Payday loan customers are being urged to "fight back" if they have been mistreated by a lender by taking their complaint to the ombudsman.

Citizens Advice said borrowers in three quarters of the payday loan cases it examined could have grounds to approach the financial ombudsman service (FOS). The charity launched a month-long campaign today calling for payday customers "not to let predatory lenders get away with treating them unfairly". Citizens Advice analysed 665 payday loan cases reported to its consumer service in the first half of this year and found that one in five were possible cases of fraud, where someone was being chased for a loan they had never taken out. More than one third of the cases involved lenders using a type of recurring payment called a continuous payment authority to drain people's bank accounts of cash without warning and in 12pc of cases lenders pestered people with phone calls and texts rather than accept offers of payments that borrowers could afford.....Read more here