Comments on: Prosper People-to-People Lending Marketplace

By: adam

adam — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 07:55:45 +0000

I was wanting to join Prosper. My credit rating is low because of the lack of credit history as well as i have been late a few times on my truck. I make good money as a elevator constructor in Vegas. 3rd generation. I have been helping my GF since she was laid off. So savings has dwindled down and now I am only able to make it by a hair. I had taken out payday loans and now the interest is killing me. GF will begin work in the middle of Nov. I make shy of 1000 a week. I was looking to borrow between 1500-2000 to consolidate those bills and get caught up. GFs income will help to pay off loan. Can you tell me if I meet the criteria for a loan? And would it be beneficial to do so? I wanted to research before going through all the process. Thank you for your time. Last years w2 income was 75000.

By: adam

adam — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 07:53:06 +0000

By: ed tse

ed tse — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 23:07:55 +0000

If we are picky, nothing is going to be perfect without fault.
If we don’t believe in people and concentrated just on the bad side of people, nothing can be called “civilization.”
I agree that some people is going to abuse whatever a system you name it and play with it, we simply can’t avoid it shortcomings just like a government that has been called “a necessary evil” for a long time. But nowadays, a lot of people are asking a more powerful government after subprime loan crisis.
We are going to lost our right direction to disregard look down our human nature and ignore the good benefits of P2P lending if we just want to count on institutions.
Please don’t assume anything has no value, except money or return. How we can help those unfortunate invisible poor folks? If you don’t mind, I will use an analogy of lottery system. You buy some lottery tickets in a hope to hit the Jack pot. How often you win and screwed up by our governments?
Now, look at how often you can help those poor get back up. Besides the interests you may collect, there is one thing most reward to me: satisfaction to help others? In some cases I may take in a loss for some trash people, it will cost me some hundred bucks. It still be within my limits as a donation to charity. It won’t lose your arms or legs as those Wall Street big fats.
So compare its bright side and ugly side of P2P lending. I believe in that most poor or working people are with honor and dignity; I read reports enough to make me so upset to stop writing a week. Clearly, they are abandoned by those politicians who just provide lip service to the Main Street.
We have to extend our hands out to help each other when the Main Street is desperately in need of help.

By: wayne

wayne — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 14:34:08 +0000

I’ve used prosper as a borrower and also now as a lender.

Yes, there is risk… I try to limit it by being very selective of who I lend to.. also, I keep my loan amounts small. That way if one goes bad, it wont kill me..

but the AVERAGE interest rate of the loans I’m funding is 26.53%… Havent had one go bad on me yet. Youre not going to find that rate at the bank

By: April

April — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:48:33 +0000

I found out as a borrower that Prosper does not contact the borrower to verify income, though their website says they will. They use other means, such as a Credit agency.

However, a person’s annual income can vary greatly from one year to the next or even month to month. For instance, I make $10 hour more this year than I did last year, and $5 hour more than I did six months ago.

When Prosper could not verify income. They delisted the funded loan and canceled the account. Prosper made no attempt to find contact the borrower for income verification.

If this is how Prosper does business, then you can’t expect much from them as a lender if Prosper will not even do real research.

By: PROSPER MEMBER

PROSPER MEMBER — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 19:21:20 +0000

I have had a great experience with prosper. I got a 18,500 loan for 10.6% saving me hundreds of dollars.

They verified everything about me before they closed on the loan.

I have since become a lender. I have had several loans that I lended to not make it through the verification process. That gives me confidence that prosper is doing their part to verify information that borrowers are submitting.

Overall it is a great program.

I limit my risk by not putting all my eggs in one basket. I also am very selective in which listing I will lend $ to.

You cant get a better rate than on prosper.

By: Biz Lender

Biz Lender — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 13:05:09 +0000

As a self-employed, and self funded business owner, the Prosper model is appealing. I sweated for over 30 years to get where I am now. Without collateral or contact with the borrower I don’t see the risk as being worth it.
I’ve borrowed from friends, family and banks, and all wanted and got enough info and contact from me to assure the payback. I never paid more than 6%.
I used my receivables, my property, my car, anything to back up the loan and give the lender a stake in my success. Lending more to folks deep in high rate debt without collateral is bad business. Prosper needs to find a way to secure the debt first before many savvy lenders will open their wallets.

