Zopa. Neither a borrower nor a lender be!

frankyone

Hello gentlemen. I am reading through the website to find a cheap solution to borrow money. At the moment Barclays asked me for a 27% APR on 3000 GBP over 36 months.
I have tried to compare different services and I find Zopa being the best available, but I keep seeing skepticisms amongst you.
How can I check if is not a fraud or any online dodge service ? Can someone give any advice if I was interested to borrow money from them at the conditions they state on the website.

Regards, Franky

Paul_Herring

frankyone wrote: »

I have tried to compare different services and I find Zopa being the best available, but I keep seeing skepticisms amongst you.

The scepticism (and the vast majority of comments on this thread) you see is from the people lending the money (and the rates the money gets,) not the people (like yourself) borrowing it.

jamesd

Zopa is OK for people borrowing. The main issues are the ability to get better rates as lender or borrower. For £3,000 you may be able to get a better deal from a credit card. Try the Barlcaycard pre-application check to see whether they think that they would offer you a card with a nice balance transfer or 0% for purchases deal. If not, Virgin or another MBNA card is a possibility that could still be cheaper than a personal loan for £3,000.

malagamad

Ok, so there are bitter people out there who get annoyed when refused a loan. I don't think I'm one of them, I'll let you decide, here's my story:

I was looking for a way to pay off a credit card with a loan and wanted low interest rates and found Zopa on the Internet. I liked two things about them, one their low interest rates and two, the ability to reward the general public rather than the fat cat bankers.

Here is my credit file in brief from experian and equifax. I have 3 credit accounts, they are a Barclaycard Platinum, A car loan with just 1 payment left to make and a second credit card. I also have a bank account with Lloyds which has an unused overdraft of £950. My credit score with both reference agencies put me in the top bracket and describe my chances if being accepted by finance companies as excellent. I have 6 years of on time payments with my 2nd credit card, 3 months of perfect payments with Barclaycard, a fully paid off car loan that finished 2 years ago (again with perfect payment record) and a car loan about to finish (also with a perfect payment record). My credit files show 6 years of on time payments made every month without even one missed or late payment.

The next thing for you to know is that I have outstanding credit of just 3% of my salary and my salary is £34000 per annum.

I have lived at the same address for nearly 8 years and have been a
Company director for nearly 3 years. My wife also has a perfect credit rating and is a teacher. She wasn't on this application as quite frankly she didn't need to be.

Anyway, I recieved an email about an hour ago from Zopa claiming that I have been declined a loan. So why have I been declined? I have no idea. I'd love to hear if any of you guys or even Martin might know why this was? Perhaps I am not spotting something in my notes about my credit above or maybe Zopa haven't got any money to lend. What have people's experiences been during July 2011? Has anyone been lent anything. Are Zopa lenders happy that people with my credit score are being knocked back. Let your feelings be known, I'd love to hear your opinions.

50quidonRED

im no expert but probably because u have 97% of your salary available, and u want to borrow more than 100% with an extra loan. im sure some expert will tell you exactly

malagamad

Just to confirm the loan I applied for was £4400. I don't have 97% of my salary available, the 3% is before non credit bills. Sorry should have explained that bit before.

Cheers for quick reply

paddyrg

Hmmm - well I guess it could be *available credit* - those cards and overdraft may have added up to make the £4400 take your available credit over 50% of your salaty? You say you're a director - is that of your own company? Maybe they view that as being higher risk than if you were employed by a large corporation?

You could also try ratesetter.com

malagamad

Hi and thanks again. I know I'm making this difficult but my available credit is only £2950 and my company is established well and without going into details is recession proof. My entire credit including a new loan would run at about 8% of my salary. Sorry to make life difficult and thanks for sticking with me on this

jamesd

Zopa used to have the weekly lender emails give the average gross rate then give an average lending rate for each market. That was somewhat confusing because it wasn't clear whether the average lending rate was before or after Zopa fee. With this week's email they changed it to be before fee for both the average gross rate and the rate for each market, so the reported rate went up by about 1% in each market. The reported rate for the popular A36 market changed from 5.9% to 6.9% because of this, while the overall average dropped from 7.18% to 7.07% before fee and bad debt.

It's a welcome bit of extra clarity from Zopa.

jamesd

malagamad, you might ask Zopa. Lenders are supposed to give the main reason for a decline decision when asked and that reason shouldn't just be credit score.