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Post by chris on Nov 5, 2014 16:11:29 GMT
If it's going back to your cash account then you've tried to withdraw funds from you manual loan investment account that weren't covered (entirely) by cash and therefore set a withdraw target. The system then tries to sell loan units to meet your withdraw request. Will you be making a change to prevent this happening inadvertently (please) Already have and posted above saying so. For the avoidance of doubt the system will no longer automatically sell any loan units in the manual investment account if you ask it to withdraw funds. You'll have to sell them yourself or wait for repayments to come in to hit that withdraw target.
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unmadem
Member of DD Central
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Post by unmadem on Nov 5, 2014 16:15:13 GMT
Most software companies/IT departments would have sacked those responsible by now. I have been critical of various aspects of the rollout but I do think that is well over the top and also in my opinion inaccurate.
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niceguy37
Member of DD Central
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Post by niceguy37 on Nov 5, 2014 16:34:38 GMT
Did any analysis of how the old system operated, and how investors used it, take place before the new system was designed? The evidence suggests not. Most software companies/IT departments would have sacked those responsible by now. And issued an apology - very noticeable in its continuing absence after more than 10 days of this fiasco. Is anyone going to own up and admit to the lack of professionalism evidenced? It's this kind of post that makes me start to wonder why we bother engaging on the forum at all. I've taken responsibility at every turn where we've messed up, explained my (our) thinking where I can, and apologised in several threads for those mistakes. Of course we looked at how investors were using the system before. We're also trying to branch out into new types of users and the new systems have been written with that very much in mind but with modifications to try and keep as many existing lenders happy as we can. The vast majority of issues we've had since launch have been where our thinking has clashed with our lender's thinking, rather than the software not working as designed, and we've been as responsive as we can be in trying to adapt our thinking, modify our systems, and make everything work how you expect. If you don't like what we're doing, the direction the site is taking, the way we're responding, etc. then you're going to have to take your investment elsewhere. I want everyone to think of our platform as the best out there, the place to do business, and the one they'd recommend to friends and family. In order to get there and be the best we're taking risks to move the platform, and the market, forward. This will become more evident when you see what we're doing with the automated accounts and products such as the green product. They may not be for you but they will open the site up to a wider audience. We're going to get things wrong occasionally, you can't make sweeping changes with any kind of speed without making mistakes. This new site represents roughly an 80% rewrite of the site laying the foundations for the next couple of years of innovation, and we have an ambitious upgrade plan for that period. But the vast majority builds upon these foundations rather than overhauls them so even the change adverse shouldn't get left behind as the parts of the site they're using and are happy with are going to be augmented rather than changed, and the majority of changes will be opt-in rather than essential. In supporting that change we're starting a technical blog on the site which will detail changes as they're launched and we plan to continue making ourselves available on this forum for constructive discussion, support and feedback. Speaking for myself, and I would hope a large silent majority, I'd like to say thanks for engaging with us on this forum, which is so much better than the interaction from some of the other P2x platforms. I hope the two-way discussions have helped AC & it's lenders understand each other better, and I've been impressed with the speed of response of many of the patches that have been applied.
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Neil
Posts: 40
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Post by Neil on Nov 5, 2014 16:46:25 GMT
Did any analysis of how the old system operated, and how investors used it, take place before the new system was designed? The evidence suggests not. Most software companies/IT departments would have sacked those responsible by now. And issued an apology - very noticeable in its continuing absence after more than 10 days of this fiasco. Is anyone going to own up and admit to the lack of professionalism evidenced? I received an e-mail (and I'm assuming everyone else did) from AC on the 30th October (6 days ago) and that included the following words - "and we apologise for any inconvenience caused". I won't post anymore from the e-mail as it says at the bottom not to copy it. Just felt I should post that part as you're making allegations that aren't strictly true.
Many companies would run a mile from engaging with their customers on a forum such as this. You have to give credit to AC for being here and engaging with us. Especially chris.
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Post by westcountryfunder on Nov 5, 2014 16:48:33 GMT
Most software companies/IT departments would have sacked those responsible by now. I have been critical of various aspects of the rollout but I do think that is well over the top and also in my opinion inaccurate. Me too. Various things I haven't liked and still don't, but I am getting used to the new site slowly. Perhaps too much was attempted all in one bang and therefore the mental adjustment we all have had to make has been rather too much. By way of comparison FC has made some minor changes in the last few days which seem pointless to me, but with plenty of warning and simple enough to grasp. Never thought I would be praising FC for their website! Keep up the hard work AC but perhaps in not so much of a rush.