By: sarathy

sarathy — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:49:50 +0000

Hi,

If you are interested in secured lending have a look at my-lending.com. It is a people to people lending on the strength of collateral given by borrower on book entry form in favour of the lender. Hence the interest of the lender is fully protected.

By: Jane Doe

Jane Doe — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 04:40:16 +0000

I signed up for Prosper because a friend of mine told me about it, I was trying to get a loan to consolidate my credit cards & also some money for school. I got fully funded for a loan of $12000 @ 11.49% but when I didn’t answer my phone number to “verify” (yet again) who I was they canceled my listing, and will not allow me to re-list. I also called their “help” who was really no help and basically said I was SOL. And when I asked for the Supervisor I got hung up on & I’ve been playing phone tag with the Supervisor for the past week & it doesn’t sound like they’re going to let me re-list my loan. So just remember to pick up your phone when they call, it doesnt matter if youre busy or not.. you’ll miss out on your loan and all future loans by missing the call. STUPID.

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:54:42 +0000

I did a piece on Prosper on my Everydayfinance site, with links to some strategies and forums. I can attest to it somewhat since I signed up a few weeks ago and have done ~$1000 in loans so far. I only started with $2000, but the diversified income potential is very appealing. While I agree with the potential for abuse, there is a nice check and balance system with incentives, which is the group aspect. There are some groups which have 100% performance on their loans. If you stick with the successful groups, you may give up a bit on the return, but have a much lower likelihood of a loss. I would be surprised if anyone doing their homework actually loses money if they’re spreading out their loans. Will report back in a week or two on my personal experience once the loan payments start coming due. Until then, good luck! Dan

By: Maclenders

Maclenders — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 07:25:08 +0000

Prime grade borrowers can find great deals on prosper especially when they need to borrow more than 10000. credit cards often has short term rates and once you get above $10k the rates other lenders provide aren’t that good for unsecured loans..

By: Thomas

Thomas — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 03:14:02 +0000

Those who say that people with good credit wouldn’t even bother using Prosper are wrong because there are many situations in which traditional banks have parameters that might work ON AVERAGE but sometimes not on an individual basis.

For example, my credit score is excellent and I already have a very lucrative job offer out-of-state, but I will be starting that job in mid-June. I just graduated from business school in December, and in the meantime I will stay in the same place after my fiancee graduates and we get married.

For a business professional, it is very hard to get a temp job, so, now, I am technically unemployed, and banks would not lend me the money because of this. Most credit officials have no idea about risk management and only work based on parameters, don’t ask them to think or put some common sense into their policies.

With this being said, something like Prosper is definitely great for those in my situation.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 01:17:49 +0000

Just a couple notes of interest:

Prosper Borrower JessM arrested on extortion charges:
link

Rhonda Alfieri / Ms Dixie: I searched and searched and couldn’t find any abuse against you on the forums, just unfortunate advice that you apparently would have an uphill battle getting funded with your credit history and downpayment situation. Was there more to forum posts that I’m missing?

By: Fairplay

Fairplay — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 11:22:01 +0000

In Michael’s May 20th post, he pointed out the Debbie and Jess listings.

The loan is now defaulting.

http://forums.prosper.com/index.php?showtopic=10050

By: Rhonda Alfieri

Rhonda Alfieri — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 03:02:52 +0000

I join Prosper the end of July 2006. I placed a request for a loan. On the my homepage, I posted picture of myself, my son, my cat and my roses that I enjoy growing. I was ridiculed, called a bitch, made fun of my religious beliefs, was called other sorry names, made fun of, told me never loan money to someone like you, you’ll never pay it back. Copied and posted a picture of my son and made fun of him and where we are from Alabama. Made very nasty jokes and insulting remarks. Judge me down to nailing my coffin shut, and you’ll never get funded here. This is what people go through on this site. I am not the only one, there are many others who are requesting loans and they are treated with disrespect to the utmost.

I have all 250 pages printed to copy and mail to various networks and magazines, and the BBB. I approached Prosper Customer Service with this, and they absolutely nothing.

I do believe all of the media and online advertisement is given this site too much credit. People are treated extremely terrible to try and get funding. You need to go to there site, http://www.prosper.spreebb.com and read the threads under Review My Listing. I am Miss Dixie, Need To Repair My Car. This will give you an idea of how they treat people.

Please do not overlook this message, if you really want to know more about Prosper.