Repair Your Credit | Examine the Cause (Pt. 3)

They tell their tales

(This is part three of this segment of “Repair Your Credit.” CLICK HERE if you missed part two)…

Remember what I said about the media? Well, they manage to extract testimonials from some “victimized” consumers. They are meant to elicit sympathy for those whose lives have supposedly been torn apart by short term loans. Here’s a sample of such a testimony. Of course you aren’t hearing exactly how the original debt was accrued and a rundown of how fees rose as high as they did. That wouldn’t make for good television, as the pundits see it. This would:

It was a $700 loan and I was paying back almost $1,900… when you first sign the contract, it sounds so good, it’s just not that way when you are writing out the checks.

And your hovercraft is full of eels

How’s that for an incomplete story? These types of public testimonies against the industry by consumers are loud, but weak. They try to drum up sympathy through a personal account of irresponsibility. Here, the customer’s testimony leads us to believe that there were was some hidden plot to rob her of an extra $1,200.

Yet the fact remains that the customer didn’t pay her debts according to the terms agreed upon at signing. To dig that much of a hole, the consumer would have to default or roll over multiple times. Current federal laws limit the number of allowable rollovers with a single cash advance lender, so this customer appears to have been very busy finding new Peters to borrow from to pay Paul. If the principal and interest had been paid on time, the most the customer would likely have paid is around $1,000 – and that’s only with the most expensive online payday loan providers. The typical amount would be much lower.

CLICK HERE to see what online cash advance companies can’t do. The image on the left should give you a pretty good hint…