President of UOKIK has imposed a fine on Profi Credit Polska in the amount of over PLN 4 million for practices that violate collective consumer interests.
Profi Credit Polska has been granting cash loans since February 2015. Numerous complaints about that loan company have been submitted to the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection. Doubts concerned, inter alia, a very high insurance fee charged by the company.
– Profi Credit Polska disbursed subsequent loans to its customers without their approval and without assessing the consumers’ ongoing capacity to repay the loan. When the consumer failed to repay the loan and the company terminated the contract, the company demanded high insurance fees and remuneration for the period following the termination of the contract, as well as covering the costs of collection activities – explains President of UOKiK Tomasz Chróstny.
Profi Credit Polska failed to provide consumers with reliable information about the terms of contract termination and charged consumers additionally for the period following the contract termination. It also charged customers for text message reminders, phone calls or other communications at the maximum contractual amounts. The company followed this practice until March 2016. Afterwards, it introduced new contract templates and ceased, inter alia, making further payments without consumers’ knowledge and without prior verification of their creditworthiness.
Despite abandoning the above practices, the company did not act with full fairness to consumers and continued to engage in further unlawful actions by demanding that consumers – whose contracts it had terminated due to default on repayment of debts – should cover the costs associated with the loans granted on account of remuneration for the period following contract termination.
– For unlawful actions, contrary to good practices and breaching information obligations, I have imposed a fine of over PLN 4 million on Profi Credit Polska and obliged the company to eliminate the consequences of the questioned practices. The company was also obliged to publish a statement on its website informing about the decision made by the consumer protection authority – adds the President of UOKiK.
The decision is not final. The company has the right to appeal against this decision to the Court of Competition and Consumer Protection.
