Home Compare Payday Loans

Consumers Happy With Payday Loan Service Say CFA

John

Payday lenders have long argued that the people most critical about their business tend to be affluent politicians who have never needed to use a payday loan service and so are not in the best position to judge and now they claim to have proven their point.

The Consumer Finance Association questioned 300 recent payday loan customers and 300 policy makers and compared the results.

93% of those customers who had recently taken out a payday loan believed they had been treated with respect and 89% believed that the payday loan service had clearly explained the charges involved.

Of the 300 MP’s, Lords and Councillors who were asked the same questions, just 5% believed that lenders treated customers with respect and only 12% believed they clearly explain their costs.

Chief executive of the CFA, John Lamidey said in a statement today that:

“Payday loans can be misunderstood by politicians concerned for the welfare of their constituents in tough economic times. This research clearly shows that the people who actually use payday loans are extremely satisfied with them at every level.”

While this YouGov poll does seem to point to the fact that most of the people who turn to a payday loan service are more than happy with the way they are treated and the way the company does business, not everyone is convinced by the findings.

The Guardian for one questions why the 300 customers polled had all used The Money Shop arguing that this particular lender happens to be one of the more reputable financial services in business, making the findings less than accurate.

The CFA told The Guardian that they had chosen The Money Shop payday loan service because it was a nationwide company and it had given YouGov the contact details of 3600 customers of which 300 had been selected at random.

While the results are definitely interesting, it would have held more water had they taken the poll from people using a variety of different lenders rather than just the one.

The Guardian article says: Had the sample been extended to the former customers of Yes Loans, which lost its credit licence earlier this month after an Office of Fair Trading investigation into customer complaints, the results of the survey would no doubt have been rather different. Source

True enough but then Yes Loans was a loan broker rather than a payday loan service and they were never a member of the CFA and so never agreed to abide by their code of practice so even if the CFA were able to include them, why on Earth would they?

Meanwhile Wonga – another lender who isn’t a member of the CFA – is yet again coming in for criticism, this time from This Is Money who have noticed that their privacy policy states that Wonga may pass on their customers personal data to third party companies and you cannot get a loan without agreeing to the privacy policy.

By submitting your details and/or using our service you accept this Privacy Policy and expressly consent to the use and disclosure of your personal information in the manner described below. If you object to any of the potential uses described we will not be able to process your application.

Further, you consent to us sharing your data with carefully selected third parties who may contact you via electronic means (including SMS and email) about unspecified products and services.

So Wonga are insisting consumers must give them permission to sell on their details to other companies or they can’t have a loan from them. As they are already the dearest payday loan service in the UK, wanting to squeeze a bit more value out of their customers by selling leads to who knows who is a bit rich, even for Wonga.