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Post by chris on Nov 5, 2014 17:03:38 GMT
I have been critical of various aspects of the rollout but I do think that is well over the top and also in my opinion inaccurate. Me too. Various things I haven't liked and still don't, but I am getting used to the new site slowly. Perhaps too much was attempted all in one bang and therefore the mental adjustment we all have had to make has been rather too much. By way of comparison FC has made some minor changes in the last few days which seem pointless to me, but with plenty of warning and simple enough to grasp. Never thought I would be praising FC for their website! Keep up the hard work AC but perhaps in not so much of a rush. Once the products are launched the pace will slow somewhat as commercial pressures will have been eased.
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merlin
Minor shareholder in Assetz and many other companies.
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Post by merlin on Nov 5, 2014 17:31:01 GMT
Did any analysis of how the old system operated, and how investors used it, take place before the new system was designed? The evidence suggests not. Most software companies/IT departments would have sacked those responsible by now. And issued an apology - very noticeable in its continuing absence after more than 10 days of this fiasco. Is anyone going to own up and admit to the lack of professionalism evidenced? It is all too easy to blame the IT guys when systems screw-up this this one has done but usually it is management who should be blamed. After all it is management that commission these systems and therefore have a duty to follow its development through each and every one of its development stages and finally sign off when ready to launch on the users. If they are not involved it must be their choice to not get involved and as client money lies at the centre of the system, management can only be seen as negligent in its duties.
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mikes1531
Member of DD Central
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Post by mikes1531 on Nov 5, 2014 17:40:02 GMT
It could be you double clicked the button instead of single clicking. This is the sort of thing that worries me most about the new system, though similar problems may have existed in the old system and I just was blissfully unaware of the potential pitfalls. I consider a system to be considerably less than ideal if something as simple as a typo or a double-click instead of a click can have such significant consequences. Some mistakes are reversible, but this is particularly a problem if the consequences are irreversible, such as if units in a popular loan are sold unintentionally. I appreciate the change that chris has made today to prevent investors accidentally triggering the sale of units by requesting a withdrawal of more cash than they had in their account. And I appreciate earlier changes that have been made in an attempt to make clearer the consequences of actions about to be taken, such as changes to targets. But it's rather inevitable that people will make mistakes. Some will be the result of fat fingers, and others will be caused by a lack of understanding of what they are doing. Hopefully the system can be adjusted to make such occurrences rare, and the impacts minimal. Perhaps the changes made so far are sufficient. We can hope.
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Post by chris on Nov 5, 2014 17:42:42 GMT
It could be you double clicked the button instead of single clicking. This is the sort of thing that worries me most about the new system, though similar problems may have existed in the old system and I just was blissfully unaware of the potential pitfalls. I consider a system to be considerably less than ideal if something as simple as a typo or a double-click instead of a click can have such significant consequences. Some mistakes are reversible, but this is particularly a problem if the consequences are irreversible, such as if units in a popular loan are sold unintentionally. I appreciate the change that chris has made today to prevent investors accidentally triggering the sale of units by requesting a withdrawal of more cash than they had in their account. And I appreciate earlier changes that have been made in an attempt to make clearer the consequences of actions about to be taken, such as changes to targets. But it's rather inevitable that people will make mistakes. Some will be the result of fat fingers, and others will be caused by a lack of understanding of what they are doing. Hopefully the system can be adjusted to make such occurrences rare, and the impacts minimal. Perhaps the changes made so far are sufficient. We can hope. A confirmation box will be going live tomorrow morning on the MLIA, one has already been added to the set target form on the loan screen. It's not our intention to make it that easy to make a mistake so the interface is changing to make sure it doesn't happen again in the future.
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Post by mrclondon on Nov 5, 2014 18:09:51 GMT
I hope AC can find a suitable way to recompense those affected by this particular hiccup of unintentional sales. Whilst the criticism in some of the earlier posts does seem a bit OTT, I know I too would have been furious if I'd been caught out by this.
Taking a step or two back :
- AC need more lenders (urgently).
- P2P ISA's are coming, sometime soon.
- There are a limited number of investors with both the expertise and time to do their own due diligence.
The proposed investment accounts, whilst of zero relevance to probably the majority of people on this forum (err ... investments are meant to be inversely sized proportional to risk, not equally sized), at face value they look to have been well thought through to attract the autobidder type investor whilst giving control to opt out of individual loans. At present this seems a quantum leap beyond where other platforms are at.
BUT in their enthusiasm, AC slightly lost the plot as to what the word manual means. The lack of beta testing looks like the real culprit here. But as Chris said in one of his posts earlier, they are listening, and are responding as fast as is practical to give the true manual investment option that is required by those that have enough understanding of investment strategy to know that automated trading is simply a no-no.
