Online loan apps shamelessly harassing customers over late payment

Coronavirus lockdown
Loan apps harassing customers

Online loan apps such as Ocash, Kissht, Ecash, Kreditbee, Cashbean, Moneed and many others are shamelessly harassing their customers over late repayment. Managers and employees are abusing the customers on call, threatening them by illegally taking over their contact list.

Several audios and tweets surfaced proving the pestering and disgraceful act.

There are a lot of apps, promising ‘instant loan’ without security to its users. These apps often show up as social media advertisements and paid app suggestions on Play store/ app store.

As a lot of apps demand access to a new user’s contact list, gallery, camera, audio recording and GPS, these apps do that too. And ultimately hack into the user’s contact list. 

If the user is more than a week late to their installment payment, the employees of these apps threaten the user. The employee say they’d call everyone from their contact list and ask for money from them.

These apps have practiced this illegal way of collecting payments on a lot of users. The employees went to a low standard of messaging one user’s relatives lying that police is looking of him.

Messages from the app, false accusations


Messages from the apps
Source – Twitter, tweet of the customer who received it

Why and how is harassment wrong and illegal?

Hacking personal data 

These apps may have mentioned in their app policy that they can and will access the user’s contact list and use it to make calls. Customers should’ve informed about how they will react in case of late payments.

Threatening the customers

The managers and employees are threatening the customers that they will call their relatives to collect the amount.

Verbal abuse

Verbally abusing and disrespecting the customers.

Many people are unemployed. Several haven’t received their salary. Where banks have imposed a comparative relaxation on its customers, RBI has some set of rules to collect the amount from loan defaulters, and hacking contact list and calling relatives is not one of them. 

Moreover, RBI has issued a moratorium on EMI because of lockdown for financial institutions. These apps are not financial institutions officially, but they lack morality.

Strict actions against this immoral behavior are awaited now that the issue is out in public. These online loan apps are shamelessly harassing their customers which is not just immoral but illegal too. Now that people are helping each other in this tough time, these ‘companies’ should be considerable too.

Tanishka Patidar
"Serving humanity & scratching words to feed the soul" Tanishka is the Co-Founder of Indian Achievers Story. This lover of pen and poetry is also a social worker.