The Good
There is a small payday loan company out of Delaware named AmeriCash Advance that is not publicly traded. This company was one of the first online payday loan lenders back in 1999.
Through personal contact with this company I’ve come to learn that they treat their customers with respect and provide loans at honest rates. AmeriCash Advance has not grown as fast as many other companies simply because they refuse to reach so low as to do the despicable things that other companies have done and continue to do to consumers in the name of profit.
Most of those seeking an online loan just want a loan from a direct, honest, helpful lender that provides loans at or below industry standard rates, to get them to through an emergency situation.
Many in the media, state or federal government consider anyone that provides short term loans and is therefore in the payday cash advance industry to be bad by nature, but that could not be any further from the truth.
In our experience, AmeriCash Advance is honest and straight forward and does these things right as well; 1) While they make loan extensions (rollovers) available to their customers, they doesn’t advertise them and in fact discourages their use and 2) Have for the past 10 years or more, zeroed out loan balances after the customers payments reach 150% of the original borrowed amount. Now I’d like to discuss this second point for a second. What this means is, if a customer, through extensions or other factors reaches a payback limit of 150% of the original borrowed loan amount gets their outstanding loan balance forgiven! This practice is in no way an industry standard practice, and in fact, I know of no other lender, in the short-term loan space or any other financial space for that matter, that does or would even consider doing this. Just to be clear, when AmeriCash Advance zero’s the loan, the customer is free and clear of the loan!
The Bad
The biggest payday loan firm is the Orwellian-named Advance America, a publicly traded firm listed on the New York Stock Exchange with over 2,500 outlets in 32 states. Wells Fargo, Bank of America and U.S. Bank provide a $75 to 300 million line of credit to the firm at interest rates ranging from four to eight percent on the loans. In recent months, Advance America’s booming profits have been noticed and it has been touted as a “good investment” by Wall Street insiders.
One former employee of Advance America explains some tricks of the trade. Speaking on the condition on anonymity (because he and other employees were forced to sign a confidentiality agreement upon leaving the firm), this former shop employee says that many of his clients were on disability or U.S. Social Security: “They would come in for a small loan and write a check to the company dated the 3rd of the month, when their government checks would arrive. All the Advance America employees were required to come in early on that day, so we could quickly cash their checks and wipe out their checking accounts.”
A primary goal is to get customers to continually renew their loans. “We had to call in our numbers every night to Advance America’s corporate headquarters. They were not interested in numbers on who paid off their loans, but on who renewed their loans. They wanted folks to pay the interest rate and keep the loan going and going,” says the former employee.
This employee also worked for a time in the collection department where he was instructed not to visit people at home, but to go to people’s place of employment first. “We would not tell their bosses where we were from, but we would carry a clip board with our name on it in a prominent way. We would request that a person be pulled off the factory floor, not to collect, but to keep them on the hook. The key was embarrassment and intimidation.”
The above was reprinted from: CommonDreams.org
The Ugly
There are many companies who advertise themselves as online payday lending sites but are in fact middle men in the loan industry. While that in itself is not a bad thing, some run the customers they receive on their pretense websites through many different lenders, each of whom run credit checks on the potential customers which can among other things seriously damage their credit rating.
Even worse, they put the least credit worthy through a never ending ring of middle men sites which in turn may at their worst place popups on the screen that are intentionally meant to confuse and defraud the customer. The popup offers a service that the customer most likely would not want but with one wrong click of the mouse authorises and is charged, something like $29.95, for this unwanted and useless service. What would you do if you applied for a short-term loan online and on the application, provided your bank account and routing number for the depositing of loan funds based on the perceived notion that you would be approved, and a popup appeared that stated something like; “You Qualify for our Credit Check Services which costs $29.95 and you authorize us to withdraw this amount from the checking account you provided. Click OK to Cancel or Click Cancel for Authorization”? How many people do you think would get confused and click Cancel, which is the wrong choice. The practice of confusion selling was encountered through clients of a lead seller we encountered by the name of Atomic Leads. Green Leaf Loan Group through its parent company, AtoZ Financials, LLC had a very short term business relationship with Atomic Leads which was severed immediately upon learning of this ugly practice.
Another Ugly practice we have identified is over-selling; whereby these middle men sites deny the potential customer for a loan, due to their current credit status, but then sell the customers loan application to multiple another companies, often times offshore or overseas. These third parties in turn send the potential customer emails offering them loans at rates that are multiple times the industry standard. If this were to happen to you, you should expect to be bombarded with texts, emails and calls from foriegn based robo callers for months on end. The emails and calls will continue even if you take out a loan or tell the callers to put you on their do not call lists.
The practice of over-selling was encountered while working with a lead seller we encounted called ** Leads. Green Leaf Loan Group through its parent company, AtoZ Financials, LLC worked with ** Leads on multiple products but immediately terminated advertising of products carried by ** Leads where it was identified that they or their affilaites engaged in this ugly practice.
Disclosure
In the spirit of full disclosure; GreenLeafLoanGroup.com is a payday loan lead provider. Green Leaf makes every effort to match those seeking payday loans with quality direct lenders such as AmeriCash Advance or provides their applications only to those companies it has evaluated and determined do not engage in the bad and ugly practices mentioned in this post.
Your comments, questions and concerns relating to this story would be greatly appriciated.
