The largest Native American loan company to date is a lender called Western Sky. If you are searching for them online their technical name is Western Sky Financial. Did this company treat their customers well? Are they treating them well as they unwind the firm? Was the interest rate the firm charged ridiculously outlandish?
Let's find out by reading a few Western Sky reviews from customers who reported their experiences back to us.
Here's a review from a guy named Josh, this is from July of 2012 where he wrote...
There are a few things I want to say about Western Sky and their company named Cash Call. Fortunately I wasn't the one that took out the loan, it was a family who took out a $5,000 loan about a year ago. I didn't even know that they had taken the loan but I found out once they couldn't make the payments.
Why they decided to get this terrible loan I'll never understand, it's beyond me. There are many people in this nation that make bad financial choices. We need some more laws that protect the people who have to earn money for their family. The contracts that are provided for customers to sign are ridiculous, really no one should sign those deals because they are so one-sided.
Cash Call is a small company that works with Western Sky and the two of them like to find ways to get past the state laws for the loans that they issue. So after I talked to employees at both Western Sky and Cash Call I was able to figure out a few things. First, the reason Western Sky can charge whatever they want on their loans is because they are a Native American reservation group and that means they can legally get around the laws of United States since they are on their own land.
It's not illegal for them to pitch these loans or to issue these loans. When you sign for one of their loans it actually talks about their immunity from being part of the laws of the U.S. It's hard to have any wiggle room to get out of these loans when you are dealing with a type of debt that originates from the Indian reservation and the contract exists under the rules of that reservation.
This is how they get these products to be legal and that's how Western Sky will explain the situation to you if you talk to them. Then it gets more involved because only a few days after Western Sky completes the loan to the customer they then automatically sell that loan to Cash Call and then Cash Call tries to maintain the loan and they also do the collections process if the borrower falls behind in their payments.
Here's the interesting thing about Western Sky and Cash Call, they threaten to have your wages garnished and to take you to court if you don't pay the loan but guess what? They don't have the power to do that because the loan terms wouldn't be accepted in a normal court. Now whether they can affect your credit score is another question, I don't think they can do anything there but I'm not sure. The credit agencies might or might not accept that information from them.
Mainly what Cash Call is going to do is try to harass you into paying back that money. They can call your work, they can call while your eating dinner, they will call your cell phone. Cash Call pressures enough customers into paying so that they are profitable, and Western Sky will always be profitable because all they have to do is fund the loan and then sell it and walk away.
Alright, so that was an interesting review. This relative of a customer really did their homework and found out some quality information. Western Sky does a great job of issuing new loans and they quickly toss them over (sell them) to Cash Call. And then Cash Call plans on getting enough people to keep paying that they too will make a profit.
How many Western Sky reviews are you looking for? Are you seriously thinking about taking on these high rates? Some people do because Western Sky is the only tribal lender that will provide any 'large' loans meaning anything over $3K in this industry.
The next review is from someone named Bob, and it was written back in May of 2013...
When I applied for a $2,500 loan with Western Sky I was told that I couldn't be approved for that much, and that I could only get a $1,500 loan. But it gets a little strange because Western Sky would keep $500 of that loan for fees and I would actually only be getting $1,000 deposited into my checking account.
I was so desperate I said it was alright and it wasn't a good decision, I was just that in need for whatever dollar amount I could get my hands on. I didn't get the funds right away because my checking account was technically in an overdraft status at the time of the funding. No one did a good job explaining what the $500 fee was for.
Most places if you qualify for a $1,500 loan then you will get that much money, only with this company they kept 1/3 of the loan, my loan. The company website is unclear and there really isn't much information on the site. I tried to get more information but the customer rep wasn't very polite. I wish I never had contacted this lender for anything because it hasn't worked out well. I'm really busy and I don't have a lot of time to waste but this experience has been a waste of both time and money.
Alright, this is another reason not to use Western Sky. I have read more reviews that talk about this lender keeping hold of $500 from the time a loan is issued. That's crazy, how can a lender say you are qualified to borrow X amount of money but then say okay you are going to get X - $500 as a loan fee.
What kind of fee is $500, especially when the total loan value is only $1,500? This is outlandish. Western Sky has a lot of nerve charging hugely high interest rates and this out of the gate $500 fee that is not well defined or justified at all.
The only reason Western Sky got so many customers is due to their very active marketing plan and the fact that they would issue some large loans to people, sometimes ranging from $5K to $10K. In the end though the high rates and inexplicable fees make this a difficult company to expect a good outcome from.
The costs are too high and the chances of falling behind on a working salary are too great. There's a reason there are so many negative reviews floating around against Western Sky, it's because they are responsible for many bad financial situations with their very expensive loan products.
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