mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Jan 21, 2014 16:36:50 GMT
In the meantime we should have 2-3 loans coming this week. As with the last loan we will carefully monitor to make sure that all investments get recorded correctly. We appreciate your patience as we work through these issues. Will there be any advance notice given? Or are we expected to keep a FS window open and check it every two minutes?  Or will the loans be large enough and the maximum bid sizes small enough for the first 24 hours that they shouldn't fill up instantly? Are we likely to have time to see what's available before depositing money into our accounts to bid with? Or do we have to put money into our accounts now and expect to withdraw unused funds afterwards? If any of these potential loans are the result of existing loan renewals/rollovers can you please supply the URLs of the loan pages -- for those of us not in the original loans -- so we can look at them and think about whether we might be interested in bidding if they are rolled over?
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alison
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Sanctuary!!
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Post by alison on Jan 21, 2014 17:01:59 GMT
And PLEASE can you get some integrity into the My Account section?
I added (or tried to add) £300 this afternoon and now have £640 available to spend. (I wonder what would happen if I tried to take it all out?)
Maybe there has been an early repayment of a loan but I have had no messages advising me of this and my earliest scheduled repayment is 2 months away.
However my Active Loans figure seems to have been reduced by about £640 so it looks like another glitch instead.
Such a good concept being wasted.
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Post by Come_on_Grandad on Jan 21, 2014 17:09:43 GMT
And PLEASE can you get some integrity into the My Account section? Me too! My count of active loans is 3 less than it should be, although the loans individually seem correct as displayed, and the corresponding £300 is inflating my "Available to Invest" figure.
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Post by mrclondon on Jan 21, 2014 17:57:12 GMT
One of the today's 3 maturing loan (a necklace plus poor condition watch) is to be renewed (the status of the other two still unknown). This email from FS explains the process
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Post by fundingsecure on Jan 21, 2014 18:22:33 GMT
Hello
In terms of the loans, we will pre-announce. However, we are not going to announce a specific time. We will say am or pm. There will be an investment restriction so that the loan stays out long enough for people to take a look.
We have two loans scheduled: one is a loan of between £8k and £10k secured on a Range Rover; the other is a loan for £1,500 on jewellery. We are also in discussions for a third loan to the value of £12,000.
For the renewals, we are consulting with the existing savers first to see whether they wish to renew. We will then put a new loan up for the balance that needs funding. This will be open to all as if it was a new loan.
It was reported to us that there was an issue with the statements not being properly updated. Its all connected with the same issue that we posted on earlier today. The statements are currently being fixed. However, the long-term solution is a rewrite of the investment process - which has started and which we should have available sometime next week.
Again, we re-iterate the fact that we are aware of these issues, that we have a plan to deal with them, and that we remain apologetic for the frustration it causes.
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Jan 21, 2014 20:55:15 GMT
For the renewals, we are consulting with the existing savers first to see whether they wish to renew. We will then put a new loan up for the balance that needs funding. This will be open to all as if it was a new loan. Presuming that many of the existing lenders will be willing to renew their participation, the amounts available to other lenders will be considerably smaller than the total loan size. So I still would expect these opportunities to be available only for a very short time even if there are investment restrictions. I therefore repeat my request that the URLs for the existing loans coming up for renewal be made available to everyone right now, so that we can have at least a little time to consider whether we'd like to be involved if the opportunity arises. It would do FS no good at all to gain a reputation that some opportunities disappear so quickly that potential lenders don't have enough time to make a proper assessment, and that bidding blind -- or nearly so -- is necessary at times. As an alternative to publishing the URLs of loans coming to the end of their terms, FS might wish to reconsider their policy of not making all past loans available for review by registered lenders. Other P2P/P2B websites don't seem to have a problem with this, and it would allow lenders to look at loans likely to be renewed without requiring any action on FS's part.
