Unsolicited Marketing PMs

Have to say that I received one such PM a couple of days ago..but as the 'approach' was polite, I replied equally politely...no harm done

I appreciate that some of your users may not want to receive private messages. Ideally, you should let them individually disable this feature / the notifications for it.

However, I believe it is unfair for you to obstruct people who do appreciate these invitations, from receiving them. I have received expressions of gratitude and courteous responses from those who wanted to know about alternatives.

My message was in the spirit of educating the market as to alternative options. I see no harm in politely reaching out to people who express their dissatisfaction to one platform, bringing their attention to alternatives.  Especially where people on the thread have been asking for options.

My profile makes it clear that I represent a platform, so any message could be perceived as attempting to solicit business.

There is a probably ProBoards plugin that allows users to configure their use of the private messaging service. Perhaps you could allow users the ability to disable private message notifications?

I've had 1 or 2 but they were polite and I didn't mind. That said, I don't think it's appropriate and I'd prefer not to receive them. I'd rather people posted on the forum and sold themselves in an open way through high quality, transparent communication.

I haven't had an unsolicited PM from Rebuilding Soc but have from 1 or 2 other platforms. Just as well, as I'm afraid I had a little experience with Rebuilding Soc in the past and I wasn't impressed and sold out from my test investments very quickly. The default rate seemed very high, missed or late monthly repayments seemed commonplace and I noted most loans were backed by worthless PGs -  and, maybe I'm plain thick, but the REBS dashboard interest rate return figures against my account seemed like a work of fiction to me compared with what I could work out I was actually getting.

The Admin at the top of this thread warns against sending unsolicited PMs - which is the internet equivalent of cold calling - and few people like that.

If somebody poses a question or query on the open forum I would suggest the appropriate way to respond would be on the open forum. If somebody sends you a PM then clearly a PM reply is the appropriate method of response.

As regards opening a dialogue with users, that should be done on the forum and not by PMs unless the user has indicated a wish for a private reply.

If I post something on the forum about a particular platform or loan I don't expect to get a PM from a platform representative.

If I send a PM to a platform representative then I expect to get a PM reply from that person.

I think the etiquette is quite simple.

To be clear, you have never sent me an unsolicited or unwanted PM. I'm just making a general point about forum etiquette as I see it.

PMs between investors to compare notes are a different matter - as clearly there's no ulterior or business motivation behind those.

My email subject and content was an invitation, so I can see how my private message may be been in breach of the recently updated rules regarding solicitation. I apologise if this upset any one. 

In future, I will ask questions, from one user to another, in a non-soliciting manner. Nevertheless, I'm sure that while many will appreciate this, some will not.

I will not use the private messaging feature to solicit business, but I do plan to use it to open a dialogue with some investors when the post comments of interest that I would like to follow up on. 

danraj : I have been doing my day job and so have only just consumed the reply you sent to the PM I had previously sent to  you, following various members having reported this activity. That is why you have not had a response yet. Your reply to my earlier PM appears to be roughly contemporaneous with your opening post on this thread.  I am doing my day job again very shortly so have passed it on to the rest of the board staff to make them aware and to consider the contents and make a response.

BB on behalf of admin team

edited: correct some 'wrongness'

1.  forum, a meeting or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged.
2.  spam, irrelevant or unsolicited messages sent over the internet, typically to a large number of users, for the purposes of advertising, phishing, spreading malware, etc.

Spot the difference.

Unfortunately, because a tiny minority of the platform rep population ignored the previous rule 7 which clearly stated "The forum may not be used to solicit loans or investments, or to advertise goods or services", we had to extend the rule to make it explicit that unsolicited marketing spam via PM was inappropriate and therefore prohibited.  Personally I was surprised that such clarification was needed, just as most reps seem to implicitly understand that trespassing on other platform boards touting for customers is poor form, I thought everybody would simply understand that spam marketing was poor etiquette at best and an unnecessary irritant at worst.  

Suggesting that people might want to switch off PM functionality is as ridiculous as suggesting that people switch off their email account or turn their phone off.  The cause of the problem is with the cold-callers and spam originators, not with people who have a phone or use email.  There is, however, a more targeted option that can be used.  See here for details.