Stay Away From Mogo! It’s Going To Destroy You Completely

Have you heard of Mogo yet? If you are from Canada or living here you must have heard about them or at-least got one promo email from them or seen a google ad on some website about their payday loans. 

So what does Mogo offer? What is it all about? I don’t want to go with the text-book definition here. 

Mogo is a pay-day loan company, that’s it. You don’t have money for immediate or need money for something, they offer you a loan amount. Again, the loan amount they offer depends on your credit score, employment held, income blah blah. 

Why Is Mogo So Bad?

So here’s the thing right – Mogo’s website or app is pretty intuitive. It’s a 6 step process from start to finish once you sign up. 

At the end of the application process, Mogo tells you how much you are eligible for ( I mean the loan amount) and what your bi-weekly payment and interest rates will be. 

Sounds all good so far? 

Now here’s the fine print – 

The bi-weekly payments you’ll make towards the loan amount will only be towards the interest and not the actual loan amount (principal) you owe. 

Case Study – MOGO LOAN 2020

I just tried for a MOGO loan amount of $2000. 

You know the interest rate I got – 47% 😀 

Next, my bi-weekly payment was $37 which is suppose to be auto-debit from my bank account every two weeks. 

Now I was curious to know the actual length of the loan, here’s where I found out “I’ll only be paying the interest on a bi-weekly basis and the principal amount can be re-payed back anytime”.

Duh. Now, that makes it an infinite loop for the interest payments. Holy Crap!

Mogo Is Not The Lending Company You Want 

Mogo.ca tries to present itself as a modern, cool online financial lending company. But truthfully mogo.ca is a sinister and predatory financial lending company with nefarious intentions of scamming the financially gullible and gouging people with poor credit history.

mogo.ca is no different from all those high street shady money and payday lending institutions that you find around poorer neighbourhoods, only that Mogo is worse, they have gone online and unlike others, mogo.ca has spent time and money to tailor and target deliverance of services and craft their public image.

Mogo.ca tries to portray a youthful, smiley, happy voice, cool generation X type lingo on both their website and through their customer service agents. Don’t be fooled by their happy smiley tone of voice. They are designed to lull you into a false sense of security.

Two months ago after I had seen the mogo.ca advert on the Toronto subway, I got interested. The advert amongst others promised a free monthly Equifax credit score monitoring and reporting service.

That to me translated to about 9 dollars a month of free Equifax credit monitoring service. How could I not be lured by a free credit report service? So my friend and I signed up for mogo.ca.

For me, I did not want a loan, I just wanted the free Equifax credit score monitoring service, however, my friend wanted a quick small loan of $2500.

My friend, who has a relatively not-great Equifax score of 649 and several late payments but no delinquency on his Equifax record, was pre-approved for a loan of $1400. He accepted the $1400 and was shocked when mogo.ca debited $220 from his bank account, each month for two months.

In his mind, he thought that he had paid off $440 of the $1400 loan to mogo.ca. I guess, my friend, like many other borrowers he had not read the fine prints and understood them clearly. When he phoned Mogo, Only to find out that the $440 was just the interest and was not the principle. He still owed the $1400 principle to Mogo.

He nearly had a heart attack. He was livid. He then had to borrow money elsewhere from a friend and paid off the whole amount of the Mogo loan. But yet to discover that on the third month, there was still another $57, that was debited from his account by mogo. He phoned mogo, to find out what the $57 was for.

That’s when at the first nice happy-go-lucky voice of the mogo agent, turned from being angelical to devilish. The agent became rude, tried to bully my friend, tried to make it look like it was my friend who is an idiot and he spoke as if my friend was trying to take advantage of mogo.ca.

He continued to rumble as if mogo.ca was a saviour to my friend, and it was my friend that does not understand mathematics and he was not there to teach him that. My friend was so angry. I had to calm him down. Now he does not want to ever hear the word mogo again. Nor did he get to understand what the $57 dollar debit was all about. He just closed his account with mogo. I, on the other hand, will wait to see if mogo will send me the free credit report, they promised.

As for me, with Stella’s credit score, mogo did not want me, so I experienced mogo’s false promises.

1. Mogo.ca advertised and promised a free Equifax credit score. It’s over two months now, I have yet to receive any Equifax credit score. On my online dashboard, where my credit score would show, There is a permanent error message that attempts to be cool and reads: “Weird, but it looks like the credit bureau doesn’t have any data on your credit. Give Equifax Canada a call at 1.800.465.7166″

2.- Mogo.ca had advertised and promised a free mogo secured credit/debit card on signing up. To this day, I have never got that secure card. When I log in online, In place of my mogo secured card, I get an info message that says. “mogo card: we are in beta mode, we are sending out invites, you are on the waiting list”. No word of when the card will be available.

Mogo.ca advertised and promised an immediate pre-approval for loans based on one’s Equifax credit score. It’s two months now, I have not received any pre-approval for a loan. My online dashboard has an info message that reads: “Sorry, you are not yet pre-approved, We are always updating our pre-approval process, stay tuned”.

So, I phoned Equifax, and used my own credit card on the Equifax website and bought my credit report and credit score information, which I hold in my hand this very moment. My Equifax beacon score is 822. (Excellent). And guess what? My Equifax report showed that mogo had accessed and queried my credit score twice on the same day of my online application at mogo.ca. One query was a hard query, while the other was a soft query. (they claim that registering on mogo.ca will not affect one’s credit score…hmmnnnn?)

