Consumer complaint received 2021-04-22
Company: Bliksum, LLC
State: SC
Product: Payday loan, title loan, or personal loan
Sub-product: Personal line of credit
Issue: Struggling to pay your loan

Complaint:
I had a severe health issue ( documented health records available ) XX/XX/XXXX and was out of work for five months. I started back work and needed to draw some money to get back on my feet for myself and my family ( being a full-time single parent ) My credit score was not wonderful at the time and searched for whatever I could find online with the intention to pay it back quickly. I applied for a {$4000.00} loan on XXXX with the company Loan Me with a 98 % interest rate. The loan was conditionally approved on that same day. I had a plan put together to have this paid off within 6 to 9 months with my new job. I was making on-time regular payments of $ XXXXmonth via automated draft from my checking account. Within only a few months I realized that plan was not going to play out how I hand hoped. 

In the beginning when I called the company ( I can pull phone records for dates/times etc. ) every representative at the call center would repeat my entire full Social Security number, my entire full bank routing and checking number out loud over the phone- which was my first, but not only concern. In which, I addressed directly and was told that was their protocol. ( not even a full account number and last four numbers of my Social Security number would suffice ) Every time I attempted to call again ( 2-3times each week- I have records ) I asked to speak with someone regarding adjusting my interest rate I was given the runaround and told no one was available to discuss that. After five months of making payments in the amount of {$330.00} and I still owed {$3900.00} Finally then, after months of calling and demanding to speak with someone regarding my account they finally connected me to someone and had to beg them to agree to lower the interest rate to something more reasonable- all they offered was 75.95 % on XX/XX/XXXX. I still had my payments set up to continue to automatically draft out of my bank checking account until on XX/XX/XXXX I received an email saying my account number had changed. Apparently this company was bought out, or switched hands in some respect, and I was given no notice there of. 

I have a list of phone records calling the same company several days each week for over a month of leaving messages with no return calls, or going through the automated phone menu where the prompts were curiously not working to get me to anyone in customer service. Interestingly enough- if you called another number at Loan Me to speak with someone to take out a new loan they answered the phone immediately. That same department in the same company ( Loan Me ) would then attempt to transfer me to the right department and the results were the same as if I called that department directly with no way to get in touch with anyone, nor a returned phone call. Finally after over five weeks of trying to contact them to discuss my account, someone called and I simply asked them to take my bank information off of the records and that I would pay buy check via mail. I also asked in that same phone call to speak with someone to discuss my account regarding either a settlement, or pay off, or to adjust the interest rate one last time to make this more manageable- seeing that I held my account in good standing for over 14 months with not a single late payment and was told no one was available to discuss my account. 

Now, and including, everything I have stated in the difficult time Ive had trying to get this resolved, I am asking for help from someone else to get involved with these obvious business practices that are taking advantage of consumers that are already in a vulnerable position. 

Thank you kindly for your time and consideration in listening and understanding my reasonable concerns.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation