mason
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Post by mason on Feb 13, 2017 19:29:52 GMT
I don't like SS either, but it's not because of prefunding. As far as I'm aware, MT operates a one account per individual policy. Operating a financial account in a false name is fraud. MT will be taking steps to verify the identity of their customers as is their regulatory requirement, so it seems unlikely that anyone owns more than one account. I think you've slightly missed the point ... some households will be operating 3 or even 4 accounts ... his personal account, her personal account, their limited company (or possibly his and her limited companies). Accepted, but people are not gaming the system in that scenario, which seemed to be the implication. Each account is owned by a separate legal entity. If I did miss the point, then hopefully this is more on point: I don't really see any difference between two people who live together (and their limited companies) logging in for loan parts at 4 pm, and them both pre-funding. Or indeed just one of them operating the accounts and doing the same. Ed has expressed a desire for new loans to last for hours not minutes and it seems nobody wants new loans to be sold out within minutes. So how does the current system prevent 3-4 accounts in the same household getting 3-4 times the limit between them? It seems to me the only essential difference between prefunding and putting an appropriate limit on new loans is that prefunding enables people who cannot log in over a 24 hour period to participate. Not that I'm advocating prefunding above setting an appropriate bidding limit - I just don't think some of the arguments against hold any water.
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jonah
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Post by jonah on Feb 13, 2017 19:59:52 GMT
MoneyThing acknowledging there is a problem is the first, key step to fixing it. So you are off to a great start. Personally I've not aimed at any renewal opportunities recently as I know I won't get them. Maybe this will move the balance a little. I'm looking forward to whatever happens in terms of changes to the way the primary market works, as I hope it will let me invest a little more. Id also take the strong views of MT as a positive. People like MT and want to succeed with it. Silence is an indication of apathy which definitely it's not the case here.
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Post by MoneyThing on Feb 13, 2017 20:07:08 GMT
... I am sure lenders recognise that we will always try to implement systems that are fair & equitable .... I note your "fair and equitable" seems to only apply to those people who happen to have nothing to do at 4pm each day. What about the rest of the lending population? Right now, with an imbalance between lenders and borrowers, you can exist without such a system but that will not always be the case. If MT want to grow to a material size then limiting your lending base to only those who can participate at 4pm seems illogical. An order management system is clearly the correct solution. Moreover, it doesn't need to be the overly complex system that AC decided to deploy. Acknowledged and I believe we have already started discussions on this particular topic. As someone who I greatly admire (as do many others), on this forum for their thoughtful posts, I would be very appreciative if you might be willing to assist with the design of the system?
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Post by mrclondon on Feb 14, 2017 1:09:30 GMT
After a few more hours pondering this, I'm going to make myself unpopular by saying that given that moneything have said the weekend's more obvious bots were being driven by relatively new users, I have concluded that I have a lot of sympathy with said users. If they did indeed manage to get £25 of each art loan, they will in all likelihood still have far less invested in that borrower's loans than many lenders.
Like a few others have commented on here, I don't always bother chasing renewals, partly due to the effort involved for £25, and partly due to the fact in many loans I 'm already at my per borrower limit (generally four figure sums). Personally, I think the approach adopted by FS of preventing existing loan holders from increasing their stake on rollover beyond the new 24 hour limit is preferable. But in the absense of such an obvious "fair and equitable" policy, a new user is pretty much driven towards technological assistance to guarantee a slice of what availability there is on renewals.
The simplest solution to the conundrum posed in this thread is to remove visibility on the website to who has bid what and when. (Or if there is genuinely thought to be some value in showing bids being processed, to fully annonomise the lender identities. To my mind it just adds uneccessary server load processing such data and the display of such data could and should be removed).
MT need to steadily increase their lender base as other aspects of the business grow. New lenders to the platform who feel they need to resort to technology given the current FFF experience offered by the platform should not, in my opinion, be penalised.
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ilmoro
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'Wondering which of the bu***rs to blame, and watching for pigs on the wing.' - Pink Floyd
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Post by ilmoro on Feb 14, 2017 2:26:01 GMT
After a few more hours pondering this, I'm going to make myself unpopular by saying that given that moneything have said the weekend's more obvious bots were being driven by relatively new users, I have concluded that I have a lot of sympathy with said users. If they did indeed manage to get £25 of each art loan, they will in all likelihood still have far less invested in that borrower's loans than many lenders. Like a few others have commented on here, I don't always bother chasing renewals, partly due to the effort involved for £25, and partly due to the fact in many loans I 'm already at my per borrower limit (generally four figure sums). Personally, I think the approach adopted by FS of preventing existing loan holders from increasing their stake on rollover beyond the new 24 hour limit is preferable. But in the absense of such an obvious "fair and equitable" policy, a new user is pretty much driven towards technological assistance to guarantee a slice of what availability there is on renewals. The simplest solution to the conundrum posed in this thread is to remove visibility on the website to who has bid what and when. (Or if there is genuinely thought to be some value in showing bids being processed, to fully annonomise the lender identities. To my mind it just adds uneccessary server load processing such data and the display of such data could and should be removed). MT need to steadily increase their lender base as other aspects of the business grow. New lenders to the platform who feel they need to resort to technology given the current FFF experience offered by the platform should not, in my opinion, be penalised. Surely by extension if you dont penalise those new users who are willing and able to create and use bots, and break the T&Cs, you penalise those new users who dont or cant use bots, and abide by the T&Cs. At what point do new users cease to be new users, based on time or holding, and will they consider such a cut off point to be fair. I dont quite see how removing visibility of purchases solves the problem, it will still be evident if loan parts get snapped up at improbable speeds. That is what prompted people to review the purchases and note the familiar names and the overlapping purchases. Much the same happened on SS. People noted the speed of sales and then tried to identify culprits. I agree that the FS approach would be a part solution when it comes to renewals (hence posting as such above) but that would still leave the issue of bots on the SM. The alternative to attempting to limit bots is to place limits on SM sales as is done on the primary market but that has its own complications and consequences.
