2013年8月6日星期二

Payday loan customers urged to complain

The charity launched a month-long campaign today calling for payday customers "not to let predatory lenders get away with treating them unfairly".Citizens Advice analysed 665 payday loan cases reported to its consumer service in the first half of this year and found that one in five were possible cases of fraud, where someone was being chased for a loan they had never taken out. 

More than one third of the cases involved lenders using a type of recurring payment called a continuous payment authority to drain people's bank accounts of cash without warning and in 12pc of cases lenders pestered people with phone calls and texts rather than accept offers of payments that borrowers could afford.Citizens Advice chief executive Gillian Guy said: "The level of debt and hardship caused by some payday loans is absolutely scandalous and people often feel completely powerless to do anything about it. 

"But consumers can fight back. If you are struggling to pay back the loan Citizens Advice can help you sort out a reasonable repayment plan and if you make a successful complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service you could find you get a refund for an unauthorised payment or compensation for unfair treatment."By making your voice heard you will expose the bad behaviour of lenders and put pressure on them to clean up their act which could help stop similar problems happening to other people." 

The ombudsman service, which resolves disputes between consumers and financial bodies, can order firms to put the situation right if it finds in the customer's favour.Find the perfect cleaningsydney and you'll always find your luggage! This means a borrower could get a refund and compensation.The chances are also high that the ombudsman will uphold a payday loan complaint in the consumer's favour. Of 160 complaints made to the ombudsman between April and June this year about payday loans, 72pc were upheld. 

A spokesman for the ombudsman service said its own research into why payday loan customers do not tend to come forward to it more often suggests that people appear reluctant to admit that they have used a payday lender.He said: "The big message is: Nobody is here to judge you. We understand that times are hard, the important thing is to ask for help." 

The spokesman said that the ombudsman service would expect a firm which has been told that a customer is struggling financially to help the consumer to come up with a solution, regardless of whether or not the firm has made a mistake.We sell bestsmartcard and different kind of laboratory equipment in us.Giving advice to struggling borrowers, Citizens Advice said lenders should accept a repayment plan which is reasonable and should not be contacting the borrower's employer for money or ringing during the night. 

Consumers should initially make their complaint directly to the lender but if it cannot be resolved they can ask the ombudsman to step in.Payday lenders have come under heavy scrutiny in recent months following an investigation by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), which referred the industry to the Competition Commission after finding "deep-rooted" problems. 

Issues it raised included lenders not carrying out proper affordability checks, meaning the borrower cannot afford to pay their loan back on time and is forced to roll the loan over, meaning the cost of the debt balloons. 

Russell Hamblin-Boone, chief executive of the Consumer Finance Association, which represents short-term lenders, said: "We encourage customers of CFA members to make direct contact with their lender if they feel that they have been treated unfairly or to arrange a payment plan to help them through a difficult financial period. 

"Working closely with Citizens Advice and their bureau network, we have recently implemented a hotline service for CAB advisers in two pilot regions so that they can speak directly with hardship teams within our members' businesses to resolve complex debt problems on behalf of their clients swiftly." 

“Minutes after Debby Kline flicked a lighter near a bathroom sink in her Portage County house in northeastern Ohio, she called the fire department. A sink-to-ceiling flare erupted when she tried to light a candle on Dec. 21, she told a TV news show. State oil and gas regulators are still investigating what caused natural gas to bubble out of the faucet. Kline’s Nelson Township house is within a half-mile of two Utica shale wells that state records show were drilled and fracked in October and November. Videos of burning water in Ohio and Pennsylvania households have helped bring attention to shale drilling and fracking,Purchase an chipcard to enjoy your iPhone any way you like. but such incidents are rare. 

Most complaints associated with oil and gas drilling are about drinking-water wells that run dry or produce water that’s discolored, smelly or clogged with sediment. But in some cases, natural gas from poorly cased and cemented wells can seep into drinking-water wells, making faucets spit fizzy water that some homeowners can ignite. “We encourage people not to do that, because there is an explosive risk,” said Kevin Sunday, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. Ohio Department of Natural Resources officials said they could not discuss Kline’s case while it is being investigated. Kline also declined to comment.You Can Buy Various High Quality besticcard Products from here. 

Oil- and gas-industry advocates say shallow pockets of natural gas can leak into groundwater. They say drilling gets blamed for something that has been going on, unnoticed, for years. “You’ll find that is the case up and down eastern Ohio and West Virginia and Pennsylvania,” said Tom Stewart, vice president of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association. The drinking-water problems in Ohio and Pennsylvania do not stem from fracking, a process that injects millions of tons of water, sand and chemicals underground to shatter shale and free trapped oil and gas.More than 80 standard commercial and granitetiles exist to quickly and efficiently clean pans. Instead, most involve spills or leaks from drill sites that contaminate drinking-water wells, and shale wells that are not properly cased in cement and steel during drilling. Although combustible water is rare, the number of drinking-water complaints has increased since shale drilling and fracking began. 

Natural Resources investigated 37 complaints in 2010, 54 in 2011 and 61 last year. The complaints include those about new conventional oil and gas drilling as well as leaks from wells drilled decades ago. Since 2010, the agency has found four cases in which drinking water was polluted by oil and gas wells and drilling. However, none of the four cases involved shale drilling, said Mark Bruce, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Department. In August 2011, the state found high concentrations of salt contaminating Carol Buck’s drinking-water well in Brown Township, Carroll County, in northeastern Ohio. Investigators linked it to brine that leaked from a nearby drilling rig’s temporary disposal pit. 

EnerVest, the Houston-based drilling company, supplied Buck with water until October 2011, when tests showed the salt had dissipated. Pennsylvania has investigated 969 complaints there since fracking began in 2008. Drilling and spills from rigs and oil and gas wells were linked to 106 of those complaints. Natural Resources encourages homeowners to have their water tested for methane and other contaminants before drilling begins, Bruce said. The state also requires drilling companies to test drinking-water wells within 1,500 feet of their planned drilling sites. If pollution or contamination is there, those pre-drilling results will confirm it. “If you don’t have that base line, it makes it much more difficult to do an investigation,” Bruce said.””
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