Consumer complaint received 2024-10-03
Product: Payday loan, title loan, personal loan, or advance loan — Installment loan
Issue: Charged fees or interest you didn't expect — 
Company: Lendmark Financial Services (LA)

On XX/XX/year> I went to LendMark Financial in Metairie XXXX and signed documents for a personal loan in a brick and mortar location. The first payment was supposed to be XX/XX/XXXX for {$210.00} but {$210.00} was drafted and posted to my account XX/XX/XXXX. The standard payments were to start the following month, XX/XX/XXXX for {$170.00}, however I was also charged {$170.00} in XXXX which posted to my account on XX/XX/XXXX. XX/XX/XXXX an additional {$170.00} posted to my account as scheduled even though I was more than double charged in XXXX. This caused my bank account to overdraft as I had made an additional payment I was not expecting. On XX/XX/XXXX I logged into my account with LendMark Financial so I could read more thoroughly through my finance agreement and discovered that my {$4000.00} loan, on which multiple payments had already been made has a principal balance of {$5800.00}. I had discussed prepayment penalties with the loan officer and was assured that I will only be charged interest for the time the money had been borrowed and that if I pay early there are no prepayment penalties. I will only be paying back the original borrowed amount of {$4000.00} and the interest accrued during the time I had borrowed the money. I informed the loan officer that I am using this loan as a bridge loan and plan to pay it off within a few month period. I had skimmed through the agreement before signing as best I could, as the entire time the loan officer was rushing me and persuading me to hurry. She had other customers waiting even though I arrived early to a prearranged appointment. It was either sign now or not receive the loan. I discovered todayXXXX XXXX XXXX that there are multiple clauses regarding the prepayment penalties with conflicting verbiage. If I had known I was going to be charged the total amount of interest for the total term of the loan regardless of when I pay off the balance, there is no way I would have agreed to the loan. Upon further inspection I see that the loan officer listed collateral on the loan of items that I do not own nor possess and had never discussed either verbally or in writing with the loan officer. I had actually used the term unsecured loan and that was agreed upon. Collateral of any kind, or being a secured loan was hidden from me. I believe the loan officer was able to accomplish this by having me use DocuSign even though I was inside an office sitting with an actual person. Docusign jumps from locations to sign or locations for initials without showing any of the pages or verbiage etc. that may be present in-between. I see now that on the collateral page, it says " Total of Collateral : {$0.00} '' right next to the signature block visible on Docusign when signing, but if you scroll up to a portion that was not visible to me at the time, it lists {$4500.00} of items I don't own as " Personal property. '' I had never been presented a large portion of the agreement. I absolutely feel swindled and lied to in multiple ways. I would have never taken this loan if the terms had been presented to me honestly, and I likely never would have been approved for the loan had fictitious collateral not been listed in the agreement. At this point I am doubting that what I was presented and signed for is even the same document I was provided after signing with my electronic signature.