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The Cash Store Won’t Help Me to Break The Loan Cycle. – Cindy

“Dear Steve,

I currently have an installment loan with The Cash Store and due to recent home repairs am no longer able to meet this obligation. The balance owed is $830 and I’ve been paying $369 every 2 weeks. I called them prior to my next due date to inform them that I am no longer able to pay and inquired about an extended payment plan which they advised they don’t offer. They continue to call asking the same question and in essence want me to come in an sign a new agreement for 10 payments which which add an additional $1,000 to what I already owe. They advise they will call 3x a day til an arrangement is made???

What do I do; I’m more than willing to make arrangement on the balance owed but there is no way I’m go ing to sign up for additional intererst.

Cindy”

Dear Cindy,

Interesting. If you have an installment loan from the Cash Store I bet it was for $2,000 or less. That’s why your comment about how much you’ve been paying and they want you to pay is alarming.

I did some checking and the Cash Store is part of the Community Financial Services Association of America, a payday trade association. This is important because members have promised to offer an EPP (Extended Payment Plan) to allow you to repay what you owe over four payments without additional interest.

For details on what the EPP offers see, Cristy Has Three Payday Loans And Can’t Pay Them

You can view the information about the EPP on the CFSA site here.

The CFSA link to the specific guidelines is here.

Poll – Vote Now

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Your homework is to go to your Cash Store office and tell them you want to repay your loan under the Extended Payment Plan (EPP) offered by The Cash Store as part of their membership in the Community Financial Services Association of America.

See also  I Took Out Payday Loans to Help Pay for College

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35 thoughts on “The Cash Store Won’t Help Me to Break The Loan Cycle. – Cindy”

  1. what I want to know is why when on most loans A monthly payment and in the last few month my payment is due every 29 days which if you do the math your making a payment twice evey mory month

    Reply
  2. I got a 1500.00 loan from them as well, looked at the contract and thought I was paying 375.00 per month, only to see its 750.00 a month. Needless to say its eating my lunch. When I went in 3 days late they could not take the payment, if I pay off the balance would be paid off in Jan, so what happened I refinanced for 357.44 instead. Which pushed me back to march payoff. Its getting harder and harder and when I asked for a monthly lower payment they told me its best to refinance because I did not want it to go to corporate as they will harass me really bad.

    Reply
  3. Regarding the Cash Store. I am ill and was unable to go into the store to make a payment (I am four days later). I had a family member send them a money order via overnight mail for the payment, and the store rep said they could not take it – but would just keep harrassing me until I came in and refinanced. Does this make sense?? I will be contacting their corporate office in Irving, Texas. I am able to make the payments, but depending on my doctor’s advice, may not be able to make it into their office. **They also have a policy of not doing bank drafts if you are late.

    Reply
  4. I am sorry that Cindy went through this problem. I to am learning just how they operate and I wished my husband never did take that loan in the first place.

    Reply
  5. Everything is spelled out for you in black and white in the contact. You as a customer need to educate yourself on the interest and fees these types of store charge. They charge an arm and a leg because they are taking a huge risk on people that have defaulted, have no credit, bad credit, etc.
    The cash store its just like every other business try to make a buck.
    What I want to know is if you would have gone to the bank and asked for the loan would you have gotten approved??

    Reply
  6. I just got off of the phone with the cash store b/c I am unable to continue to pay all the fees associated with it. I am going to print this out, allow mine to go to the corporate level and go from there. Maybe I can get them to lower the overall amount simply b/c I’ve paid so much interest toward the loan…Thanks for this info

    Reply
    • Ok to all the previous posts. I used to work there and know at the store level we are not to offer anything to help you. All they are to do on any of the loans regardless of title, cash advance or a payday loan is they want you to get 3 calls a day and get you in within immed if not within 2 weeks. Yes refinance and spend more that’s the business. But if you know the system once it goes to corporate then yes they make arrangments on all loans regardless as well without refinancing and saves you a ton of money. And get this they relian after that to you. So if you work it right it’s cheaper to let it go to debt and make payments. Now the stores get bonus money for getting you out of debt as well. So that’s why. It’s crazy I don’t work there any more thanks to the man above. Not to mention my co workers were very rude.