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elliotn
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Post by elliotn on Feb 14, 2017 2:45:50 GMT
So someone running 3 accounts get pre-funded 3 times as much as me without any effort. Seems fair. I like MT as it is and don't like SS. I don't like SS either, but it's not because of prefunding. As far as I'm aware, MT operates a one account per individual policy. Operating a financial account in a false name is fraud. MT will be taking steps to verify the identity of their customers as is their regulatory requirement, so it seems unlikely that anyone owns more than one account. They open the account with the family member's ID and then run themselves, many people openly admit it on here and can then get multiple bid limits on MT and settle loan parts on SS. One forum member (who shall remain nameless) boasted of running 5, more typical is 3 ie self/company/partner. That is fraud without power of attorney provided to the platform and in contravention of T&Cs ie fair usage of platform and being the named account holder. Edit - crossed with mrclondon (chronologically reading again)
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mason
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Post by mason on Feb 14, 2017 7:49:08 GMT
They open the account with the family member's ID and then run themselves, many people openly admit it on here and can then get multiple bid limits on MT and settle loan parts on SS. One forum member (who shall remain nameless) boasted of running 5, more typical is 3 ie self/company/partner. That is fraud without power of attorney provided to the platform and in contravention of T&Cs ie fair usage of platform and being the named account holder. What's more, as soon as the money is transferred into an account that is not legally owned by them, it is no longer their money. So they are risking the account being frozen by MT on one hand, but they are also risking the person who legally owns the account finding out and deciding they would quite like to claim the account and its contents for themselves. So let's hope these individuals have very strong relationships with those whose identities they are exploiting for personal gain.
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SteveT
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Post by SteveT on Feb 14, 2017 8:23:04 GMT
I think this thread is slightly losing perspective. The issue flared up after a scrap over a few tiny bits of renewal loans, minuscule in the context of the wider MT loan book. MT already has fair allocation processes for all of its new loans (24 hour and now 48 hour bid limits) which are working well. And there's already thinking as to what might need to come next if/when demand goes exponential (ie. pre-bidding / pre-allocation of some sort).
Personally I have no problem if a computer-savvy user decides to automate the placing of their 4pm bid for a new loan, saving them the need to do it in person. I wish I was computer-savvy enough to do it myself (sadly, I'm not) but I could achieve the same thing by asking one of my kids to log in at 4pm and place my bid for me. Provided that bid limits are set sensibly, it would afford me no competitive advantage over other MT lenders.
So the issue comes back to renewals, where demand is often likely to be 10x / 100x / 1000x more than is available. For these, it would seem fair to me if: a) the bid limit takes account of rolled-over holdings in that loan (as per FS), so later arrivals get a better look in b) a velocity restriction is applied on multiple bids being placed, reducing the chances of one lender succeeding across multiple small renewals simultaneously (I don't really care how fast their first bid is placed, but after that they could be limited to, say, 1 bid per 5 seconds)
Regarding the SM, if transaction logs reveal a lender who repeatedly is much faster than others in responding when parts appear (and they're not simply cross-buying from a "related" account) then I'd support a formal warning, followed by an anti-bot sanction if the warning is ignored. The best approach IMO would be to add ReCaptcha verification to their account only for a period, given that's exactly what ReCaptcha is for, but a velocity restriction might also work.
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jamesc
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Post by jamesc on Feb 14, 2017 10:26:23 GMT
I don't like SS either, but it's not because of prefunding. As far as I'm aware, MT operates a one account per individual policy. Operating a financial account in a false name is fraud. MT will be taking steps to verify the identity of their customers as is their regulatory requirement, so it seems unlikely that anyone owns more than one account. They open the account with the family member's ID and then run themselves, many people openly admit it on here and can then get multiple bid limits on MT and settle loan parts on SS. One forum member (who shall remain nameless) boasted of running 5, more typical is 3 ie self/company/partner. That is fraud without power of attorney provided to the platform and in contravention of T&Cs ie fair usage of platform and being the named account holder. Edit - crossed with mrclondon (chronologically reading again) I object to what you have said MOST STRONGLY just because I opened an account on behalf of my wife and place bids on her behalf am I now a criminal ?
