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Post by bonfemme on Sept 20, 2014 13:59:42 GMT
My partner and I have been investing in FC for more than three years now. I've talked my son, daughter and son-in-law into investing too. I've got more time than they have so when I've won multiple parts at decent rates, I've been endeavouring to sell them on to them to try and help them build a decent portfolio. At first this was at 0pc mark up, until I realised auto-bidders (I presumed) were snapping some of them up, so I started adding .3pc. I've now been foiled at this by Nikita*** who, for a few weeks now, has managed to cherry pick virtually everything I try to sell to them at a good rate. This is despite the fact I am hitting 'buy' a nano second after I hit 'sell'. This is obviously a computer programme because it's way past coincidence. I feel this is a grossly unfair and it's making me really angry. I've written to FC about it, but I'm wondering if anyone else has come across it and whether there's anything I can do to avoid this person nabbing all my best parts?
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Post by bracknellboy on Sept 20, 2014 14:04:51 GMT
My partner and I have been investing in FC for more than three years now. I've talked my son, daughter and son-in-law into investing too. I've got more time than they have so when I've won multiple parts at decent rates, I've been endeavouring to sell them on to them to try and help them build a decent portfolio. At first this was at 0pc mark up, until I realised auto-bidders (I presumed) were snapping some of them up, so I started adding .3pc. I've now been foiled at this by Nikita*** who, for a few weeks now, has managed to cherry pick virtually everything I try to sell to them at a good rate. This is despite the fact I am hitting 'buy' a nano second after I hit 'sell'. This is obviously a computer programme because it's way past coincidence. I feel this is a grossly unfair and it's making me really angry. I've written to FC about it, but I'm wondering if anyone else has come across it and whether there's anything I can do to avoid this person nabbing all my best parts? Have u thought about selling them at a higher premium so that they aren't cherry picked, and then giving your relations the premium back as a separate capital payment ? Would amount to the same thing would it not ?
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Post by goldservice on Sept 20, 2014 14:38:45 GMT
Months ago I tried using a 3% premium but it didn't deter the buy-bots. Transfers just aren't possible. I'll dig out my correspondence with FC on this ...
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Post by goldservice on Sept 20, 2014 14:41:38 GMT
In August 2014 I complained to FC about buy-bots but all they could suggest is that I put a 3% premium on the parts being sold. This was unhelpful advice as I had already told them that I was doing that and it didn’t deter the buy-bots.
I also complained about bid-bots and their DoS-type damage to auctions:
1 Me to FC:
You say "some investors whose bidding patterns may resemble the use of a script do not in fact utilise a script, but rather bid manually at an extremely high rate; it is possible to manually click the mouse button upwards of several hundred times per minute." Please tell me which button on the loan screen I should click on at such a high speed in order to bid as rapidly as that. If I click on the blue Bid button once, I cannot click on it again until 'My live bids' has been updated and the Bid button has returned to its darker colour. This makes it impossible to bid more than 1-3 times a second. What have I missed, please?
2 FC reply to me:
Both manual and script bidders are placing bids by clicking the same blue "Bid" button as yourself. There may be a slight variation on the speed at which this refreshes due to the speed of an individual investor's internet connection and computer, but materially every investor is subject to the same constraints as yourself.
Is this obfuscation from FC? What do the well-behaved scripters out there say?
So there is no prospect of being able to transfer parts between accounts. I console myself with the thought that one day nikita*** or whoever may want to transfer parts himself. At that point, he will wonder if there is another buy-bot out there, perhaps called n*m*s*s … !
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Post by oldatheist on Sept 20, 2014 15:17:08 GMT
The facts that these bots exist, enables many buyers to sell fast and keeps them happy. I can't see FC doing anything about this to satisfy a tiny number of members who want to do odd things like transfer holdings, if that has a negative effect on the 99.9% of people who just want to sell stuff as fast as possible.
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Post by goldservice on Sept 20, 2014 15:41:26 GMT
The facts that these bots exist, enables many buyers to sell fast and keeps them happy. I can't see FC doing anything about this to satisfy a tiny number of members who want to do odd things like transfer holdings, if that has a negative effect on the 99.9% of people who just want to sell stuff as fast as possible. Is it really that odd? Another account holder within a family may be paying a lower tax rate, so ... "the 99.9% of people who just want to sell stuff as fast as possible" - what about the 99% of people who want to buy stuff but don't have a buy-bot?