      Reply
        • Okay, I would love a little help with my situation with The Cash Store. I took out a title loan in the amount of $500. I made many many payments and then was hit again with an unforseen cost that kept me from making a couple of payments. This whole time I kept up communication with the Cash Store. After a few weeks I went in to pay what I owed in full and was told that my account had been frozen and not even the Cash Store employee could access my acct. I spent the entire day there with the CS employee continuously calling corporate to assist in helping to resolve the situation. Not only was she unable to help me that day but I spent the next few weeks playing “phone tag” with corporate. During those weeks I also had someone from a towing company bombarding me with phone calls and text messages. Last week was the first week that I did not try to call the corporate office at all and last night my car was taken from my fathers driveway. What can I do here? I have been trying to pay them and they are the ones turning my money away. Now I am sure they are going to try to add a ridiculous amount of money in fees and such to the measley $116 that I needed to pay to clear my debt. Any advice?

          Reply
  7. I just wanted to let everyone know that The Cash Store is NO LONGER a CFSA member. I called the CFSA today to see if they were a member since I was getting the run around with them and the lady said they paid their membership for the year but recently withdrew their membership.

    Reply
  8. I just wanted to let everyone know that The Cash Store is NO LONGER a CFSA member. I called the CFSA today to see if they were a member since I was getting the run around with them and the lady said they paid their membership for the year but recently withdrew their membership.

    Reply
  9. I know this is an old post, but the Cash Store is a terrible company. We made a mistake and got one of their installment loans, and somehow went from borrowing $1,360 to owing just over $3,600. That means we will have paid more than double (closer to triple) than we borrowed!

    I guess in our desperation to borrow we did not understand what we were agreeing to. Which was yes, our BIG mistake. By the time we figured it out we had already made four payments. We thought that after we made the fifth payment that would be it. After all the fifth payment would have been a total of $1,825 paid back.

    To me $465, is a huge gain on the money borrowed. However that was still not enough for the cash store. I know it is our fault for not FULLY understanding what we agreed to, but it was still a horrible experience.

    Now to the reason I am sharing such a personal experience. The post from Jen, said the original poster must have been paying extra. Which in her opinion is why it was costing her $369 every two weeks. I’m not sure I agree with that, not when she borrowed from the cash store. I’m sure they stuck it to her in the same way. After all we didn’t borrow $2,000 and our payments were well over the “310” Jen thought would be tops!

    So maybe something is fishy with them! I don’t know, but they sure do make a lot off of their installment loans. Even banks aren’t that criminal!

    By the way, our loan was made back in March 2010, I believe. I came across this post, because I googled The Cash Store. I wanted to see what complaints popped up lol. Still thinking about adding one myself.

    Since you are a get out of debt guy, (which I love) I thought you might want to hear more truth’s about The Cash Store. It’s a badddd baddd place. At least when it comes to their installment loans. If people do still consider it, they better take the paper work home. Read the fine print and then make a decission. Which I’m sure will be NOOOOO!!!!

    And it is almost impossible to default on the loan. They have you write a check saying you agree to pay said loan back. Of course if you go in and say you can’t make a payment, they will tell you sorry, we will have to run the check. Talk to your bank and they will tell you, sorry we can’t stop the check. It will be in some random amount. We tested that out and sure enough our check which we wrote for $1,360 was not charged. We got charged $219. Where did that number even come from????

    Hmmm wonder if Cindy wrote a check? She didn’t mention that in the post. Ah well…I was just thinking about that lol. My rant is done.

    Reply
  10. I know this is an old post, but the Cash Store is a terrible company. We made a mistake and got one of their installment loans, and somehow went from borrowing $1,360 to owing just over $3,600. That means we will have paid more than double (closer to triple) than we borrowed!

    I guess in our desperation to borrow we did not understand what we were agreeing to. Which was yes, our BIG mistake. By the time we figured it out we had already made four payments. We thought that after we made the fifth payment that would be it. After all the fifth payment would have been a total of $1,825 paid back.

    To me $465, is a huge gain on the money borrowed. However that was still not enough for the cash store. I know it is our fault for not FULLY understanding what we agreed to, but it was still a horrible experience.

    Now to the reason I am sharing such a personal experience. The post from Jen, said the original poster must have been paying extra. Which in her opinion is why it was costing her $369 every two weeks. I’m not sure I agree with that, not when she borrowed from the cash store. I’m sure they stuck it to her in the same way. After all we didn’t borrow $2,000 and our payments were well over the “310” Jen thought would be tops!

    So maybe something is fishy with them! I don’t know, but they sure do make a lot off of their installment loans. Even banks aren’t that criminal!

    By the way, our loan was made back in March 2010, I believe. I came across this post, because I googled The Cash Store. I wanted to see what complaints popped up lol. Still thinking about adding one myself.

    Since you are a get out of debt guy, (which I love) I thought you might want to hear more truth’s about The Cash Store. It’s a badddd baddd place. At least when it comes to their installment loans. If people do still consider it, they better take the paper work home. Read the fine print and then make a decission. Which I’m sure will be NOOOOO!!!!

