about your current loan?

If you are still repaying a doorstep loan, you can still complain. If you tell the doorstep lender you want a payment arrangement, they will allow you to pay less each week over a longer period without adding any more interest.