I then phoned mogo.ca and asked why they seem not to locate my credit information and yet it clearly showed on my credit report that they had queried my credit. Besides, I had also provided to Mogo, my SIN number, date of birth and on top of that, an electronic identity check which is performed by mogo.ca thru Equifax at online signing up was successful. My identity had been confirmed or else account creation would have terminated. After the phone call, all that the mogo agent could say was that they were going to get back to me. I was expecting them to ask me to send some identity documents etc, which they never did.

Even tho I have had a mogo account for over two months, there still remained one problem. I was unable to verify my phone number. The online system was supposed to send me a text message or a voice message to my mobile number so as to verify my number. But no matter how many times i requested a verification online, the system just does not send me the verification code. So, I gave up and left the mogo account dormant for a month until today.

So today, I decided to call mogo.ca to find out what was going on with my account. They finally told me that I was denied a loan. I also asked why I was unable to verify my number, the agent told me to hold on while he checked. Guess what? 2 mins letter, the phone went dead. So I decided to use their online chat instead to find out why in spite of being employed and having a good credit score without any debts, I would be denied a pre-approval?

Besides, I wanted to know if I would still be getting a free Equifax credit report every month even if I was denied. The agent on the chat told me that yes, I would still get a free credit score every month, and that, their system reviews accounts continually and that a NO today maybe a yes tomorrow if my indicators changed to be favourable to mogo.ca lending requirements.

So I decided and logged into my mogo account, and they’re still were the message, that they were unable to get my Equifax credit report, even if they said I was denied. So I decided to call mogo again and ask since the chat was deliciously slow. The agent took a while each time before replying. The agent on the phone this time was rude, arrogant and very impatient.

I asked if indeed mogo had got a copy of my credit report, he could never answer with a yes or no to my question. I asked him if mogo denies people with Stella credit reports. The agent said it’s the mogo computer system that decides automatically, so he can’t answer the question.

I asked if they had a copy of my credit report. He was short of admitting that they had a copy of my credit report from Equifax but repeated to me that: “apart from mogo.ca using Equifax credit score, be it good or bad, mogo.ca uses complicated algorithms to determine legibility and that these algorithms use multiple indicators like, employment, payment ability, liquidity, earning ratio etc etc”.

The agent continued to avoid my questions, on what went wrong with my applications. He decided to become rude, he raised his voice in an attempt to psychologically intimidate me so that I would not ask anymore why questions, But I just kept calm and asked him instead to calm down and to be patient as well as to hear me out. I think this rattled him.

He then changed tactics and tried speaking to me in that mogo-type condescending yet happy voice, the voice that an English speaker uses when he encounters a native of a foreign island who does not speak English. He expected that I would get angry.

But I obliged him and calmly persevered. He tried talking to me as if I was stupid and I could not understand mogo.ca algorithms. I just instead humbled down and asked him more questions. It was clear that the agent got irritated and lost his cool. He then said he had to go, there were other customers waiting on the phone line.

I accepted his request and asked one more final question. I asked him how I could close my account. He got angry and lost his cool, he did not answer my question but was, screaming and being tense. “is there anything else I can do for you? He just hanged up the phone on me, before I could say ‘no and thank you.

It is obvious that mogo agents are trained to handle customers in certain ways, depending on various situations. But all in all, these mogo agents are trained to be nasty people when the need arises in their favour, they can be like fraudulent boiler room collection agents.

Sadly lots of people are bullied and intimidated by these mogo agents and end up paying thru their teeth and nose.

I JUST HAVE MORE QUESTIONS FOR MOGO.CA

1. I wonder if mogo agents get any sort of commissions?

2. I also wonder how many of mogos customers have indeed gotten a personal loan at a rate of 5.9%.

3. How honest is their interest rate-determining system.

4. So if credit score alone is not the determining factor for the interest rate charged, what are the list of other factors used and how are they used?

IT IS ALSO BLATANTLY OBVIOUS THAT MOGO.CA HAS BEEN FALSELY ADVERTISING WITH FAKE PROMISES INORDER TO LURE CUSTOMERS TO SIGN UP.

MOGO.CA HAS FAILED TO DELIVER ON PROMISES OF SERVICES FOR WHICH THEY ARE INCAPABLE OF DELIVERING AS OF YET. SO WHY DOES MOGO ADVERTISE FOR SOMETHING THAT THEY STILL DONT HAVE IN PLACE.

WHY DONT THEY INFORM PEOPLE THAT THESE SERVICES ARE YET TO COME AT TIME OF ADVERTISING. THEY MISREPRESENT AS IF THE SERVICES ARE ALREADY IN EXISTENT. IN THAT WAY, I WOULD NOT HAVE WASTED MY TIME SIGNING UP. IT IS PRACTICALLY A SCAM WHEN A COMPANY LURES NEW CLIENTS WITH PROMISES THAT THEY CANT DELIVER.

Tip for consumers: DONT BELIEVE MOGO.CA. STAY FAR AWAY FROM MOGO.CA THEY ARE JUST A MIRROR AND SMOKE COMPANY WITH CROOKED HANDS IN YOUR WALLET.

That’s it for now. Please leave your thoughts and comments below. 

Please share this article on social media and help spread the word. Let me know your thoughts and comments below. 

Top 10 Popular Posts Of All Time