Raise the Hammer

I agree with jazzfan, the government has more pressing issues to deal with than this one. Perhaps if they increased the hourly wage instead of lining their own pockets first, the poor would be in less need of loans. Also if the government looked at banking practices and the Big Banks focused on individuals not just major corporations perhaps they would not loose customers to PDA companies. The banks are not user friendly to most individuals and especially not the the people who use pay day loan establishments. Bank fees are very high and numerous.
There will always be individuals who rip off others, both lenders and borrowers. My experience as a pay day loan employee is that we are very careful regarding who we lend to and how much we lend because we want the loan repaid and do not want to over burden the customer. In many cases they are not very good at money management so we try to watch out for both of us. Except for late fees we do not hear much about what happens when a customer is in default. First if the person receives their income from any government source ie: ODSP, Welfare, Pensions etc. you can not garnish that money so if they do not pay, we take the hit(if the customer is not above board they can legally steal from us)on the other hand if that same person owes money to the government their "overpayment" is deducted from their cheque each month. If we have to take a customer to Small Claims Court it is very time consuming and expensive. We pay up front and the customer has to pay if we get judgement and are able to collect. The fees charged by the court are inflated for what they do and often end up being more than the loan itself.
We take the forms off the net,fill them out, drive to the court house, pay to park and file them. The first document,of at least four,is the Plainfiff's Claim which costs between $75-$145.00. In the end(up to and including garnishment)it can cost the customer about $300.00. That does not even include any court appearances. Three hundred dollars seems very steep when we charge only $14.95 for a transacation and 1% per week. Do the math, that is less than $120.00 for a two week loan of $100.00. And there are people who think that $6 or $7.00 is enough for the transaction fee? Perhaps they ought to try and pay rent, ulitilies wages and unpaid loans out of $7.00 per loan.
We have long term customers who treat us well and who we treat well. Without us they would have to go to the food bank in between pays or be without heat and hydro because the utility companies will not wait. Do not paint every PDA company with the same brush not everyone is out there to rip someone off.
Finally it would be nice if people began to take some responsibility for their own actions and stopped whinning. Credit is credit no matter what kind and some people can not handle it no matter where it comes from. Cutomers have a responsibility to find out the rates when they borrow, they choose to borrow so they should look for the best rates. The problem is that alot of times they borrow from too many places at once Is this really any different than having too many credit cards? Why doesn't the government go after credit card companies and get them to lower their interest rates as well.