Discretionary Commission Arrangements - Compaints and refunds

Morses Club Refunds

 

Morses Club charges 466.37% APR, so is most definitely a High Cost Lender. Interestingly they claim to be a “Doorstep Lender” and say that they can deliver the money borrowed to your front door. The repayments are collected weekly by an agent.

Morses Club do undertake affordability checks and assessments so do appear to be aware that they need to lend responsibly and with due care and attention.

The problem that occurs with any high cost lender is when the customer has other borrowings with other lenders and slowly but surely the debt builds up until the repayments just cannot be met.

The example of what a loan from Morses Club costs on their website tells us that if we were to borrow £400 over 34 weeks (around 8 months), we would pay £280 in interest. That might not seem a lot but that is over £8 per week, every week. 

When we make a Morses Club refund complaint we find that a lot of customer had a lot of loans, often the loans are back to back with no break in borrowing and can go on for years. This is why our average refund from Morses Club is £1,914.

Morses Club Refunds

Morses Club

 

Morses Club is a doorstep loans lender.  They sell themselves by claiming that their loans are designed with their customers in mind. They think that providing weekly repayments collected by an agent, or via the customer app, makes it customers in mind. We I guess any loans loans company, not just Morses Club has to have customers in mind, so lets dig a bit deeper.

 

Morses Club tell us that they are one of the largest home credit providers in the UK and that they pride themselves on our friendly, personal service. OK, now would expect every loans company to offer a friendly service, and to say that your service is “personal” means nothing really. When you fill you are with petrol it is a personal service, so not much of a claim really.

 

Morses Club charge a Representative 498.34% interest. Now that is a BIG interest rate and could quickly become very expensive.

 

On their website there is a page that says “Loan Calculator”, but it does not seem to be a calculator at all, it is just the start of the application to borrow money. It does have a slider that moves from £200 to £1,000, but it does not calculate anything as the next button is “Apply Now”.

 

It seems that a new customer could borrow £1,000 at 498.34% interest. Morses agree that the interest they charge may be higher than some other forms of credit, but they are happy to explain why they charge so much, because their loans start small, and you can pay weekly and the agents will offer you a personal, friendly service (they do seem to think that a personal, friendly service is important). I do wonder how friendly those agents are when the customer cannot afford to pay. It is a cheek that they actual use the fact that the customer will not be charges a penny for paying a loan off early. I say that as no loans company is allowed to charge any extra money for a customer paying a loan off early. So all they are really saying is “we don’t even break the law if you pay the loan off early”.

 

I tried to complete the Loans Calculator and after filling in all my personal information they rejected me as they do not have a representative in my area, but they did suggest that I try their online loans service called Dot Dot Loans who charge even more with 824.7% APR.

 

I did manage to complete an application with Morses Club via the Loans Calculator using a false address, but it still did not calculate anything or provide me with any figures, it just wanted me to tick about 6 boxes to say I had read this, or agreed to that.

 

If you are an existing customer, you can borrow £1,500 over, maybe, 35 weeks or 52 weeks. Morses Club has been clever and keeps the total amount repaid just below double what you borrowed, but it is still eye wateringly expensive. £1,500 borrowed over 35 weeks (8 months) will cost £1,125.00 in interest. So you will repay at £75 per week and £32 will be interest. If you borrowed £1,500 over 52 weeks you will be repaying at £56 per week and £27 will be just interest.

 

No wonder we get a lot of people coming to us, asking for help, with a Morses Club Refund.