Wonga

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kentc81

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Sep 19, 2011
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How can our club be affiliated with a loan shark of a company , sending out letters from fake lawyers threatening legal action !!!


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28015456


Payday lender Wonga must pay £2.6m in compensation after sending letters from non-existent law firms to customers in arrears.

The letters threatened legal action, but the law firms were false. In some cases Wonga added fees for these letters to customers' accounts.

The City watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority, said 45,000 customers would be compensated.

Wonga has apologised and said the tactic ended four years ago.

An investigation found that Wonga sent letters to customers from fake law firms called "Chainey, D'Amato & Shannon" and "Barker and Lowe Legal Recoveries".

The plan was to make customers in arrears believe that their outstanding debt had been passed to a law firm, with legal action threatened if the debt was not paid.

"Wonga's misconduct was very serious because it had the effect of exacerbating an already difficult situation for customers in arrears," said Clive Adamson, director of supervision at the FCA.

"The FCA expects firms to pay particular attention to fair treatment of those who have difficulty in meeting their loan repayments."

The situation occurred between October 2008 and November 2010, and involved Wonga and other companies within its group.
 
"The plan was to make customers in arrears believe that their outstanding debt had been passed to a law firm, with legal action threatened if the debt was not paid."

First Direct were the same as I found out when sorting out someone's loan. The legal company had the same address and I found out shared an office on the same floor as their Scottish HQ. Cutsn

There was a story on Radio 2 a few hours ago of someone who had bailiffs sent in by Wonga and took his carpets away. The thing was that he had never had a loan with them in the first place,
 
Back in 2005 I had lived in a shared house and the phone bill was in my name. After I moved out the guy who was responsible for paying the bills for the last two months (I left at the end of my post-grad whereas he stayed over the summer) just didn't pay it (it may have been an oversight but who knows).

Some 6 months later I get forwarded a letter from a 'law firm' who had been passed my debts to handle (the new tenants had passed the letter to the uni who thankfully forwarded it). As a trainee solicitor I looked for who the law firm were out of interest as their headed letter didn't meet the standards of The Law Society and found out they were entirely fictitious.

The phone company who was using a fake solicitors firm to chase their debts? That would be BT.

Also of note, from day one I used to get bogus phone-calls from companies trying to sell me things using information which could only have come from BT despite the fact I had stated I wanted to be ex-directory.

Wonga are scum but so are so many of these big companies. If they think they have any chance of getting away with it without being exposed then they'll do it.
 
ps. It is possible that the letter was a scam from another group claiming to be chasing up a BT debt which BT didn't know about. That situation would of course imply that BT passed on my even more of my details.

For 'passed on' read 'sold'.
 
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