Seaside Payday is a new tribal lender and there are some reviews now online. The problem is that there are just not many reviews so we have to just look at what's out there.
However, for the complaints that could be found floating around, it's easy to spot that Seaside Payday is a new lender. Why? It's because all of their complaints range from October of 2013 through to January of 2014 (and it's currently March 8, 2014) so you can see that they are starting to come in even though the company is less than a year old.
This gets back to my old standby, where I guarantee that all tribal lenders that are in business for at least a year will have complaints about them starting to appear somewhere online. It doesn't matter how small or obscure they are, it doesn't matter if they do a lot of advertising or not, and it doesn't matter if they are based in Connecticut or California, there will be someone unhappy with their loan experience with any given Native American lender. And how could they not be unhappy, with interest rates that tend to average anywhere from 450% APR to over 800% APR it's hard to imagine how someone could be smiling as their financial situation gets crushed.
Below is a sad yet mildly interesting review about a Seaside Payday loan that went unpaid, at least that's the alleged situation per the review. The writer said...
For the last two weeks i have been receiving calls from many different area codes, from a company that states they are a collection agency for a lender named Seaside Payday and their name is (we will omit this part) working for Reinahrd and Associates. This agency has been calling my sisters, my friends and even my employer pretty much everyday, several times a day at irregular intervals, basically you never know when they are going to ring the phone. This is ridiculous, I have not received even one collection letter from this company, not even one email, they have sent nothing because this debt was already paid for through a legal team that included this debt in the arrangement. This company accessed my bank checking account and removed $791 almost two years ago stating it was for the past due debt that was for Seaside Payday. When i contacted Seaside, they told me they work with their own internal collection department to collect outstanding debts. spoke to customer representative there (and also someone saying they were an investigator) who, by the way, I am pretty sure is the exact same person and they call with a different docket number. Very strange. They have been stating (claiming) that someone is coming to serve me papers at my place of employment or my residence with the sheriffs dept. I have filed several complaints against both of these companies and I have contacted the FTC and the attorney generals office with no results or reply. I have even tried filing a police report a ways back because they have been calling and harassing me just too long. This was ridiculous and now it is beyond ridiculous. Lastly, I called them on the phone and then tried to call Seaside Payday at the same time, so we could try to do a conference call and get some kind of clarification with everyone at the same time. But that didn't work out, because they hung up the phone. The customer rep at Seaside states they do not work with this company at all but then how do they have all my information? I am so tired and fed up over this terrible treatment and so are my family and friends.
Alright, so there it is. Another happy customer. This time it's strange because usually a tribal lender will at least acknowledge their collection agency and justify the collections process as the appropriate way to handle borrowers who are past due or who have abandoned their debts. In this case Seaside Payday just didn't seem to want to admit (and maybe they did not) hire a private collection firm.
Either way, it's a note about the fact that you do not want to fall behind when it comes to making payments to a tribal lender, they can be extremely persistent in trying to get you to repay the loan. And think about it, what else do these lenders have to do all day? There whole business model is based on making loans and then making sure their customers repay those loans following the terms that were signed for in the original deal.
This also calls into light another odd situation, and one that I think needs to be written about more, which is the following:
Does charging off a Native American loan through a debt consolidation company actually work or does the tribal lender still make a claim for those past due dollars later on? That is what seems to have taken place in the story above. The strong allusion is that this Seaside Payday past due debt was supposed to have already been handled, which I'm assuming the writer is referring to the debt being legally discharged in a court through a standard debt consolidation process. But since tribal lenders are literally beyond the scope of state regulators it makes one wonder if this will actually work in getting rid of the debt or will the tribal lender (or some firm hired by them) show up a few months later, still claiming that the debt is unpaid? This calls for some more research, look for a post on this in the coming weeks.
As far as Seaside Payday, the review is somewhat telling as to what kind of a company they are but really do we even need that review? I don't. For me the answer was found immediately in the title of the company name, Seaside Payday. It's the "payday" part that catches my eye.
That means the loans are very short-term in nature and it means that I can find better options amongst the Native American installment loan companies like Mobiloans, Plain Green Loans and even Spotloan. For my personal decision-making there just is no reason to turn to a payday lender while the installment lenders are in business and making loans.
Recent Comments