Bondora, TrustPilot and the fake reviews...
Dec 19, 2017 18:16:40 GMT
JamesFrance, ozboy, and 4 more like this
Post by pedrolopes on Dec 19, 2017 18:16:40 GMT
Greetings,
I still have an account in Bondora, I don't deposit any money anymore, but I don't withdraw either (mostly because the money is invested in loans that are irrecoverable or that will take a very long time to recover)... However, with the intention of helping any new investor that could still not be aware of the situation regarding Bondora, I decided to write a review of Bondora at TrustPilot.com. The review was accepted by the TrustPilot team, a few days later bondora answered my review, later that day my review was taken down (obviously my review was negative), I tried again, this time I wrote a review with an even less "controversial" language, but still, my second review got taken down because bondora complained to Trustpilot about the review, again... However, if you look at Bondoras Score at Trustpilot you will see that Bondora has a 4 start classification, and you will also notice that most reviews are awkwardly upbeat and short, just as if had been written by Bondora employees using fake accounts (or their own personal google and facebook accounts), clearly experient bondora users will never give bondora such nice reviews.
If bondora workers spent the same amount of energy pursuing delinquent borrowers that they spend polishing their image on Trustpilot, perhaps the number of defaults would not be so high.
this is a warning that I leave to all the new investors: do not believe the online reviews in sites like trustpilot of other of that kind, because those reviews are completely inaccurate.
by the way, this was my second review:
to which bondora replied with this:
I wish more people would write honest reviews about bondora, maybe, at some point, they will give up erasing reviews.
I still have an account in Bondora, I don't deposit any money anymore, but I don't withdraw either (mostly because the money is invested in loans that are irrecoverable or that will take a very long time to recover)... However, with the intention of helping any new investor that could still not be aware of the situation regarding Bondora, I decided to write a review of Bondora at TrustPilot.com. The review was accepted by the TrustPilot team, a few days later bondora answered my review, later that day my review was taken down (obviously my review was negative), I tried again, this time I wrote a review with an even less "controversial" language, but still, my second review got taken down because bondora complained to Trustpilot about the review, again... However, if you look at Bondoras Score at Trustpilot you will see that Bondora has a 4 start classification, and you will also notice that most reviews are awkwardly upbeat and short, just as if had been written by Bondora employees using fake accounts (or their own personal google and facebook accounts), clearly experient bondora users will never give bondora such nice reviews.
If bondora workers spent the same amount of energy pursuing delinquent borrowers that they spend polishing their image on Trustpilot, perhaps the number of defaults would not be so high.
this is a warning that I leave to all the new investors: do not believe the online reviews in sites like trustpilot of other of that kind, because those reviews are completely inaccurate.
by the way, this was my second review:
Stay away from this company
If you are an investor: stay away from this company.
They have a track-record of incompetence that has made many investors lose thousands of euros of capital with the 2014/2015 Spanish loans and the forgotten Slovakian loans (that bondora does not mention in their site anymore), in the case of the Slovakian loans the percentage of total irrecoverable defaults was so high that Bondora simply had to pull out of that market, and pretend that it was never there.
The reason for such a high rate of defaults was due to the fact that many borrowers used fake personal information (including fake identities) to obtain loans from bondora.
Bondora remained aware of this situation for over a year, before changing their methods of id verification.
Now there has been some attempts to recover some defaulted loans, but the legal fees and costs from the collection agencies fees eat away, in some cases, more than half of the remaining unpaid capital, which is discounted from the amount recovered, making the debt collection process very expensive for the lenders, that lose money even when the recovery process is successful.
If you want to know what real investors think about Bondora check out the forums specialized in discussing P2P independent forums.
PS: this is the second review I made about Bondora, they reported my last review on the base of a technicality, just goes to show how they operate.
If you are an investor: stay away from this company.
They have a track-record of incompetence that has made many investors lose thousands of euros of capital with the 2014/2015 Spanish loans and the forgotten Slovakian loans (that bondora does not mention in their site anymore), in the case of the Slovakian loans the percentage of total irrecoverable defaults was so high that Bondora simply had to pull out of that market, and pretend that it was never there.
The reason for such a high rate of defaults was due to the fact that many borrowers used fake personal information (including fake identities) to obtain loans from bondora.
Bondora remained aware of this situation for over a year, before changing their methods of id verification.
Now there has been some attempts to recover some defaulted loans, but the legal fees and costs from the collection agencies fees eat away, in some cases, more than half of the remaining unpaid capital, which is discounted from the amount recovered, making the debt collection process very expensive for the lenders, that lose money even when the recovery process is successful.
If you want to know what real investors think about Bondora check out the forums specialized in discussing P2P independent forums.
PS: this is the second review I made about Bondora, they reported my last review on the base of a technicality, just goes to show how they operate.
to which bondora replied with this:
Hi Pedro,
Thanks for your comments, we are sorry to hear that you are not happy with Bondora.
Bondora now has a 10-year track record with a total of €110M invested through the platform and 8 out of 10 of our investors earn over 9% per annum.
While it is correct that we issued loans in Slovakia in the past, we withdrew from this market as it did not fit our business model and we decided to focus on the countries we already operate in, which are Estonia, Finland and Spain.
Last month, we published 4 blog posts related to collection and recoveries, including the status of loans previously issued in Slovakia. You can find these here:
www.bondora.com/blog/3-step-collection-and-recovery-process/
www.bondora.com/blog/how-much-cash-is-recovered-in-each-stage-of-the-process/
www.bondora.com/blog/snapshot-of-the-recovery-process-stages-november-2017/
www.bondora.com/blog/average-recovery-rate-for-2014-2017-is-47-2/
We are happy to go through your existing portfolio with you in depth if you have any outstanding concerns, so please get in touch on investor@bondora.com and let us know when you are next available for a call. We will be looking out for your email.
Team Bondora
Thanks for your comments, we are sorry to hear that you are not happy with Bondora.
Bondora now has a 10-year track record with a total of €110M invested through the platform and 8 out of 10 of our investors earn over 9% per annum.
While it is correct that we issued loans in Slovakia in the past, we withdrew from this market as it did not fit our business model and we decided to focus on the countries we already operate in, which are Estonia, Finland and Spain.
Last month, we published 4 blog posts related to collection and recoveries, including the status of loans previously issued in Slovakia. You can find these here:
www.bondora.com/blog/3-step-collection-and-recovery-process/
www.bondora.com/blog/how-much-cash-is-recovered-in-each-stage-of-the-process/
www.bondora.com/blog/snapshot-of-the-recovery-process-stages-november-2017/
www.bondora.com/blog/average-recovery-rate-for-2014-2017-is-47-2/
We are happy to go through your existing portfolio with you in depth if you have any outstanding concerns, so please get in touch on investor@bondora.com and let us know when you are next available for a call. We will be looking out for your email.
Team Bondora
I wish more people would write honest reviews about bondora, maybe, at some point, they will give up erasing reviews.
) It seems Bondora started doing some fake negative reviews to discredit the real negative reviews... for example this one: 
