Provident Personal Loans, Credit and Vouchers. (Provident Personal Credit)

Member Name: he6rt6gr6m

Product:	Provident Personal Credit
Date:	26/05/09 (162 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Vouchers spendable at major outlets, online calculator, fast cash loan.

Disadvantages: Very lazy, laid back agents in some cases, bad customer service.

Ive been a Provident customer for around 3 Years now. Had both of their offerings, cash and voucher.

They do offer a Credit Card also, but Ive never tried for it.

So, the Vouchers. Spendable at some of the biggest names on the street. HMV, Farmfoods, Argos, Comet... many, many places, and a full list available from their website. Sadly, no places that sell beer. Hehe.

The repayment on the vouchers are a lot cheaper than the cash. For £50 of vouchers, over 25 weeks. You pay 50% of the amount you got from them as interest. So, if you took £50 Vouchers, youd pay £75 (50% of £50 = £25) and if you took £100, youd pay £150, and so on. The 25 Week repayment option is the only one, which I have found out to my perril.

The cash is a little more complex. There are more Payment options, particularly 23 and 31 on the website. Im sure the Agent you speak to to get the loan will have more details, and a possible longer repayment option.

Repayments are cheap. Around the £4 a week mark for low amounts of loans. Higher ones are obviously more expensive, but a calculator is on their website.

They will arrange a time and day to come around weekly or fortnightly, to collect.

The Agents are people from all walks of life. In fact, chances are, there is an Agent living around your area, maybe even your street. The problem here, being that the Agents can either be very friendly, very trustworthy and very reliable, to unfriendly, lazy and not bothered.

Personal experience has taught me that Provident take their loans very seriously, as a company.

Recently, I received a debt letter from a collections company working on behalf of Provident about a loan outstanding from around 12 Months+ ago. Due to a change of my address, this has become a problem.

After giving the new address, Provident decided to not come and continue to collect the repayments. They instead went 4 miles away to a different address, even though the address I gave them was correct. Not having a Phoneline, or having any way to contact these people other than e-mail was frustrating, because the email recipients dont respond.

Im currently unsure what happens from now. Whether I pay the debt collections back or what, but this recent experience has shown me how lazy Provident and its agents can turn out to be. Up until this experience, Provident had always been very good. A change in management, and a change in agents and address has changed my whole perception on the company.

Summary: A decent service, if your not moving house. Vouchers are particularly good.