Wonga

[BrilloPad]

Not as unethical as I thought... it turns out that they don't use agencies!

Nevertheless they are evil scum who bring this country to its knees. Government would ban them but they went the thickos to go and spend on useless tat to stop the economy tanking.

The government should force all advertising to be 50% of "run out of money? go without you stupid fooker. NEVER EVER borrow".

[VectraMan]

It seems to me most the customers these sort of companies have fall into one of two camps: those that pay back the money on time, or those that have no hope of paying back the money. So they only make money out of the small proportion that don't pay on time but are able to pay after a month or two. So maybe 2000% isn't so bad; it's not like anybody's going to be taking out a 5 year loan at 2000%.

[fullyautomatix]

I do feel a bit of sympathy for the bad press Wonga get about their high APR.

This is because they roll all the charges into the interest rate. There is an overhead to processing any loan, so if you take out a small loan for a very short period, then this fixed portion increases the effective APR considerably.

If Ryanair did payday loans, the loan would be at 1% APR, but there would be a dozen charges added on afterwards bringing the effective APR up to zillions.

If RyanAir sold cars they would sell the car for a quid and charge a few grand for the tyres and seats and doors etc etc. There would still be a queue to buy them since they are the cheapest around.

[Freamon]

I had a tiny bit of sympathy up to the point my mum and a person at clientco both ended up with wonga loans having never had anything to do with them.

The problem is that they record and chase debt against the unverified name and address which may not relate to the bank account they paid the initial money into. Given that other companies have been closed done and charged for fraud when performing these shortcuts I'm surprised they haven't been closed for the same tricks.

They may chase it down, but they probably have limited legal grounds to actually collect it, if they only have an unverified name.

[eek]

I do feel a bit of sympathy for the bad press Wonga get about their high APR.

I had a tiny bit of sympathy up to the point my mum and a person at clientco both ended up with wonga loans having never had anything to do with them.

The problem is that they record and chase debt against the unverified name and address which may not relate to the bank account they paid the initial money into. Given that other companies have been closed done and charged for fraud when performing these shortcuts I'm surprised they haven't been closed for the same tricks.

[Bunk]

I do feel a bit of sympathy for the bad press Wonga get about their high APR.

This is because they roll all the charges into the interest rate. There is an overhead to processing any loan, so if you take out a small loan for a very short period, then this fixed portion increases the effective APR considerably.

If Ryanair did payday loans, the loan would be at 1% APR, but there would be a dozen charges added on afterwards bringing the effective APR up to zillions.

They wouldn't be allowed to do that though. Whenever you advertise a loan you have to provide a representative APR and certain terms also trigger the need for a representative example. Ryanair only get away with that nonsense because the laws on advertising for airlines are nowhere near as strict as they are for banking and credit.

[centurian]

I do feel a bit of sympathy for the bad press Wonga get about their high APR.

This is because they roll all the charges into the interest rate. There is an overhead to processing any loan, so if you take out a small loan for a very short period, then this fixed portion increases the effective APR considerably.

If Ryanair did payday loans, the loan would be at 1% APR, but there would be a dozen charges added on afterwards bringing the effective APR up to zillions.

[pmeswani]

Not as unethical as I thought... it turns out that they don't use agencies!

The question is, do they charge you 2000% interest on the rate they offer?

[Spacecadet]

Not as unethical as I thought... it turns out that they don't use agencies!