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Sept 20, 2014 16:09:36 GMT
2 FC reply to me: Both manual and script bidders are placing bids by clicking the same blue "Bid" button as yourself. There may be a slight variation on the speed at which this refreshes due to the speed of an individual investor's internet connection and computer, but materially every investor is subject to the same constraints as yourself. Is this obfuscation from FC? What do the well-behaved scripters out there say? I dunno if I am well behaved or not, but basically by doing a HTTP "POST" request to "https://www.fundingcircle.com/loan_requests/" + Auction_Ref + "/bids/", with appropriately set token, cookies, and data string, you can place a bid. You are not obliged to wait for a response - you can go totally asynchronous, which is actually the default for HTTP requests. If you do wait for a response you'll get a HTTP 201 "created" (or if you have no money, or auction closed or whatever, some 3xx or 4xx response) about 0.4 seconds later, but like I say, no real need to wait, your bid-bot can fire off a hundred from the same PC, or 100 separate PCs, it makes no odds, and sweep up the cr&p afterwards. Cr&p is mostly bids which got lost on the way, or money which got hung up while the server had a breakdown. Blue buttons, or indeed any colour buttons, are not required, but you can do it that way if you want an easy life .. all the button does is kick off (via Java script) the same HTTP request (and wait for a response, so it can say 'accepted'). Personally I wait for the "OK" to come back before bidding again, but then I'm not trying to place £10k in £100 pieces. During busy auctions bidding can/does time out (5 seconds is the point at which I give up).
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mikeb
Posts: 1,052 
Likes: 463
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Post by mikeb on Sept 20, 2014 18:52:55 GMT
... "some investors ... bid manually at an extremely high rate; it is possible to manually click the mouse button upwards of several hundred times per minute." This makes it impossible to bid more than 1-3 times a second. What have I missed, please? Dunno about several hundred. Maybe some special gamer-programmable-mouse thing that lets you click like a lunatic. What I do know is that, on an older version of the site, you could click "Bid" with the mouse, then hit "ESC" to stop the page refreshing, then hit "Enter" (with focus still on the Bid button", and ESC, Enter, ESC ... If you can do that, like a drummer, then you can batter bids in ... I don't think it still works, not felt the need to bid like a lunatic 
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Post by planetx on Sept 20, 2014 21:33:19 GMT
I was interested to read this thread as I didn't know that FC had an API. I agree with oldatheist. It's a pity that direct transfers aren't possible as it would be useful for the OP in this situation, but so far as I know FC have never indicated that transfers could be done on their platform. It's a marketplace, and I don't see anything unfair here; anyone is entitled to pay the asking price, bot or not.
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Sept 20, 2014 21:44:00 GMT
FC don't have an API .. well OK, they do, but it is only accessible via their IoS app. The planned closed beta release has yet to happen, and is now promised for 'not this year'.
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Post by planetx on Sept 20, 2014 22:29:47 GMT
Ah, OK. Not being at all knowledgeable in this area I had assumed that would be necessary in order to bid but I see you mention http requests in your post above. So I guess that means the bots are effectively outside the control of FC - are they explicitly allowed or is it a grey area?
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jimbo
Posts: 234
Likes: 42
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Post by jimbo on Sept 21, 2014 1:46:10 GMT
2 FC reply to me: Both manual and script bidders are placing bids by clicking the same blue "Bid" button as yourself. There may be a slight variation on the speed at which this refreshes due to the speed of an individual investor's internet connection and computer, but materially every investor is subject to the same constraints as yourself. Is this obfuscation from FC? What do the well-behaved scripters out there say? I've not currently got anything running on Funding Circle, but to me that reads as obfuscation/fobbing off for all the reasons GSV3MIaC has already gone into. If I'm logged into my account, all I'd need to do would be to have a loop coded that would keep sending whatever the HTTP request structure is that places a bid. The button on the web page is an irrelevance. It actually makes me quite angry that they responded to you in this way. Maybe that was the belief of their customer services representative at the time, but it's completely wrong.
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agent69
Member of DD Central
Posts: 5,603
Likes: 4,185
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Post by agent69 on Sept 21, 2014 8:27:18 GMT
I've got more time than they have So you complain that somebody has an advantage over you because they have a bid bot? You have an advantage over me because you have lots of spare time to bid, I have an advantage over the man down the road because I have superfast broad band and he only has dial up. That's life, there will always be inequality. Mark your loan parts up by 3%. If your relatives buy them then job done, if a bot buys them then be happy with the 3% you've just made.
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Sept 21, 2014 8:42:02 GMT
2.75% actually! However most, if not all, of the SM bid_bots are only buying to resell for a fast buck .. Writing a bid_bot for buy-to-hold would be ridiculous unless you plan to hold megapounds worth. Ergo most, if not all, SM bid_bots won't ever buy 3% markup parts.
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Post by pete100 on Sept 21, 2014 8:51:58 GMT
Appreciate that many customers dont like the bots and many customers do. However, the real issue on this thread is why FC wont allow transfers. Is it just technical, too much work or is there a valid business reason? Is there any change request mechanism with FC?
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