I, too, was in the same predicament as some of the rest of you were, running low on money and I ended up with more payday loans than I could handle. Before I knew it, it felt like my life was spiraling out of control. I finally started googling and found sites like this one with advice on how to get myself out of the situation. So many people had information about different laws that these types of companies were breaking, etc., so I took their advice and used the forms that they had posted to try to settle my debts with the companies. No one responded to me except Rio. They were willing to waive my finance fee due at that time and settle for my $300.00 principal balance. In deciding whether or not to accept their offer, I found this blog and read all of the postings about the letter from the OCCE. Dealing with legal issues as a profession, I decided to research some of the information that he had provided in his letter and found some of it to be false and misleading, which is what prompted me to post on this blog. Mishele, you are right – the cease and desist letter only applies to Oklahoma residents, so the rest of you are out of luck. Oklahoma Consumer Credit Code, which can be found by clicking on the following link, .....
http://www.oscn.net/applications/OCI...p?CiteID=65733
states the following:
(
Notwithstanding other provisions of this section
(a) except as provided in subsection (4), this act does not
apply if the buyer, lessee, or debtor is not a resident
of this state at the time of a credit transaction and
the parties then agree that the law of his residence
applies; and
(b) this act applies if the buyer, lessee, or debtor is a
resident of this state at the time of a credit
transaction and the parties then agree that the law of
this state applies.
Most pertinent is (
..... (a) & (b) (below).
(
Notwithstanding other provisions of this section
(a) except as provided in subsection (4), this act does not
apply if the buyer, lessee, or debtor is not a resident
of this state at the time of a credit transaction and
the parties then agree that the law of his residence
applies; and
(b) this act applies if the buyer, lessee, or debtor is a
resident of this state at the time of a credit
transaction and the parties then agree that the law of
this state applies.
What this means is that if you have applied for a loan on the internet, you are required to abide by the terms of your loan agreement. If you are not a resident of Oklahoma and your contract does not state that the lender agrees to abide by the laws of the state that you reside in, you are still bound by the terms of the agreement. Unfortunately, the company doesn't have any legal responsibility to consider your loan null and void. They can, in fact, proceed with collection efforts. I also found out that it is run out of an Indian reservation, so they have no obligations to statutory laws whatsoever.
After finding this out, I went back and agreed to the offer that they had made to me to avoid paying all the collection fees that I would have had to pay if I was turned over to a collection agency. It was the best way to resolve the issue, albeit a hard lesson learned.
Pay close attention to what you sign up for because there is not always an easy way to get out of these things. Payday loans are not long term loans, although they can end up that way if you don't pay them off early in the term. Most of these kinds of loans charge finance fees every time you extend the loan, so you could end up paying more than what you expected.
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