Consumer complaint received 2020-12-17
Company: MoneyLion Inc.
State: NJ
Product: Payday loan, title loan, or personal loan
Sub-product: Payday loan
Issue: Charged fees or interest you didn't expect

Complaint:
On XX/XX/2020 I was able to take out a loan of XXXX by Money lion and agreed to pay it back on XX/XX/XXXX. MoneyLion then breaks the loan up into 3 separate transactions and charges an exorbitant fee of XXXX on each transaction for instant pay to be sent to my bank account in minutes. While convenient and a small fee if it were one transaction, but it seems deceptive to break up one loan amount into 3 separate transactions resulting in 3 charges of XXXX ( almost {$15.00} ) to have the loan sent to my bank quickly for a {$120.00} loan. So in the end, the loan transaction is 2 loans of {$50.00} and 1 loan of {$20.00} ( {$120.00} ). The main problem is the way they break up the 1 loan into XXXX to make more transaction fees, but also the fact that they automatically add a tip amount and their system is designed to trick the person requesting the loan. This fee is pre-set to {$5.00} ( or some dollar amount ) in their system and the person taking the loan must manually change it to {$0.00} or another amount, as opposed to the company having it automatically pre-set to {$0.00} and having the person add a tip of their choosing or leaving it at {$0.00}. I guess on the first 2 transactions of {$50.00} I changed the tip from {$5.00} back to {$0.00} as I do not have money to give for a tip which is why Im getting a loan in the first place. On the 3rd transaction of {$20.00} they then added the {$5.00} tip to the final transaction. Im guessing I forgot to change it from {$5.00} to {$0.00}, but I personally never added the {$5.00} tip or inserted this dollar figure. At some point prior to the XXXX I asked them if I could have some extra time to pay my loan to which they agreed that the XXXX of XXXX would be fine. On XX/XX/XXXX when I went to pay back my loan I was curious as to why I had {$20.00} in fees instead of approx {$15.00}. When I reached out to customer service this is when I found out that there was the XXXX dollar tip on the last transaction of {$20.00}. I asked them to remove it as I did not do this myself and explained to them that this must have been preset by the system and I never would have entered a XXXX dollar tip as Im not in a position to do that. This was on a chat session and I have screenshots of the chat and the person who was the representative said there was nothing they can do to remove the XXXX dollars. They just explained to me that next time I should remove the XXXX dollars and change it to XXXX dollars which is ridiculous because I explained to them the XXXX dollar tip should not be put in there automatically and that it should be set at XXXX dollars and if I want to leave a tip I can enter the amount of my choosing. We went back-and-forth for several minutes and they refused to take off the XXXX dollar tip that I never selected manually. I then contacted money lion by phone and again spoke to another customer service representative and basically received the same information and explained to them that I will have them investigated and that I am not paying a XXXX dollar fee and that I am going to report them because I dont think its fair or legal. These are exorbitant fees that theyre charging and the fact that they are inputting the amount and not the person taking out a loan. I dont know what the loan fees are that my state allows, but I feel like this has to be illegal and borderline fraudulent, if not outright fraudulent. This is probably how theyre making a lot of their money off the backs of struggling consumers. Please look into this matter further. It will be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief