Auto Relend been off a week - Zopa how dare you! Options

[kirklean]

Right folks,
Logged into my account last night to see that I had £20 sitting in holding (with the returns from payments). Now you may be aware that just over a week ago I turned auto relend off and cancelled my standing order until I can see a substantial change in Zopas attitude to lenders and the problems we are all facing.
Logged in today and they have put that £20 in to Offered. Now, this is not my wish so went into lending offers and low and behold, auto relend is indeed switched off so I can only assume some how someone has decided to either run SQL to lend out the funds regardless of the state of the relend flag or there is a fault with this function.
Yet another example of how Zopa is doing something completely different to what the lender wants/requested. I am getting so fed up with this. After all, it is MY MONEY they are playing with, not theirs.
The way things are going the quicker I can get out the better. As I said in previous posts, I was all for Zopa and it's aims and after just over 2 years you would expect some of the ealry issues to be fixed, but the rapid increase in issues is causing even me great concern. If the auto relend will lend your money anyway, perhaps I will never be able to get out.

[Deddington]

What did they say when you emailed them?

[Paul_Herring]

What did they say when you emailed them?

In Zopa's defence, since he only noticed it last night, and he posted about it at 10am this morning - I don't think they'll have replied to him just yet.

This is, of course, assuming kirklean was optimistic and actually emailed them expecting an answer....

[tibsie]

This is really quite worrying. We keep seeing things like this happen and it seems to be happening more frequently. When you think that this forum represents a very small percentage of the total number of lenders it becomes even more worrying.

As Kirklean has said, this is OUR MONEY at stake here. When we signed up we understood that it would be at risk from defaulting borrowers but we didn't think for a moment that it would be at risk from Zopa itself.

Put simply, the software should never have gone live with the sorts of inaccuracies that we have been seeing. When a borrower repays a loan the capital repaid should be EXACTLY the same as the amount of the loan, no more, no less. The data shown on one screen should be consistent with the data shown on another one. The amount in your Zopa account should equal money paid in + interest earned + bonuses - fees - bad debt - money taken out, not a few pence off here or there. And if we have said that money should stay in the holding account and is not to be relent then it had better stay there.

Don't get me wrong, I like Zopa and I intend to put more money in soon (I'm still looking for a job but have nothing yet) but these kinds of errors are really worrying and they only get sorted out if we are vigilant, if we check exactly what each penny in our account is doing.

The problem is that we shouldn't have to be keeping an eye on things. Auto relend was designed so that we could just set up an offer, set up a standing order and just leave it alone, tweaking the rates every now and then. We can't do this, we have set up spreadsheets to track payments and where our money is because we just don't trust the system.

We are like the mother who lets her kids play in the garden but who stands at the window keeping an eye on them, afraid that something might happen to them. We should be sitting on the sofa, reading a book or magazine with a cup of tea and a biscuit (happy for a bit of peace and quiet!!) just glancing out of the window every now and then.

That is what it all boils down to, TRUST. We are beginning to lose the trust that we once had in the system. People have already stopped trusting, stopped putting more money in, begun running their loans down and taking money out. If this sort of thing gathers pace it will be catastrophic for Zopa. No new money and no more relending means no more loans. Simple as that.

[adilowes]

Right folks,
Logged into my account last night to see that I had £20 sitting in holding (with the returns from payments). Now you may be aware that just over a week ago I turned auto relend off and cancelled my standing order until I can see a substantial change in Zopas attitude to lenders and the problems we are all facing.
Logged in today and they have put that £20 in to Offered. Now, this is not my wish so went into lending offers and low and behold, auto relend is indeed switched off so I can only assume some how someone has decided to either run SQL to lend out the funds regardless of the state of the relend flag or there is a fault with this function.
Yet another example of how Zopa is doing something completely different to what the lender wants/requested. I am getting so fed up with this. After all, it is MY MONEY they are playing with, not theirs.
The way things are going the quicker I can get out the better. As I said in previous posts, I was all for Zopa and it's aims and after just over 2 years you would expect some of the ealry issues to be fixed, but the rapid increase in issues is causing even me great concern. If the auto relend will lend your money anyway, perhaps I will never be able to get out.

I have a standing order going in around the 25th so I am going to give it 10 days for zopa to come up with an answer for this and if not I am cancelling it.
Always had the attitude with zopa that if I wasn't happy I could just switch auto relend off and filter my money back out and would have 3/4 back in 3 years but this is worrying if zopa are doing this. Not to mention possibly illegal and the amount I have in zopa it would not be cost effective to take legal action for my money.
I am going to report this in the hope that zopa respond.

The main worrying thing on these boards is that the majority of people not happy and complaining are us moderators who are the ones who have always been positive and behind zopa.
All this appears to have gone into freefall since they looked to go in to the USA and I suspect although will probably be denied any funds that were earmarked for the UK development have been diverted to the USA as it is a lot bigger market.

Since the push for the USA launch what has happened.
Complaints have gone through the roof.
Virtually no positive comments on here.
All Zopa bonus' have ceased.
Bug after bug is appearing on the site with no fixes being sorted.
Virtually none of the advancements that have been promised have been launched.

At the end of this month I will have been in zopa for 1 year. On the site other than a paint job and a pie chart it looks and works (Or doesn't) exactly the same as when I joined.

Come on zopa remember where you routes are. It is nice to look for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but when you get back if your home is gone what is the point.

I both work full time and run a couple of part time businesses, 1 with 5 staff. If I treated my customers like this then I would not have a business. I don't have financial backers but if I did I am sure they would not be happy running the business like this.


I have always tried to stay positive with my posts on these boards but am finding it increasingly hard to remain positive.

[zopa_tom]

Kirklean - I've investigated what happened. You made a pending lending offer for £20 at 10.30am on Sunday 4th August (I can email you details of this offer if you want). As with all pending lending offers, when the money comes into your account, the offer becomes active.

On 8th August, our nightly processes ran and you received repayment from your borrowers. These repayments pushed the balance of your account over £20, and your pending lending offer became active with that £20 (as is supposed to happen).

To remove the lending offer, you just need to log in to your account and remove it from the My Lending screen.

So to reiterate, nothing untoward has happened. Your decision to turn auto relend off is entirely your decision, and we would never, ever, ever question it, let alone override it.

Shout (tom at zopa dot com) if you want further info.

[mosshill]

6 months ago, (in February of this year) I did as a number of you seem to be doing and decided that enough was enough. I withdrew all my offers and withdrew all the cash that I could and said goodbye to Zopa.

For me the doubts had started months earlier with the clumsy and insecure password log on. Then followed the farce with the pie chart, and a series of updates launched in working hours and failing within minutes of going live. I had never seen such a cavalier and unprofessional approach to a financial website. Finally on that fateful day in February the system re-opened whilst still updating, exposing users to incomplete and this invalid data. That was the last straw for me.

Since then a number of things have happened :

- Zopa won a Webby which beggars belief.

- A vibrant and confident community has turned into the next intake for an anger management course.

- I have placed the £10,000 that was earmarked for Zopa in Lloyds Bank at 8% gross and in Co-op Financial Services 9.25% Preference shares. My income after tax is £628 per annum which equates to about 9% at Zopa. I have no stress, no worries and no bad debts.

I enjoyed lending at Zopa and would love to return, so would it be possible for Zopa management to get a grip of the situation.

[OpsDirector]

Kirklean

There is nothing wrong with auto relend. The reason your £20 was offered was because you had a pending offer in place which was set up on 04/08/07 for £20 but not funded - the same day you switched auto relend off. Our repayment process ran on the evening of 09/08/07 and a repayment of £2.18 was credited to your account. This brought the holding account balance up to £20.31 which activated your pending offer.

You are right it is your money and you choose what you do with it. This is why we respected your pending offer and placed the funds on the market as soon as was possible.

The funds are still sat in your offer and haven't been matched yet so you are at liberty to withdraw the offer and leave the funds in your holding account if you wish.

Regards

Linda

[kirklean]

Kirklean

There is nothing wrong with auto relend. The reason your £20 was offered was because you had a pending offer in place which was set up on 04/08/07 for £20 but not funded - the same day you switched auto relend off. Our repayment process ran on the evening of 09/08/07 and a repayment of £2.18 was credited to your account. This brought the holding account balance up to £20.31 which activated your pending offer.

You are right it is your money and you choose what you do with it. This is why we respected your pending offer and placed the funds on the market as soon as was possible.

The funds are still sat in your offer and haven't been matched yet so you are at liberty to withdraw the offer and leave the funds in your holding account if you wish.

Regards

Linda

Thanks, I am going to do just that. I am still not convinced of the explanation as why would I turn auto relend off (in protest) then set up an offer on the same day?

[CoogarUK]

I have 'auto-relend' turned off, not due to distrust or any suspicion of underhand activities or wrongdoing , moreover that I feel it is inaptly named.

Preferring to strike a three-way balance between money lent out, money on offer and a positive balance in my holding account, I was gobsmacked to learn upon first using the facility that the way it actually works is to sweep your holding account of money that has never been lent out in the first place! I guess it simply assumes - wrongly in my case - that all members operate their holding account with a zero balance.

I am pleased to report that since turning auto-relend off my borrowers repayments have been returning to my holding account and staying there.

[Justin]

Thanks, I am going to do just that. I am still not convinced of the explanation as why would I turn auto relend off (in protest) then set up an offer on the same day?

I don't think we can code around the inner-workings of your mind, I'm afraid.