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elliotn
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Post by elliotn on Feb 14, 2017 11:44:00 GMT
They open the account with the family member's ID and then run themselves, many people openly admit it on here and can then get multiple bid limits on MT and settle loan parts on SS. One forum member (who shall remain nameless) boasted of running 5, more typical is 3 ie self/company/partner. That is fraud without power of attorney provided to the platform and in contravention of T&Cs ie fair usage of platform and being the named account holder. Edit - crossed with mrclondon (chronologically reading again) I object to what you have said MOST STRONGLY just because I opened an account on behalf of my wife and place bids on her behalf am I now a criminal ? 1 If it were fraud, YES OF COURSE (although I lazily recycled that from an earlier post); 2 You are certainly BREAKING MOST T&Cs where they state clearly the user must be the named account holder (although some do allow you to submit legal power of attorney); 3 You would almost certainly contravene FAIR USAGE were you to use your own funds to get multiple allocations thereby depriving other legitimate lenders. Edit - 4 Were you also to use a third person's account for tax evasion that would make you a CRIMINAL.
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jamesc
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Post by jamesc on Feb 14, 2017 12:25:01 GMT
I object to what you have said MOST STRONGLY just because I opened an account on behalf of my wife and place bids on her behalf am I now a criminal ? 1 If it were fraud, YES OF COURSE (although I lazily recycled that from an earlier post); 2 You are certainly BREAKING MOST T&Cs where they state clearly the user must be the named account holder (although some do allow you to submit legal power of attorney); 3 You would almost certainly contravene FAIR USAGE were you to use your own funds to get multiple allocations thereby depriving other legitimate lenders. Edit - 4 Were you also to use a third person's account for tax evasion that would make you a CRIMINAL. Now you are being downright LIBELLOUS in your response
1. Why am I committing FRAUD ?
2. I would not be breaking any T&Cs ?
3 Why would I be contravening FAIR USAGE ?
4.Why would I be committing TAX EVASION ?
The only CRIMINAL is you for making LIBELLOUS STATEMENTS
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markw
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Post by markw on Feb 14, 2017 12:46:15 GMT
1 If it were fraud, YES OF COURSE (although I lazily recycled that from an earlier post); 2 You are certainly BREAKING MOST T&Cs where they state clearly the user must be the named account holder (although some do allow you to submit legal power of attorney); 3 You would almost certainly contravene FAIR USAGE were you to use your own funds to get multiple allocations thereby depriving other legitimate lenders. Edit - 4 Were you also to use a third person's account for tax evasion that would make you a CRIMINAL. Now you are being downright LIBELLOUS in your response
1. Why am I committing FRAUD ?
2. I would not be breaking any T&Cs ?
3 Why would I be contravening FAIR USAGE ?
4.Why would I be committing TAX EVASION ?
The only CRIMINAL is you for making LIBELLOUS STATEMENTS
Making libellous statements isn't criminal. I think you both need to get a grip. Can I suggest a moderator delete these last few posts?
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star dust
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Post by star dust on Feb 14, 2017 12:54:01 GMT
Mod Hat On/
I think this has gone far enough, can we have fisticuffs down please or we will have to intervene more strongly. You may vehemently disagree but please remember the forum rule of being polite and constructive. Thanks.
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bg
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Post by bg on Feb 14, 2017 13:01:18 GMT
You've just got to look to the computer games industry to find that defeating bots isn't going to happen, they've been fighting them for years with whole buildings full of developers. So why not supply the bots? That way everyone will be on a level playing field. I think this post nails it. MT now seem to be descending down a route of wasting a load of time and resources on implementing checks and guards against so called bots that is going to almost certainly mistakenly catch out number of manual bidders (for various reasons) and massively complicate the rules of what is currently an easy to use platform. Once these new rules come in, bot users will adapt which will lead to more complaints and further changes and it will be a never ending cycle wasting resources and time that is best devoted elsewhere. This is going to be the first of dozens of similar threads as these new rules come in. Fact is, if there were a few more chunky loans paying 10%+ then nobody would care about missing a £25 clip on a loan. There would be plenty to go round. I would much prefer MT focused their time on bringing in new loans. I personally don't have a problem with someone using a script to place a bid for them at 4pm (i haven't myself), sitting there waiting for 4pm to place a bid does seem a great waste of time for a lot of people. It's not 'fair' that i'm not available to bid at that time most days. Also, I can't understand the furore over loan clips of £25. The interest earned for a 6 month holding of this loan part would be £1.50. Is it really worth anyones time?
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jamesc
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Post by jamesc on Feb 14, 2017 13:11:09 GMT
Now you are being downright LIBELLOUS in your response
1. Why am I committing FRAUD ?
2. I would not be breaking any T&Cs ?
3 Why would I be contravening FAIR USAGE ?
4.Why would I be committing TAX EVASION ?
The only CRIMINAL is you for making LIBELLOUS STATEMENTS
Making libellous statements isn't criminal. I think you both need to get a grip. Can I suggest a moderator delete these last few posts? And nor is tax planning between Husband and wife to ensure the best use of tax allowances are made.
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