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bugs4me
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Post by bugs4me on Jan 21, 2014 22:44:32 GMT
Hello
In terms of the loans, we will pre-announce. However, we are not going to announce a specific time. We will say am or pm. There will be an investment restriction so that the loan stays out long enough for people to take a look. I think you may need to rethink this strategy as time goes on. Maybe it will work as a stop gap measure until the server software is more robust but I feel it is unrealistic to expect folks to sit in front of their monitor with the FS web page live hitting the refresh button!! Also missing a loan opportunity will of course cause frustration. Obviously the way round this is to sort out the software and to have more opportunities available - but I'm sure you're working on that. What would be sad is if investors decided to go elsewhere so loans were not fulfilled. I believe FS is a great idea waiting to really take off. Just my tuppence
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ramblin rose
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“Some people grumble that roses have thorns; I am grateful that thorns have roses.” — Alphonse Karr
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Post by ramblin rose on Jan 21, 2014 23:43:20 GMT
Hello
In terms of the loans, we will pre-announce. However, we are not going to announce a specific time. We will say am or pm. There will be an investment restriction so that the loan stays out long enough for people to take a look. I think you may need to rethink this strategy as time goes on. Maybe it will work as a stop gap measure until the server software is more robust but I feel it is unrealistic to expect folks to sit in front of their monitor with the FS web page live hitting the refresh button!! Also missing a loan opportunity will of course cause frustration. Obviously the way round this is to sort out the software and to have more opportunities available - but I'm sure you're working on that. What would be sad is if investors decided to go elsewhere so loans were not fulfilled. I believe FS is a great idea waiting to really take off. Just my tuppence They have no choice but to do this until their new software gets released next week, when I'm sure they'll go back to announcing a time. Would you actually prefer the mess that currently happens with monotonous predictability when a time is announced? I just hope they give the new software a trial run or two before letting 10s of users all start pressing the same buttons at the same time again. When the site first started there was an email that was sent when the loan went up, and for loans that were large enough that was a good enough mechanism to ensure a reasonable number of lenders got a bite but without a total scrum. Obviously it's not ideal, but I think it is reasonable for a short time until the software can cope. If some of us miss out on a few loans for a week or two it surely won't be the end of the world. Quite possibly some lenders might get fed up and leave, but early adopters should expect a number of teething problems, and I think most of the people who actively lend at the moment understand that. Of course there are limits.............. 
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Jan 22, 2014 3:32:42 GMT
Would you actually prefer the mess that currently happens with monotonous predictability when a time is announced? You're right. They really don't have a choice when their software can't cope with a peak of activity. About the only thing they could do would be to impose a really low bidding limit at the beginning, so that lenders could be confident that the loan wouldn't fill instantly, and thus they didn't need to rush to place their bids.
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Post by davee39 on Jan 22, 2014 18:49:24 GMT
Quite possibly some lenders might get fed up and leave, but early adopters should expect a number of teething problems
NO!. The outstanding incompetence of government IT projects, or early releases of Microsoft products may have influenced your views. Well written and well tested software just works. With only 236 Savers it is pretty astonishing the FS Website collapses under load. What happened to Stress Testing? Clearly FS are unhappy by the dismal performance of the web site - but oddly once something goes public I actually expect it to work!
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Post by mrclondon on Jan 22, 2014 18:59:29 GMT
All three of yesterday's maturing loans are to be renewed, so there may be 3 loans needing small topups in the next week. They were only small loans to start with, so the restricted amount per lender required for any topup is likely to be very low.
