• Paid off my Prosper loan recently. I’m relieved to end the relationship as a borrower. I’ve put in $50 for a friends loan and it doesn’t have much time left before it too is paid off. Counting the days…
• OMGWTF?! A negative article about Prosper! About time someone brought a balance to the Force…
• Prospers.org is still a rough and tumble place. I poke my head in now and again out of curiosity, but nothing more. Looks like they are still beating up bloggers. They must have learned it from Prosper themselves, as they’ve whined at me about my few posts on the subject. You can’t please everyone…

* Unless they do something else that is completely retarded.

[Fred93s Prosper blog]

Update: Prosper the P2P lending company, not this company.

The Prosper blog invites the public to submit entries and get a t-shirt. Recently a respected member of the Prosper community submitted a post for the Prosper blog. It was rejected with the following message:

Unfortunately Prosper is not able to accept your post for to the Prosper Blog. Many of the sentiments expressed are shared, but we fell it is inappropriate for the blog. We are open to a revised version, but in it’s current form I will be unable to post it to the blog.

The post was titled “My holiday wish for Prosper.com”, and it goes like this:

If I could wish for just one thing this holiday season when it comes to Prosper.com it would be redacting any changes that lead to the appearance of censorship.

It is my opinion that the appearance of censorship on the part of Prosper.com and its management will be the downfall of Prosper. PMI needs to remember that this is a place where lenders invest their hard earned dollars and where borrowers ask for same. Everything that is done needs to be above board and honest to a fault. This appearance of censorship started when Prosper erased, completely erased, the old forums and installed a new one.

I have kept track and nine out of my last ten posts to the new forums did not meet approval and were not posted. Add to that that Prosper is sending out letters from attorneys to various members, banning anyone who mentions an outside website on Prosper.com, and erasing profiles that do the same and it looks like Prosper operates under a police state.

I want nothing more than for Prosper to succeed and it is my most fervent wish that I can work within Prosper to affect change.

As it stands now until or unless Prosper takes some action to remember who their customers are I won’t be borrowing or lending again. That’s a sad statement for me to make and I hope Prosper realizes I’m not the only one who feels this way. Many of us feel that Prosper has squandered not only the goodwill we once had but also the tremendous talents of their lender and borrower base are the customers who have been with them since the beginning. We all share one common goal: to see Prosper succeed and become the premier site for P2P lending. We hope Prosper shares this goal with us.

I’d like to thank Cushie for allowing me to post this. If you would like to know more you can follow the discussion at Prospers.org, the unofficial Prosper forums.

I waited longer then I planned too when it came to writing this entry. Prosper has been on the war path. In just the last few weeks they have:

• Issued trademark infringement notices to sites critical of them
• Removed members profiles that are critical and threatened them with suspension.
• Accused Prospers.org of phishing for their users information.
• Fostered such a “good community” on their blog that four days can pass without a single comment passing through their intense moderation

Back to my regularly scheduled post…

The short version…

Member since May 2006.

HR borrower the first time around, paid it off. ($1,000.00 @ 12.50%)
D borrower second time around, 25% paid off, never late. ($4,500.00 @ 13.50%)

Put $50 into my friends loan.

Emailed (in fairly accusatory tone) by Prosper because I talk about them on this blog. How nice of them to notice. It’s probably because I get a lot of traffic from the search engines on prosper keywords and/or because I am a Prospers.org member. Check my freshly minted stats for proof.

The long version…

I joined Prosper on May-16-2006 at 4:49 PM looking to consolidate some credit cards that were being a hassle. I joined a group right away, didn’t get many results, and started looking for other groups. I applied to several. Most I never heard back from, some sent me a nice denial letter, and finally one accepted me. I emailed back and forth with the group leader a few times, then setup a phone conversation for the weekend. We ended up being on the phone for about four or five hours as I recall. He walked me through what Prosper was and wasn’t and how he could help me fund my loan. We went through my five previous (unsuccessful) listings and discussed what about them wasn’t working. By the end of our conversation, my GL decided to fund my loan entirely on his own. This was not unheard of at the time, but rare nonetheless. We stayed in touch and have developed a good working relationship.

In February of 2007, having paid off my previous loan, I discussed another Prosper loan with my group leader. In the time since my first loan, by credit grade had improved from HR (high risk) to D (moderate risk). I asked for substantially more this time and my group leader agreed to fund part of it and leave the rest for the community for chip in on. The key here was going to be several fold to fund successfully:

• Make sure that members of the community could find me and my listing.
• Tout my improvement in credit grade and payment history.
• Do NOT auto-fund the loan so that the rate can be bid down.
• Explain work history, budget, and goals for the loan. Prove that previous goals were attained.

It all went very well. My rate went from 17% APR to 13.5% APR and had 135 bids over 7 days. The money was deposited in my bank account a couple days after close.

It is possible for a high risk borrower to get a loan on Prosper successfully. Don’t expect overnight money. This is a process that takes time, energy, patience, and the understanding that you are taking real money from real strangers. So many borrowers at Prosper default without ever making a payment that it is staggering. My Prosper payments have come first and carry more weight with me because they came from real people just like me and you that are looking to invest their money, get a return, and make a real difference in the lives of ordinary people.

My experience as an HR borrower on Prosper

Sometimes I wish I could know what Prosper (PMI) was thinking. They have deleted two years of public forums to rewrite history and censor opinions. The new forum is so heavily moderated that nothing, except cheerleaders, can get through their required moderation. Lucky for lenders, some of the data has been archived. It is a tough process, but several veteran members are doing what they can to make sure that Prosper can’t hide from the truth.

To that end, here are some other resources on Prosper if you haven’t found them already.

• Prospers.org Forum: The unofficial Prosper forums.
• RateLadder: A Prosper centric blog
• Eric’s Credit Community: Prosper loan data and statistics.
• Prosperlicious: A top lenders blog
• LendingStats: Statistics, data, and tools for Prosper lenders
• ProProsper: Professional tools for Prosper Lenders
• Blogs on Prosper: Aggregate feed on blogs about Prosper

Stats courtesy of lendingstats.com

Prosper P2P lending as of 10/11/2007:

15,175 loans totaling $92,772,263.54
2,229 loans are late, defaulted, repurchased, or bankrupt for a loss of $11,201,836.00

Wow…just…wow. How can this be anything but a failed model?

Stats courtesy of lendingstats.com