Outback Bucks is out of business, the company is completely out of touch and gone for good. The phone line doesn't work, the fax line doesn't work, and the website is just displaying a pile of static advertisements, which means that there is no way to contact this company. If you still have any outstanding loan amount due to this company it's safe to say you will not be paying them.
Outback Bucks was a small time tribal payday lender that was one of the earlier Native American lenders to get involved with online lending. Even the company has been gone at least a year, we know they were an early player because some of the complaints against the company go as far back as 2007. This would be considered the infancy of tribal lending, companies like Mobiloans and Clear Creek Lending weren't even around at this point in the game.
Why did the company fail? It wasn't all of the pressure that state governments are bringing against Native American lending firms because they were gone before all of that got going strong. Was it a lawsuit or maybe just a bad reputation that got around on the internet? Who knows, but for whatever reason Outback Bucks decided to close up shop.
Actually, a few other sister companies that were owned by the same holding company closed down all roughly at the same time, which would be late 2011 or early 2012. Another company that died right around the same time is EZ Cash Media. By the way, where did the owner of these companies get these branded names? Outback Bucks? It sounds like a loan that would be issued to somebody in the middle of Australia rather than to someone in Alabama or New Mexico.
Outback Bucks ran the typical tribal payday loan operation. We don't have the interest rates they charged to customers but they were definitely very high as the number of complaints that are still floating around on the internet attest to. Some customers were extremely irate at the company and that may have contributed to the closing of the firm, because any simple search online for Outback Bucks reveals that they had formed a large group of enemies.
Some consumers who complained not only were mad about the high rates, but there were more than a few complaints about being double charged. In other words, a loan for $150 with a $45 finance charge attached to it would be set to be processed on a certain date. Outback Bucks would take the $195 out of the customers account.
Alright, no problem with that. But then two weeks later Outback Bucks came right back and took out another $195, as if the loan had never been repaid from two weeks earlier. This is more than just bad business practice, this is dancing into the neighborhood of fraud. Or at a minimum an egregious mishandling of customer accounts that is so unorganized the company didn't even know if they had already closed out a particular loan or not. Either way it's completely unacceptable to run a lending operation in this manner.
One customer complained about trying to get in touch with the firm. This customer wrote "when I went to call them, their number was disconnected. In fact, they managed to change their voicemail from Outback Bucks name to Payday loan center."
How ridiculous is that? This company must have been making so many errors and enraging so many customers that it was just easier to close down that to make things right. And the bad attempt to resolve the situation by changing the name on the voicemail recording? Come on, you know that is not going to work at all, if anything it will make already angry customers even more distraught and worried.
It's just as well a company like this is out of business, because if Outback was still around they would receive the ultimate negative vote at this site. Plus, it sounds like the firm was only interested in originating small payday loans that ranged from $150 to $500, if that much even. As you know if you've read any information here, this is simply not even what I consider a loan.
A loan is when you have use of funds for a period of time, and I do not consider 12 or 13 calendar days to be a period of time. The measly amount of $150 for a loan in the one example from 2009 that I found, it's just why would the customer or the lender even bother with that small of an amount? Actually I know why the lender would use that small amount, they're hoping the lender just pays for the extension for months without touching the principal. That way the lender can have maximum profits with a very limited risk of only $150 in the original loan amount.
Outback Bucks was not a good company and their exit from the field of Native American lenders is no loss at all.
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