[Tealer]

Quick there's a bandwagon- jump!

I have to say that as a zopa member for about 1 year and 6 months, I am pretty content with the company. At the moment the only complaint I have is that I've just transferred in another tranche of cash and the rate at which new loans are going through seems to be a little slow. Whilst it is noble for people to withdraw their money from Zopa if they feel so strongly, I don't agree that this will have a noticeable effect, even if it were to cause an increase in rates then many others (myself included) will re-evaluate our positions and increase our exposure to Zopa.

One further thing I feel confident about is that with you guys badgering Zopa I need not worry about bugs in the system, safe in the knowledge that they will be resolved, and if lenders were to be left short changed then Zopa will retrospectively correct it.

This post has been edited by Tealer: Aug 9 2007, 01:29 PM

[adilowes]

I have a standing order going in around the 25th so I am going to give it 10 days for zopa to come up with an answer for this and if not I am cancelling it.

I am reletively happy with the explination so will be leaving my Standing order going.

There does need to be more communication.

I suspect this was the last straw for Kirklean and with the lack of communication and support from the other issues raise he saw red when he thought auto relend had lent his money back out.

I am still behind Zopa and think it has a big future provided it gets back on the tracks and builds up the community, which is it's life blood.

with regards to the US side of things, it may be a good move but please learn to walk before running.
If some of the issues that have been raised here happened on the US side of things, zopa would be going bust defending the Lawsuits going on. If somebody can win a lawsuit for spilling coffee from McDonalds on them in their own car and sue because there was no warning it was hot on the cup then almost anything can be won in court over there.

Emotional distress of not been able to follow my Zopa balance accurately.

[Paul_Herring]

Thanks, I am going to do just that. I am still not convinced of the explanation as why would I turn auto relend off (in protest) then set up an offer on the same day?

I don't think we can code around the inner-workings of your mind, I'm afraid.

I may be wrong, but I thought the implication was that kirklean didn't set up an offer on that day.

[kirklean]

I don't think we can code around the inner-workings of your mind, I'm afraid.

What is it they say about sarcasm, it's the lowest form of .... wit

[Paul_Herring]

What is it they say about sarcasm, it's the lowest form of .... wit

I take it my assumption was correct then?

[roger_at_zopa]

I don't think we can code around the inner-workings of your mind, I'm afraid.

Communications with a customer should all ways be considered before replying - just in case they could be miss-read by other
readers. This is very important if the message is an in-joke that others may consider bad taste.

Now do we need a poll on how may people think the reply above can be miss-read!

Roger

[I Love Sheep]

Communications with a customer should all ways be considered before replying - just in case they could be miss-read by other
readers. This is very important if the message is an in-joke that others may consider bad taste.

Now do we need a poll on how may people think the reply above can be miss-read!

Roger

Chill out, I think it was a perfectly valid response. If the records show something then it's not up to Zopa employees to base any theories on conjecture.

The facts are: the money went out because a pending offer was made.

Perhaps it was by accident the offer was made, perhaps it was a glitch in the system.

Unless your post was a dry sarcastic joke (which obviously i didnt get) then I think you are over reacting.

[Paul_Herring]

Communications with a customer should all ways be considered before replying - just in case they could be miss-read by other
readers. This is very important if the message is an in-joke that others may consider bad taste.

Now do we need a poll on how may people think the reply above can be miss-read!

No. They'll post here (well the lurkers won't)

Chill out, I think it was a perfectly valid response.

Until I get a reply from my post requesting a clarification of kirklean's latest post, I don't.

If the records show something then it's not up to Zopa employees to base any theories on conjecture.

The facts are: the money went out because a pending offer was made.

But was it? A lender, getting frustrated, withdraws auto-lending, but makes a pending offer requiring funds on the same day? This is what Zopa is claiming - this is what I was asking kirklean if this is what they did. It seems unlikely, but...

Perhaps it was by accident the offer was made, perhaps it was a glitch in the system.

Well, given recent threads, what do you think?

[roger_at_zopa]

Chill out, I think it was a perfectly valid response. If the records show something then it's not up to Zopa employees to base any theories on conjecture.

The facts are: the money went out because a pending offer was made.

Perhaps it was by accident the offer was made, perhaps it was a glitch in the system.

Unless your post was a dry sarcastic joke (which obviously i didnt get) then I think you are over reacting.

No it was not "a dry sarcastic joke" with the issues being raised on these forums about poor information flow, under payments, over charging and web site bugs Zopa staff need to be very careful about how they reply to people. Everyone is requesting information and hard facts, not off the cuff remarks.

Maybe kirklean did make a mistake, that is best handled by Zopa providing detailed information to kirklean via email to show when the mistake took place, not by the reply that was posted. If Zopa can show kirklean that a mistake was make I'm sure he would be the first to put his hand up and say oops.

Roger