Consumer complaint received 2025-11-11 00:00:00
Product: Payday loan, title loan, personal loan, or advance loan — Installment loan
Issue: Getting the loan — 
Company: HFS Financial LLC
State: NJ

Complaint narrative:
I was in the market for a personal loan in XX/XX/year> and I went through the loan application process with HFS Financial which I understand to be like a loan broker ( i.e., they are not the actual lender but will farm out your loan app details to actual potential lenders and HFS probably takes some fees on the backend ). My loan application was approved and XXXX XXXX was at least one of the HFS employees that was in charge of my application, answering my questions and providing me with drafts of the loan agreement from the third party lender that HFS paired me with/was willing to actually fund the loan for me. I am a professional finance attorney with 8 years of experience reading and negotiating complex loan documentation. I was not applying for the loan in any professional capacity and was simply acting in my capacity as a private citizen to apply for the loan so I did not feel the need to specifically tell the HFS employees that fact. Given this HFS employees did not necessarily know they were working with what was likely a uniquely sophisticated potential customer in terms of understanding loan and finance terms and industry practice, the law and negotiations. From their perspective I was a typical customer and they treated me as such. I was APPALLED by the time pressure tactics and blatant lies that HFS employees told me to try to manipulate me into signing the loan contract they provided to me. I have text/written evidence of XXXX XXXX XXXX telling me that he personally has authority to contractually bind the third party lender. That is utterly not true but unless you are an attorney, a consumer hearing that may not understand that that is wrong and rely on it. At best he was negligent in that misrepresentation and at worst he made that misrepresentation maliciously ( i.e., knew that wasn't true, told me it anyways in the hopes that I would not know he was wrong and that that lie would convince me to sign the loan documents so HFS could get their fees from the transaction ). Essentially, HFS employees are committing fraud and preying on consumers to get their fees. Additionally, HFS is a broker and XXXX held himself out as a finance expert/an authority on interpretation of the loan documents HFS provided to me from the third party lender but he incorrectly interpreted the loan terms to mean something that they did not, refused to ask the third party lender to change the wording in the loan agreement to clarify what I wanted it to say, and after I didnt agree with that explanation, XXXX said his manager at HFS also reviewed my request and agreed that the term that I wanted changed in fact did mean what I said it meant but was non-negotiable. XXXX misrepresented to me that his texts incorrectly interpreting the contract " should suffice meaning I should stop asking him to ask the third party lender to change the wording because his word alone should be enough. All of these misrepresentations were also simultaneously made in between persistent time pressure tactics to scare me into signing the loan docs quickly. Multiple texts, voicemails, emails telling me I am taking too long reviewing the loan documents and my application/loan offer will expire within a short period if I dont sign imminently. Its also curious that when I completely ignored those time pressure tactics, the expiry date in his frenzied messages was magically extended, which made it clear to me that XXXX was lying to me again in effort to brow beat me into just signing the loan to avoid the hassle and further damage to my credit if they had to pull my credit report again. I worked with similar lenders over the exact same period of time on loan applications for the exact same loan amount and there was XXXX time pressure of this kind. 

Needless to say I did not sign the loan documents with HFS and their third party lender but I am deeply concerned that HFS is doing this exact same fraud scheme to less sophisticated consumers and conning them into signing predatory loans. This is entirely unacceptable. Please look into this company and throw the book at them. This is intentional targeting by HFS and should not be permitted to continue. I will be happy to provide the CFPB with the text evidence and I can certainly check if I have the actual loan document download and can provide that too.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation