Consumer complaint received 2017-02-24
Product: Payday loan — 
Issue: Can't contact lender — 
Company: Risecredit, LLC (CA)

The lender blocked my access to their website, making it extremely difficult and time consuming to make payments. 
I was using this loan as a short-term bridge ; I knew it was expensive, but when I borrowed money twice from them, I paid each loan back in a few months. 
In XX/XX/XXXX of last year, I was not able to log in. I contacted them and complained ; being able to log in to the website was critical for me to see and schedule my payments, and plan accordingly. Making the payments by phone was very time consuming and complicated, since I was making very large payments in order to pay the loan off quickly. 
The company ignored my complaint about the website. I used a different browser, and was able to access the website. I then took out another loan, and soon found that my access to the website in the alternate browser was blocked as well. I complained repeatedly, and got no response. 
In the meantime, for several months they were debiting automatically the minimum monthly payment, because I had no way of logging into the website, to see my payment schedule and organize my payoff. 
I continued to complain, repeatedly, and it was n't until I refused to make anymore payments that they finally attempted to fix the problem. However, these attempts were weak and ineffective ; it became obvious that they had no intention of repairing my online access. 
Now the account has been sent to collections, despite the fact that I did not receive any communication regarding payment due, interest charged, current balance, or any warning that it was going to collections. They simply stopped trying to repair my access, and stopped communicating with me. 
I have recordings of my conversations with them in which they acknowledge that I first complained about my access in XX/XX/XXXX, that my payment history clearly shows that I paid off multiple loans with large payments in short periods of time, and that those types of payments abruptly stopped when I complained again about access being blocked in the second browser. 
I also have a screen capture video of the login page, where I type my password and the page does n't go anywhere. I have multiple emails from them acknowledging this problem, and I also have them recorded on the phone admitting that this has happened to others. 
I believe that this was an intentional effort to make it difficult for people who used this loan like I did - as a very short term bridge - to make larger payments. They obviously prefer that borrowers make the minimum monthly payment for years and years. I find it very strange that the difficulty logging in was not only in one browser ( XXXX ) but two ( XXXX XXXX ), and that the problem only came about, in both browsers, several months into the loan - in my opinion, once they became aware that I was paying my loans off quickly. 
I do not dispute the principal that I borrowed, nor a certain amount of interest comparable to the payment schedule that I maintained in prior loans. However, I believe that blocking my access to the loan website via not one but two different browsers was an intentional obstacle put forth to make it more difficult for me to make larger payments and pay the loan off quickly. This is also evident in their refusal to resolve the issue.