Insights
Making a complaint, or responding to a complaint, can often be difficult and stressful. At the same time, we will need to talk to both participants and consumers about the complaint. If the consumer refuses to talk to us or co-operate with our investigation, we won’t be able to take their complaint any further.
What happened?
Lucy made several purchases between 2017 and 2020 on finance from the lender, but by 2024, she was still making weekly loan payments and had not managed to clear her debt.
Lucy complained to FSCL.
What were the parties’ views?
Lucy said that she had been paying her account off with the lender for the last seven years at $30 per week, and she had not managed to clear her debt. Lucy said that she had overpaid the lender by $1,600, and the lender needed to pay her back.
The lender said that they had provided Lucy with her account statements and explained to her why she still had $1,450 outstanding on her account. The lender said that Lucy would not accept their explanation, would not talk to them, and they did not fully understand why Lucy was saying that she did not owe them any money or why she thought she had overpaid by $1,600.
What was FSCL’s view?
After reviewing the lender’s file, the purchase invoices and account statements, we agreed with the lender that Lucy still had $1,450 outstanding on her account.
We explained to Lucy that although she had made her last purchase in 2020, she had been paying small amounts (varying from $16-30 per week) coupled with the interest (25.5-27.5% per annum) and account fees ($6 per month), which meant that the total account balance had been decreasing slowly. We could see from the file that the lender had disclosed the fees and interest on Lucy’s account to her and had explained to her that if she decreased her payments, it would extend the length of time that she had to pay the loan.
We told Lucy that the lender had offered to freeze fees and interest on her account to help her reduce her outstanding balance, which was a good offer.
What was the outcome of FSCL’s investigation?
Lucy did not want to discuss the information, our view, or her complaint with us after we gave her our initial thoughts. This meant that we closed our file.