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ramblin rose
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“Some people grumble that roses have thorns; I am grateful that thorns have roses.” — Alphonse Karr
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Post by ramblin rose on Jan 22, 2014 19:52:34 GMT
Quite possibly some lenders might get fed up and leave, but early adopters should expect a number of teething problemsNO!. The outstanding incompetence of government IT projects, or early releases of Microsoft products may have influenced your views. Well written and well tested software just works. With only 236 Savers it is pretty astonishing the FS Website collapses under load. What happened to Stress Testing? Clearly FS are unhappy by the dismal performance of the web site - but oddly once something goes public I actually expect it to work! I can't really disagree with you - in an ideal world you should expect that something that has gone public should work. I would like to think that had it been a development I had presided over it would have not been quite so diabolical - certainly nothing I can remember was. I guess I really meant that after a lifetime of experience in the IT industry, had I not learned to be accepting of teething problems from small enterprises I would spend more time being annoyed, disgruntled and with higher blood pressure. As it is, I am perhaps more accepting of them than others would like, but it keeps me serene. If I end up losing out in a significant way from issues, I get annoyed, but if not, I don't see the point. We may not like it, but in the real world these things do often happen. Maybe early adopters shouldn't 'expect' teething problems, but a sense of realism should certainly lead them not to be overly surprised. I know plenty of people demand a higher level of perfection, and that is perfectly reasonable, but maybe they are just not ideally suited to being early adopters.
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bugs4me
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Post by bugs4me on Jan 22, 2014 22:43:07 GMT
Quite possibly some lenders might get fed up and leave, but early adopters should expect a number of teething problemsNO!. The outstanding incompetence of government IT projects, or early releases of Microsoft products may have influenced your views. Well written and well tested software just works. With only 236 Savers it is pretty astonishing the FS Website collapses under load. What happened to Stress Testing? Clearly FS are unhappy by the dismal performance of the web site - but oddly once something goes public I actually expect it to work! I can't really disagree with you - in an ideal world you should expect that something that has gone public should work. I would like to think that had it been a development I had presided over it would have not been quite so diabolical - certainly nothing I can remember was. I guess I really meant that after a lifetime of experience in the IT industry, had I not learned to be accepting of teething problems from small enterprises I would spend more time being annoyed, disgruntled and with higher blood pressure. As it is, I am perhaps more accepting of them than others would like, but it keeps me serene. If I end up losing out in a significant way from issues, I get annoyed, but if not, I don't see the point. We may not like it, but in the real world these things do often happen. Maybe early adopters shouldn't 'expect' teething problems, but a sense of realism should certainly lead them not to be overly surprised. I know plenty of people demand a higher level of perfection, and that is perfectly reasonable, but maybe they are just not ideally suited to being early adopters. I think it shows the system is just flaky and FS appear to have acknowledged that. Whether it requires a total re-write I would doubt as the front page looks okay IMO but beauty is in the eyes of the beholder . Often these things are down to the server database and how it is coded. So a tweak here and there can often sort it out - provided you have the right IT guy/gal that is.
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ramblin rose
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Post by ramblin rose on Jan 22, 2014 23:14:52 GMT
I think it shows the system is just flaky and FS appear to have acknowledged that. Whether it requires a total re-write I would doubt as the front page looks okay IMO but beauty is in the eyes of the beholder . Often these things are down to the server database and how it is coded. So a tweak here and there can often sort it out - provided you have the right IT guy/gal that is. Yup - you can just see the developers explaining why the code needs an entire re-factor rather than the 'fix'  . Keeps them in work. To be fair, we would all hope that this codebase will need to be maintainable and expandable for many years to come, so the rewrite is probably justifiable. Just so long as it becomes reliable, soonest, then I'll be happy however it's achieved.
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Jan 23, 2014 1:29:48 GMT
All three of yesterday's maturing loans are to be renewed, so there may be 3 loans needing small topups in the next week. They were only small loans to start with, so the restricted amount per lender required for any topup is likely to be very low. Looks like the 28th is going to be a busy day then, and it sounds like a £25 limit per lender might be appropriate. Now would anyone care to speculate on the probability that the website offer handling software will be smart enough to prevent renewing lenders from picking up another piece of a loan and thus exceeding the limit? 
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. Keeps them in work. To be fair, we would all hope that this codebase will need to be maintainable and expandable for many years to come, so the rewrite is probably justifiable. Just so long as it becomes reliable, soonest, then I'll be happy however it's achieved.