Funding Circle Spring Amazo voucher promotion.

Quiddle

If anyone took part in this promotion (not allowed to post link) I would urge you to initiate a complaint against Funding Circle who are attempting to avoid honouring the scheme. Once 25 complaints have been made FC have to pay £650 per complaint to the Financial Ombudsman which may help focus their thinking with regard to their obligations. 
Yet another example of a large institution disregarding the law whilst small businesses suffer yet behave decently.

mikb

You can post links to any original T&Cs by breaking up the link, leave off the http and the www.

You can also provide details why you think they are not honouring it. Did you fail to hit some criteria? e.g. lend more than X, put more then Y new pounds on the platform? Has all this been made impossible due to Covid shutting down their lending activity? Or other?

Quiddle

Thank you. This is the link
.p2pfinancenews.co.uk/2020/03/03/funding-circle-launches-amazon-promotion/
I complied fully with the investment requirements and received an email from FC when I first queried the delay in issuing my  voucher which confirmed a voucher would be sent to me. After a long delay I escalated my query to a formal complaint which resulted in FC unilaterally applying additional criteria, after the end of the promotional period and not advertised on their website as they stated it would be, to qualify for a voucher. 

masonic

Terms of the offer can be found here: https://www.fundingcircle.com/offers (Funding Circle Spring 2020 Investor Promotion)

Which additional criteria have FC informed you of that were not in the T&Cs?

My brief reading of the T&Cs suggests that if you invested >£15k of new money (in addition to whatever balance you held across your accounts at midnight on 2nd March) between 2nd March and 30th April, and you refrained from making any withdrawals from the date of this deposit and the end of 30th June, then you'd qualify for a voucher.

Quiddle

That all the money invested had to be lent out to borrowers by the closing time of the promotion. I have engaged in similar promotions with FC in the past, with similar t&cs and this has never been the case. In any event, I have an email from FC, admittedly opaque in parts but unambiguous in confirming that I will receive a voucher:

Hi ******,

Thank you for your email and apologies for any inconvenience caused.

I have raised your request to management and have put you on the concessions list for their review. You will receive the voucher when we send out our first batch of promotions to investors.

I hope this helps and thank you for your patience.

Regards,
Sunaina

masonic

An email from a customer service agent does not trump the official offer T&Cs. CSAs get it wrong all of the time. It is clear in this instance that the CSA was not at liberty to decide whether or not you had qualified for the promotion, hence the need to "put you on the concessions list for review". If you had an email mistakenly telling you you had qualified for a £50,000 gift card for investing £500 instead of the other way around, you could not hold them to that promise!

The terms state "if you invest £15,000 or more". So it will come down to what a reasonable person could interpret "investing" through the Funding Circle platform entails. It is quite clear that, due to the nature of P2P investment, a sum of money "invested" through the platform will not be in the possession of a borrower at all times. The T&Cs include the concept that "lending must be activated", suggesting that the money is either in the possession of a borrower or in a queue of money waiting to be automatically lent to a borrower. There is also the concept that "withdrawing money from any of your investor accounts" is what causes it to cease to be counted as "invested", reinforcing the fact that it is the presence of the money in the account, activated for lending, that constitutes investing through the platform.

Quiddle

I disagree, not that I'm reliant on that email, but my case is not absurd in any way, unlike your example. If a bus driver drives into a queue of people it is irrrlevant whether she got things wrong all the time; her employer is liable for damages, end of. An organisation is responsible for the action if its employees as is well established in English law and I would ask you to cite a case that suggests otherwise. Anyway, your 2nd paragraph supports my case, as indeed does past behaviour of FC.

masonic

Quiddle said:

I disagree, not that I'm reliant on that email, but my case is not absurd in any way, unlike your example. If a bus driver drives into a queue of people it is irrrlevant whether she got things wrong all the time; her employer is liable for damages, end of. An organisation is responsible for the action if its employees as is well established in English law and I would ask you to cite a case that suggests otherwise. Anyway, your 2nd paragraph supports my case, as indeed does past behaviour of FC.

Your case regarding the email is absurd as the email contradicts itself. But you are right that the company is responsible for the wrong information contained within that email. If you wish to pursue FC for the employee wrongly stating you will receive the voucher whether the management agree with her opinion or not, then you can expect an apology for being misinformed, and perhaps a goodwill payment of £5-10 for the inconvenience. If you really want to have a discussion about that, rather than your actual rights under the terms of the offer, then I suggest you may have your priorities wrong.

On the subject of buses hitting people... Liability when a bus hits a pedestrian depends on the cause of the incident and which party acted negligently. The bus company may be liable if it failed to ensure its drivers had adequate training, whereas if the bus driver was under the influence of alcohol, or was deliberately trying to mow down his ex-wife after an acrimonious divorce, it may be ruled that the company had little or no liability for the incident. If the victim behaved recklessly and jumped out in front of the bus, then they may themselves be held liable for their own injuries. There is a wealth of case law around road traffic accidents and liability and it certainly is not the case that a judge will always find an employer liable for an incident involving their employee.