Poll - how was the launch?

Unfortunately andrewholgate I have had to select 'very bad' as there isn't the option to I need, namely 'Drove me to seriously consider withdrawing from the platform' which is the current position I am in and unless the Statement issue and the Auto invest issue are resolved pretty quickly or there is a clear statement of intent with details of what AC intend doing rather than holding wish washy polls to cover their backsides on a fundamental error of judgement and with definite timescales (not that AC are renowned for keeping to timescales) my money will be exiting the platform. As of last night I took the decision to make no further transfers of money in to AC, any outstanding bids being settled from sales of existing holdings and to cease reinvestment of repayments and interest pending the outcome of these killer issues that are core to the platform. The next stage being to make a phased withdrawal from the platform, followed by a straight sale and withdrawal.

To give this thread a bit more balance, I will say the following:

What I have now, if I understand it correctly, is better than what I had before.

Design aside (just as well), the ability to split loan 'parts' up and the change of practise when it comes to tying up funds pre-drawdown are both steps forward, and while I can understand peoples niggles about other aspects I personally feel that at least it's two steps forward one step back. And that step back can mostly be fixed or changed in the coming weeks - I don't think this is panic stations just yet.

I voted 'OK' - mostly because I don't have very strong feelings about it and feel it's fine. I don't expect to have complete control over my investments in cases like this, if I wanted complete control I would start my own group of investors and lend to businesses on terms tailored to my requirements exactly. But I use AC (and others) and so I cannot expect to have full control over every aspect of my money; there is an element of trust and also acceptance that not everything is customisable on every platform.

My main gripe is the search filters - but that comes with my above comment; it comes with the platform, which no-one is forcing me to use, and is an improvement on no filters.

I would also like to give this thread a bit more balance. Clearly the poll shows that a majority thought it was good, but as ever when it comes to comments in forums the negatives tend to dominate; that is just the way it is.

So I would like to say :

If I may give a bit more balance to the thread, I would suggest that my pre-announcing the purpose of this post as being to 'give more balance' to this thread don't necessarily make it so.

I simply do not understand how people can say that this was anything but an atrocious upgrade, andrewholgate and his team have unilaterally, without notification, consultation or my express consent taken it upon themselves to reverse my instructions to the platform both implicit and explicit, with the result that the platform has purchased loan parts which I neither wanted nor instructed it to buy and which as of this point I have do not appear to have been able to sell. On top of this we have chris repeatedly claiming that there is no change in functionality when there blatantly is.

If you want to do something as simple as buying loans and managing them in the way that you want as you could pre-upgrade it as become a horrendously complex and time consuming process:

Step One: Turn of automatic reinvestment of income by setting the Manual Lending Account (MLA) to 'Withdraw repayments and interest'.

Step Two: Check every single loan in your loan book to ensure that the Manual Auto Investment (MAI) target is set where you want it to be. i.e. equal to your holding if you don't want to buy more, less than your holding if you want to sell, and greater than your holding if you want to buy more. You will need a calculator for this as any adjustments have to be entered as an adjustment not the end target. At the same time keep a tally of the increases and decreases so that you know whether you will need to add funds to your MLA and if so by how much.

Step Three: Go to the loan book and make the appropriate adjustments to the MAI targets for the loans that you wish to make first time purchases of. Again keep a tally and add it to the total from Step Two, if this total is positive then this is the amount of funds that will be need to be added to the MLA.

Step Four: If there are insufficient funds in your Cash Account (CA) to cover the increased requirement in the MLA transfer go to Step Five, if there are sufficient funds transfer then from the CA to the MLA and wait for the process to happen. END

Step Five: Initiate the transfer funds from your bank and wait (several days) for the funds to arrive in your CA.

Step Six: Once the funds arrive go to Step Two.

Each time you want to make a purchase or a sale start the process at Step Two.

NB: Never undo Step One otherwise you could find yourself increasing your holding of loans that you don't want to increase your holds of.

Note I have not fully tested the process but this is how I believe the simple purchase of parts in a new loan works from the work I have done so far. With my current loan book and assuming sufficient funds on my CA I estimate about an hour to an hour and half should see me put a request in to purchase parts in a new loan and that is on top of the time taken to do my DD and made the decision to lake part in the loan. Obviously as my loan book grows (if I stick with the platform) this time will increase.

EDIT: Please note these process notes have been further refined, an up to date version can be found here: www.p2pindependentforum.com/post/26006