    And it is almost impossible to default on the loan. They have you write a check saying you agree to pay said loan back. Of course if you go in and say you can’t make a payment, they will tell you sorry, we will have to run the check. Talk to your bank and they will tell you, sorry we can’t stop the check. It will be in some random amount. We tested that out and sure enough our check which we wrote for $1,360 was not charged. We got charged $219. Where did that number even come from????

    Hmmm wonder if Cindy wrote a check? She didn’t mention that in the post. Ah well…I was just thinking about that lol. My rant is done.

    Reply
  11. Here is the truth for future reference:

    The Extended Payment Plan is for payday loans. It was designed to protect customers from loan sharks who continue to charge interest after a loan defaults, thus allowing the customer a better chance to repay the debt. Most reputable lenders, including The Cash Store, never did charge interest once it was in default- and have always provided payment plans. The EPP regulations are pointless for them since they already provided it. The employee said that they do not offer it because it does not apply to installment loans- which Cindy has.

    However, installment loans work the same way. Once it went into default status, the interest stopped. The store received it on their return report, and then had 15 days to collect before it was turned over to corporate collections. Without a promise to pay in full or extend the loan, they are required to continue calling. They are not encouraged to give the date it will go to collections because many customers will postpone payment until then. The stores are supposed to try and collect by that date and are following their guidelines to get customers back into good standing without going to collections.

    Corporate collections will make payment arrangements, as they always have, but it has nothing to do with EPP. They did this long before EPP was introduced for Payday Loans. They do not have to do it for Installment Loans, but they do. However, they can and will collect with your bank or send you to a third party collections agency at any time. The store employees know that the only way to prevent this is to set up a promise to pay off or extend within the store’s 15 days. If you break a promise, make a promise for after the 15 days, or promise only a partial payment it does not count.

    Sounds harsh, but many people default, break promises, and never pay. They do not mess around with this. I also wonder about those payments- I assume the $369 every 2 weeks must be paying extra toward principal. For a 10 payment loan which is described, the highest loan amount anywhere is $2000. The payments would be $310 for that, and that is as high as it gets! Maybe she paid it down to $830 by making those big payments?

    Anyway, hope this helps. People are always confused by that EPP- and unfortunately, the bad lenders who it was meant for still have installment and title loans that allow them to get around it. It really is best to stick with the bigger name payday lenders who don’t do this!!

    Jen

    Reply
  12. Breaking news!!! I received a final call from the cash store on Tuesday again asking that I come in and reloan; again I explained that I cannot afford to add additional payments and interest to balance owed. The rep advised me that this was the last day that she could offer assistance (assistance??)… On Friday when I got hope my called ID had logged several calls (no message) from Cottonwood Financial; they called this morning and turns out they are the corporate office for the Cash Store. The gentleman kindly asked how I intended to settle the balance and I asked for 4 equal payments to which he replied “sure, he could set that up” …. yeah success … finally someone that has some sense of best business practice and compassion for consumers that face financial hardships and can exhibit a willingness to help folks settle their account without badgering them.

    Reply
    • I worked at the Cash Store and we were not allowed to discuss any options but to refi your loan. Even when we know that you can not make the pmts because they are so high we are told to push the customer to take the highest approval amount that is given. Employees are repremanded and fired for not doing so, The notto is “set the customer up for success” ,Which is a lie!!! If you inform the customer on payments on different loan amounts in front of a distrct or regional manager prepare on monday to be told you are fired  !!!!!!!

      Reply
  13. Additionally I did send an email to the CFSA but no response yet … I will give them a few days and if no response I will call their office.

    Reply
  14. Hi Steve … the latest communication is that I spoke with the Cash Store again when they made their second call of the day. The store manager sounded a bit weary as though she even knew these calls were ridiculous since I’ve talked to them I think every day this week (so what more is there to say) but again I asked about the EPP and her reply is they don’t do that and I told her I had been informed that they were a member of the CFSA and I should be able to make 4 equal payments on the balance owed. I asked her if she could call the corporate office or the legal department to find out and she then replied that the only way to make arrangements is when the acct goes to corporate. I asked when does it go to corporate and she replied she really didn’t know; they just get updates to make the collection calls and she added “you know what I mean”; soooo I guess we just play this game of you call me with the same questions each day and I give you the same answer until it eventually goes to corporate?? It would be comical if it weren’t so ridiculous.

    Reply
  15. Thanks so much for the prompt response. As previously stated, I asked for an EPP and was informed that they don’t offer one. But I will try again …

    Reply

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