How can I get back refunds from illegal payday loans?

Hi Pollie!

You may submit a complaint to the CFPB or Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Give every detail of these payday lenders to CFPB.

You’ll get a fruitful result for sure.

This is the worst part of dealing with illegal payday loans. They don't give refunds easily. Now, that the pandemic is going on, they will make more excuses. Call the State Attorney General and see if he can help you.

Make a complaint to the State Attorney General.

Hello everyone,

First off sorry for making this post here - I tried starting it as a new thread but for some reason it won't let me.

I want to say this is a GREAT FORUM and should be read by everyone who is considering a PDL especially tribal ones, who has PDLs, or who is trying to resolve PDL issues.


Like most people posting here, I am trying to get out of the PDL trap. I started reading this forum about a week or two ago and thought I would share my experiences.

My situation is quite similar to others - I took out a few PDL loans to get by - all of them online tribal loans. I have a decent paying sales job where I make a salary plus commission. I would take out a few PDLs and for the most part would pay them back in 1-2 maybe up to 3-4 installments. This worked fine for a long time as I would take out a few PDLs and then back them back once I got a large commission check.

Everything changed once COVID hit and I wasn't getting the type of commission checks I was use to. What did I do? I foolishly took out more PDLs thinking I'd eventually pay them back like I did before. Well, sales slowed to a crawl and I was getting by on only my salary plus maybe a few hundred extra here and there from smaller sales. I wasn't in a position where I could pay back 3 or 4 loans at once with a commission check. I'd pay back some loans or at most of the balance, but then would run out of money due to the high interest rates and daily expenses, then foolishly get another small loan. Eventually, just the minimum payments from all the loans I had taken out were taking half my paycheck.

I started doing some research - reading the agreements from each lender, speaking to attorneys, credit counselors, the tribal companies' internal collections, etc. Here is what I learned:

1) These tribal lenders become TERRIFIED when you revoke ACH authorization. In every contract I have read you have the right to revoke ACH authorization. Most PDLs' contracts also give you the right to revoke wage assignment. In my opinion, the best way to revoke ACH authorization, wage assignments, etc. by email and let them know you will make alternative payment arrangements. They'll either send you immediately to internal collections even if you haven't missed a payment yet, or will do so right after you miss 1 payment. They'll actually then reach out to you with an offer. In my experience, they'll either offer to "freeze" the balance as of that day and you can pay it off as you please even $20, $30 at a time, or they'll send you offers for paying it off in 2 installments, 4 installments, etc. which is substantially lower than what they would've charged you otherwise. Some lenders sold the debt almost immediately to a collection agency and even their initial offer was substantially lower than what I would've paid.

2) I do not see any sort of negative remarks on my credit profile as of right now. Some of these tribal loans haven't been paid in several months or were sold off to a collection agency. This may however change - I will check my credit profile every few weeks and see if there's any new negative remarks. However, as of right now there is nothing including for loans that have been in default for about 2-3 months or those sold to a collection agency.

3) Tell them explicitly in an email that you revoke ACH, revoke any authorization to charge any card you have on file, revoke any wage assignments, that under FDCPA they can't robocall you, call anyone else but you or a person you appoint to discuss your debt, cannot call your work, cannot call your family, friends, etc. Tell them they can only contact you or an attorney/debt counselor you have given limited power of attorney to discuss the situation (if applicable).

So what am I going to do moving forward?

I am still on the fence about this. I've spoken to some credit counselors who have offered to help me resolve the situation by negotiating on my behalf. Their fees ranged from 10-20% of the balance of the loan. It seems though that they make their profit not just from the 10-20% service fee, but also by negotiating a far lower amount than your current balance. It's been said on here numerous times that with the "illegal" tribal payday lenders you only need to pay back the principal and nothing more. So if say you took out a loan for $300, but your balance is now $900 because of all the fees, the debt counselors will likely negotiate it down closer to $400 but they're going to charge you as if they took care of the whole $900 PLUS their 10-20% fee.

From the research I've done so far, here are the pro's and con's as far I can see them as of right now with using a company to handle your consolidate your PDL debt into monthly payments
PRO's: will do everything for you, can consolidate everything into a far lower payment that you'd otherwise pay, will answer all the PDL debtors phone calls, emails, etc. so you don't have to,
CON's: more costly than doing it yourself - 10-20% service fee of the balance as of the day you sign up with them which is far higher than the balance if you first revoked ach, waited a while, then negotiated with them at which point they'll offer a far, far lower balance to pay, their contracts generally state that they're off the hook if they can't resolve it, some will let you cancel the agreement within 10 days others will let you cancel at any time, some are limited on the length and will only do like 4-10 months, others go up to several years even, doesn't appear to really improve your credit score but can offer some guidance

Here are the pro's and con's of doing it yourself from the info I've gathered so far
PRO's: It'll be cheaper overall than paying a debt consolidation company since there's no 10-20% service fee and you can negotiate far lower than what the "balance" is - you can get it down basically to the principal amount, far more control over the situation
CON's: You have to do everything yourself which can be quite time consuming and frustrating, you have to deal with PDLs, collection agencies, etc. calling you, you have to spend time calling PDLs to make a payment

Whether I go the PDL debt consolidation company or on my own, I will fight to negotiate the lowest possible rate - as close as possible to the principal balance - and will using a prepaid card so that no one card overdraft. I'm leaning more towards going on it on my own though so I can have more control over payments. For example, on an illegal tribal PDL that say I have a $550 balance as of today, but the principal is $240 I'll simply tell them that I'll make a $20 payment every 2 weeks for 6 months (so 12 payments of $20 each totaling $240). Naturally, they'll scoff, say they're not going to accept it, or whatever. In that case, I'll tell them fine - then I'm not making any payments... eventually they'll agree because at the very least they don't want to take a loss and recoup the principal.


Here's questions I still have:
1) Will illegal tribal lenders report your unpaid PDL to the 3 major credit bureaus?
2) Can a tribal lender that's on a reservation get a judgment against you in your state and therefore garnish your wages (or get a collection agency or someone else do it on their behalf?)
3) Has anyone been sued or had their wages garnished by a tribal PDL company?
4) What recourse does a tribal PDL have if you default on a loan assuming you've revoked ACH and wage assignment?


PLEASE NOTE THAT NONE OF THIS IS MEANT AS LEGAL ADVICE - IT IS SIMPLY WHAT I'VE WENT THROUGH, HOW I'VE HANDLED TRIBAL PDLS, AND WHAT I INTEND TO DO IN THE FUTURE

All I know, to your questions, is that Mobiloans, a tribal lender, will not do anything to you in the legal sense, but they will report it to Transunion. You can contest it as illegal perhaps. You have to check particular states on their allowance of garnishment. For example, my state of Texas is a non-garnishment state, except for child support and the IRS. Hope that helps a little