Agreed, but the complex ones are the ones that tend to go to court.

You will get no argument from me to suggest that these moneylenders do anything except prey on vulnerable (read poor, stupid, desperate as the mood takes you).

I don't think that the APRs are worth mentioning because the whole calculation is meaningless on low value, short-term deals. The simple fact is that at that end of the market, risk is a lot higher than on "respectable" lending.

Sadly, the mentality that it will be ok to rip off the lender just means that more banks won't lend at all, so the moneylenders advertise on prime-time tv and suck in more and more people who borrow from each of them in turn to pay off the last, and pawnbrokers get back into the game, holding on to granny's wedding ring till they get their pound of flesh.

When I started, I mainly dealt with consumer finance and even as an 18 year old I couldn't understand the mentality of taking out a 3 year loan to pay for this year's holiday.

Back then, we still had credit controls with minimum deposits for different kinds of assets - we used to joke about having a lot of 4-wheel furniture driving around, but in many ways it is a pity that we don't have the controls any more - I suspect that the current financial crisis would never have happened.