niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Oct 22, 2014 12:22:48 GMT
Well new site certainly seems to be be very active in buying and selling. I've 142 transactions in just over 24 hours! I can just imagine the size of transaction statement I'll need to check if I'm offline for a week or two. But I have managed to pick up assortments of less-commonly-available loans so helping adjust my portfolio balance. (But I hope only from willing sellers!)
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niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Oct 22, 2014 11:39:22 GMT
no doubt the system is accurate and fair, but buying in 1p portions is a little silly. Perhaps a minimum of £1 allocations with a queuing system would be more sensible? Or in £10 allocations, spread randomly among the interested lenders. Less than £10 is not worth the bother, and is financially insignificant, and just generates massive volumes of transactions to scroll through.
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niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Oct 22, 2014 9:24:51 GMT
I'm a keen supporter of AC, and tell friends and colleagues about it, but this new website is abysmal. Ironic that the home page show someone using a typical widescreen laptop when this is a format which is quite unsuitable what with the large fonts and need frequently to scroll down to see what you need. It's not too bad on a desktop, but certainly no improvement over the old site, although of course I do understand that some functional changes were needed anyway. So now I have at least three websites which seem to have been spoiled, namely AC, RateSetter and Santander, all with the same problem when it comes to oversize fonts and too much scrolling. Fortunately HSBC has not yet joined the club. No doubt the idea is to accommodate fat fingers on tablets, but do people really do serious financial transactions on such devices as a matter of routine? If so, I'm amazed! Around 20% of our traffic is mobile / tablet, and it's increasing all the time. That's actually relatively low for the web as a whole. UX refinements will be made continuously and we have a new UX expert joining the team full time tomorrow. So if you can tell if the display device is a tablet or a pc can't you tailor the display a bit accordingly?
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niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Oct 22, 2014 8:45:44 GMT
Can we have a filter option to view those loans opted out/opted in? And, more importantly, *** does "opt out" do ? There's no obvious indication, and with the AI being out of control, I don't know whether to test it and see. "W**d Gr**n" - I have a button "Remove From Opt Out". I don't like no double negatives, but -- I never put it in an opt out. How can I remove it? What is an opt out? I have a holding in this and accrued interest. "Angle***" has a "Test Opt Out" and "Remove From Opt Out". What am I testing? Is this the "Press to test"/"Release to detonate" user interface I heard about? "Scott*** Proper***" has no opt out button at all. Whatever. Where is the manual that was created for this new website? I need to read this, pronto. Also on the "table view", there's no way to see accrued interest any more, you have to go to detail view which is painful to pick through. I don't think there's any way to export these tables/views. Maybe this is the intention. Make it so hard that people give up? We've been waiting months for this new website, on the promise that all the confusing "display errors" and "accounting errors" will be sorted out by it. I'm not seeing it. If anything it's got worse. Even agreed fixes from before the website change haven't been done. My interest for the year figure is a joke: I'm glad we've finally got a figure showing interest earned (it was a secret before) but it can't be trusted. My account total is off by hundreds. If calculating and displaying my holding in a loan, and the interest on it, is too hard, then something's fundamentally broken. The amount of time spent in chasing all these errors (through Q&A, on here, by email) cannot be worthwhile. I've lost track of entire loans from the old site where there are STILL supposed to be cashbacks and compensations owing that haven't been paid. It is becoming Funding Circle, part 2. NOBODY WANTS THAT! I'm becoming Old_Grumpy, part 2. I DON'T WANT THAT (No offence, OG!) As it happens I entered "Test opt out" on Anglesey Bridging Loan, and it now shows me "Test opt out ... Remove from Opt-out", so I wonder if you're seeing my test opt out message.
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niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Oct 21, 2014 22:00:24 GMT
But 7% isn't particularly encouraging in my book. So not for me. There are greener fields elsewhere even within AC. Indeed. It may prove a tough sell at 7% compared to the existing wind turbine deals on offer. We'll have to wait and see what incentives there are.
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niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Oct 21, 2014 21:12:57 GMT
Surely when a loan principal repayment is made on an amortizing loan it should reduce the target at the same time.
I think that is the most intuitive way to operate and what one would naturally expect to happen.
Hopefully AC will make this change in the next week or two.
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niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Oct 21, 2014 16:48:26 GMT
Well done on finally getting the new site in. The world hasn't ended, and Chris has been very responsive, and hopefully most of the issues will soon be rectified. I was surprised that nobody noticed that sales and purchases weren't on the statement (now fixed - thanks very much).