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oldgrumpy
Member of DD Central
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Post by oldgrumpy on Nov 5, 2014 18:16:48 GMT
So why was it even activated for manual accounts? Not thought through. No flagged up warning that that was about to happen? It seems to me that we should be scared stiff of making mistakes now on this platform. And you still haven't explained last week why, when I raised a target by £20.99, the system promptly raised it by £41.99 then later purchased units to fulfil it!! I did not make a mistake. It wasn't activated for manual accounts, it was activated for all accounts and we didn't code a special exclusion for manual accounts. Can you PM me your email address so I can look into it. It could be you double clicked the button instead of single clicking. It's on p27 of the Website comments thread, 23 October. No need to look into disruption to my settings - it's not important. What I wanted to do was alert you the fact it had happened. If I did indeed do a (very rapid indeed!) double click - the system shouldn't be able to respond twice before applying my request because I only applied for one request. That is what needs checking. It might be important on bigger requests. I'll send you my email anyway in case you can extract some data! PS I don't think you should be sacked! 
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Post by chris on Nov 5, 2014 18:34:47 GMT
I hope AC can find a suitable way to recompense those affected by this particular hiccup of unintentional sales. Whilst the criticism in some of the earlier posts does seem a bit OTT, I know I too would have been furious if I'd been caught out by this. Taking a step or two back : - AC need more lenders (urgently). - P2P ISA's are coming, sometime soon. - There are a limited number of investors with both the expertise and time to do their own due diligence. The proposed investment accounts, whilst of zero relevance to probably the majority of people on this forum (err ... investments are meant to be inversely sized proportional to risk, not equally sized), at face value they look to have been well thought through to attract the autobidder type investor whilst giving control to opt out of individual loans. At present this seems a quantum leap beyond where other platforms are at. BUT in their enthusiasm, AC slightly lost the plot as to what the word manual means. The lack of beta testing looks like the real culprit here. But as Chris said in one of his posts earlier, they are listening, and are responding as fast as is practical to give the true manual investment option that is required by those that have enough understanding of investment strategy to know that automated trading is simply a no-no. ISAs aren't the only target but yes it is that type of lender we're preparing for amongst others. The product accounts include a target rate, so whilst the system is given a target diversification factor it's still trying to balance your loans to reach that target rate, including taking a blend of loans above and below the rate. It does that whilst trying to maximise the diversification of your portfolio. I agree we lost sight of what the word manual means but suspect it was for another reason, and that was our starting point being automatic. Between our own automated systems and others making use of our API in time there wouldn't have been any practical way for manual bidders to work with the system. We've been having to work backwards from automatic to get as close to manual as we can in order to try and keep the playing field level and our thinking and approach hasn't matched up to what our existing lenders have wanted. Our conversion rates are up significantly so with our new lenders it's clearly resonating more than the old site, but we've clearly made a couple of technologically fairly simple missteps that have had a larger than expected impact on existing lenders. Hopefully with these latest tweaks and a few others we'll have the platform back on track for as wide an audience as possible, and the automated accounts will then be able to help the platform stretch its legs.
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Post by yorkshireman on Nov 5, 2014 18:59:48 GMT
I am seriously worried that the system has become too complex. Absolutely spot on. Every time I log into this forum I seem to read about a new issue which is nothing short of outrageous when you consider that AC are responsible for other people’s money. I’ve said elsewhere that I’m not against change and continuous improvement but what has come to light since the website changes is totally unacceptable and consequently I’m steadily withdrawing my hard earned brass from AC as there is enough risk attached to P2P /P2B lending without problems with ill thought out systems.
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Post by chielamangus on Nov 5, 2014 19:35:47 GMT
My position in Leeds has now been restored to the pre-sell-off position. Now waiting for people to sell off bits of all the other loans where mine went missing.....
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bugs4me
Member of DD Central
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Post by bugs4me on Nov 5, 2014 23:01:05 GMT
I am seriously worried that the system has become too complex. Absolutely spot on. Every time I log into this forum I seem to read about a new issue which is nothing short of outrageous when you consider that AC are responsible for other people’s money. I’ve said elsewhere that I’m not against change and continuous improvement but what has come to light since the website changes is totally unacceptable and consequently I’m steadily withdrawing my hard earned brass from AC as there is enough risk attached to P2P /P2B lending without problems with ill thought out systems. Yes there are problems with the new website but there were also problems with the old one. Many of the 'problems' with the new website are due to a lack of understanding on my part but after a while I'm now settling down. Now if monies have gone 'missing' then that is unacceptable but no doubt a quick e-mail could easily sort that out. At least AC are engaging with the community especially chris and davidricketts1 which is more than I can say for other P2P lenders - especially those that believe they have become established and can drop the communication aspect which helped grow their business in the first place. Once folks begin to drift away from a platform then you rarely get them back. I'm currently in run-off mode with one very well established platform - I simply don't understand how they work and their attitude IMO is take it or leave it. So I'm leaving it. No doubt AC are aware of this and have no intention of falling into the same trap.
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