01
23
06
Payday Loan Company Held to Account
Alevo just sent me an article about a payday loan company in Winnipeg that was charged with levying criminally-high interest rates:
Winnipeg police charged a payday loan company Thursday with levying criminal interest rates, and verbally accused payday loan companies across Canada of breaking the law. “All payday loans companies basically operate in the same manner,” said Winnipeg police detective Len Terlinski.
I wrote about this issue a year ago in a post called Easy Money. I wonder if these charges in Winnipeg will have any effect on payday loan companies across the country. I’m tempted to print out a copy of this article and bring it to my local PayDay loan companies for comment.
February 6th, 2006 at 8:09 am
The other side of this is the collections industry which also is deserving of close examination.
Their latest methods are to call and play a message daily (well actually 6 days a week). Doesn’t sound like a problem except that they don’t seem to be very careful about how they choose the number to call, and the only way to stop the calls is to call them and answer all the questions they pose. In my case I was called 170+ times and there’s not the remotest association between me and the debtor they sought.
This might be alright if you’re actually a debtor – if you’re not it seems like an envasion of privacy and harassement. Especially because the ONLY way to stop the calls is for you to pick up the phone and call them. Then wait in line – service levels are the pits – and then tell them about yourself.
Like the payday loans issue there are laws to address this but governments seem to need a push to enforce them.
If you want more details, or if you have a story about being wrongly and repeatedly called check out http://www.irresponsiblecalling.blogspot.com