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niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Oct 21, 2014 16:27:22 GMT
Just visited site and omg what is this. Nice new graphics but everything is so spaced out meaning continuous scrolling and the important info you used to see on dashboard page has gone to menu options/links. I don't use a wide-screen normally and much scrolling is still needed and on my other pc with a wide-screen it is horrendous and so time consuming to use. I understand what you are doing with losing the auction/bidding setup and moving the bidder away from the loan parts but I am really put be off using the site as frequently as I used to now. Hopefully so layout tweaks will be coming! Perhaps something can be added so that the system can detect whether it'd displaying on a pc, tablet or phone and adjust it's layout accordingly.
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niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Oct 21, 2014 16:22:56 GMT
The problem derives from the fact that the target set in the MAI does not track the loan principle as the repayments are made, not huge issue when loan parts were £100, but now that loans can be micro-sliced the MAI will be attempting to purchase micro-slices each time a repayment is made on the principle. So if put £10,000 in as your target the MAI will attempt to maintain your holding at £10,000, however in theory this could mean as the loan comes to its end you could find yourself holding 100% of the loan. This was combated in the old AI by having a maximum % holding in addition to the value holding but this seems to have disappeared in the MAI. That is probably part of the problem, but not all. If you want to increase your holding by a substantial amount, and somebody decides to sell £100 (or even less) and there are 200 or 300 people with it on their wish list, you'll still get shrapnel. It's a noble attempt to be fair. And it does give an indication of loan movements. But it might generate a lot smaller volume of transactions if the system, when demand for a particular loan far exceeded supply, simply randomly allocated £10 each to lenders until the supply was exhausted, with some getting lucky and some not. This would avoid a lot of financially insignificant chaff clogging up our statements, and the AC database. And if the interest ever needed to be fixed it would make things a lot easier.
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niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Oct 21, 2014 14:13:22 GMT
Thanks
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niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Oct 21, 2014 13:55:19 GMT
1. I notice that I'm opted out of loans where I've set an investment target of £0. But I don't want to be opted out - I'm just trying to sell my current holding to pay for something else. I don't want to opt out of a loan unless I actually specify. 2. The "Opted-out" heading in the detail loan listing, just sitting there without anything underneath it, makes me think I'm Opted-out of a loan. If I'm not opted-out there should be the word "In" underneath it.
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niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Oct 21, 2014 12:28:27 GMT
well I managed to buy it according to the system (now in my loans and no longer available for sale). I might try selling it again as I was never particularly interested in this one. But then again, if I hold onto it I might remain the only person ever to have bought a 35p loan unit on AC. Ah I wasn't thinking straight. If you set your target higher than £1 then it would hoover up anything available. My target for Coventry Serviced Office Loan is £200 more than my current investment, and I've cash in Manual account, but the system has not purchased the 17p it says is available.
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niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Oct 21, 2014 12:16:13 GMT
Not showing all loans in a single scrolling list is more preparation for when we have many more loans on the site as it will eventually become completely impractical, and that limit will be different for different users. I'll see about increasing the number show per page to double what's currently there. Chris, perhaps a dropdown menu with a (remembered) choice of loans per page from 10 to say 200 (or whatever limit you feel your software can accommodate) - this should then keep both the scroll and click brigades happy. Would also like to see the Loan Book headers (and in fact all the large headers) compressed, or at least the option to have it compressed. But more importantly, where have the buttons to download the Loans data as xls/csv disappeared to? Perhaps some options on the user profile page for preferred number of loans per page. Advanced users could then easily customise it for themselves.
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niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Oct 21, 2014 12:14:18 GMT
Given that quite a lot has changed, so far found it surprisingly easy to navigate my way around. I had avoided Essex BL, but since there was a loan unit for 35p apparently available, out of curiosity I decided to buy it....... How does one get a 35p loan unit ? I like the new filters (at least I believe they are new). Quite intuitive. There's an arbitrary limit of £1 as a minimum investment so I'm not sure you can buy it. I may remove that limit though as the system should cope down to 1p and you can earn interest as usual on that. You could allow the last remnant of a loan be hoovered up, just to keep things tidy.
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niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Oct 21, 2014 12:03:09 GMT
Going one step further back on the philosophy, do we take it that auctions and bidding have ceased to exist and the live and accepted bids reports are an anomaly to cope with the transition from the old system, and as such in the manual system it will just be a case of setting what you want MI to pick up if an when there is anything to for it pick up given that there appears to be no visible/separate secondary market. Yes. No auctions, no bids, and those reports are an anomaly to cope during the transition. Loss of crowd due diligence with the loss of auctions may be something we come to regret. Also, although auctions have proved to cause sometimes too long delays before interest is earned, it does allow one to stake a claim to the more attractive loans, which underwriters might be tempted to keep to themselves.
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