eBay Seller Capital and LendingPoint-Heads Up

[budstewart]

So I decided to explore what eBay Seller Capital and LendingPoint were all about.  Spent better part of the day trying to make LendingPoint happy.  If you are considering a loan using these people be prepared for the following:  2019 Tax Returns including all W2's and Schedule C.  A current P&L Statement.  Recent Bank Statement.  Copy of a canceled check.  Routing Number for your checking account.  Last years 1099 from PayPal.  I transmitted all of this information three different times to three different locations.  I had conversations with three different Customer Service reps.  I emailed them a request to CANCEL the whole mess after receiving an email from them requesting the documents for the third time.   I went to bed thinking that I just refinanced my home faster and more efficiently than what I went through with LendingPoint.   Just my experience.  Others may have had a more pleasant experience.

[pcb1bb]

Geez that's a lot of data. 

Watch your credit report and block your Bank & Investment accounts as you just gave up the keys to the Golden Goose.  It might not be a happy ending.😩

Good Luck

[budstewart]

No kidding.  I changed some passwords and gave my bank an alert.  As an aside, since I posted my original message, I received two notices telling me my application was canceled and a third asking me to send the information they had requested yesterday!  These people are not talking to each other.

[pcb1bb]

Try this in person:  

Household Finance Corporation in Birmingham, AL
Household Finance Corporation (Loan & Financing Services) is a financial advisory firm in Birmingham, Alabama. This financial advisor is listed on Financial Advisory Firms under Financial Advisory Services - Loan & Financing Services.

[divwido]

As a lender, they have a fudiciary duty to not  to use or sell that data.

[pcb1bb]

Is that a joke?  HAHAHAHAHA

Once the Bird flies..............

[thecrazyham]

Yeah i got the email from eBay saying they would be replacing PPWC with eBay working capital offered by lending point, i contacted lending point and they said the working capital isn't available yet, coming soon, but they could offer me an unsecured personal loan.  I asked how much?  They pre-approved me, for a paltry sum less then i usually took from PPWC every year for some quick inventory purchase, and then they wanted a huge monthly payment, and on top of that they wanted a pile of documentation to start the process.  I said nope... hung up the phone and just walked away.  

Funny how i can get $20k from PPWC before MP and lending point is like the max we can do is $9k and we want $348 a month... I was like excuse me??  I have an excellent credit rating, in the 800's, and my FICO is just over 800 as well, but your going to kindly offer me $9k and ask for $348 a month?  I don't think so... Since i am stuck with MP now and can't get PPWC anymore i guess i will have to fund bulk inventory purchases another way, which stinks, i usually paid back the PPWC in 6-8 months from sales and i never had to lift a finger it just took care of itself.  

Even local banks offered better loan terms then lending point did and all they wanted was last years taxes and a signature.... Whats that tell you?

[tev4all]

Maybe lending point foresees a wind coming that could  blow down a house of cards, ( not necessarily your house)

[esg-enterprises]

It tells me any company that ebay is involved with is probably run like ebay.

Birds of a feather, lol

I used PPWC also, a great resource and couldn't have been simpler, anything ebay touches becomes as complicated, and expensive, as could be.  

[dandfmarinesalvage]

I think you might have hit on something there. Defaults at all levels are beginning to tick up in the finance world. It seems that the last month or so, credit markets are tightening for sure. For what it's worth as both a Paypal working capital client and a lending point client. I used paypal wc on a couple of occasions and it worked well. Once you really did the math to figure the true interest rate is was fairly atrocious unless you had a way of funneling money around that account to drag the repayment timeframe out longer. As to lending point. I received a notice a few months ago thru ebay of their partnership. I applied (took about 10 minutes). I was notified of the terms I was eligible for a few hours after applying and the money hit my account the next day. Not sure if I just happened to hit it at the right time in it's infancy, maybe I hit it before credit markets started to tighten, or maybe I got lucky and submitted all the info they needed the first time (which was very little). I can not say for sure if that was the normal process back in the summer but I literally had 10-15 minutes of time invested in the whole process and got a very attractive interest rate as well (yeah your local bank may give you a rate a few points better but by the time you figure in the closing cost, various silly fees etc. then unless it's a really drawn out time frame you're effectively paying a MUCH higher rate).

[metallicaguitarist]

This SUCKS !, I took out, and repaid just shy of 100K in PPWC loans over the last few years, Problem free, Almost no forms since Paypal had all the ebay info anyway and no third party bird sitting on the shoulders of the loan officers, telling them to get every last shred of info for the last 5 years worth of tax returns and bank info before even talking about loans (cause god forbid, we can't have people getting any money without uncle Sam being sent a memo about it).  And now thanks to EBAY wanting to try and run the table, and kicking paypal out of the equation, they pretty much fu**** all of us big sellers who used to rely on those big loans on a regular basis, meanwhile if you mentioned this to any ebay employees, they would say "well, ebay is getting into doing these loans as well, you can still get them, but just do it through us", Its NOT the same thing, and its NOT ebay doing the loan, its LendingPoint, If I wanted to deal with LendingPoint I Would have went to them right off the bat !, And the way that Paypal did them, taking a small percentage of each sale, and nothing more, was PERFECT !, Not this **bleep** that paypal now does with the "business loans", where it just automatically deducts a few hundred a week from your bank account, regardless of how much you sold that week, thats what banks do, if I wanted that kind of loan I could have went to a bank and gotten a cheaper rate !, But I used to take the slightly higher rate, and borrow 30K at a time from Paypal purposely to avoid a "set amount due" payment weekly/monthly,  and with the sales volume we do regularly, each of those 30K loans were paid off within a year or less just by allowing it to withhold 25-30% of each sale.... But as they say, "All good things must come to an end" .... Thanks alot Ebay ! >:o 

[thriftorium]

I had a similar experience and was eventually approved. However, I can never reach a customer service agent or "relationship specialist" as they call them. All I need to do is change the auto-pay bank account for my loan but their website does not enable users to do self-manage such items. Expect to be on hold for 30 minutes or more anytime you need to reach this company.

[nolaguitarshop]

I just gave up on trying to get a inventory loan from LendingPoint.

It was so much easier with PayPal where the limit was a percentage of your prior 12 months of sales.

For the amount I was looking to borrow it just seemed like the 1099K would have been sufficient, but as others have mentioned, they wanted the prior years personal tax return, P&L etc., and the interest on the loans was pretty much what you would expect using a credit card.

[sandyoutlet]

Hi @budstewart thanks for sharing your experience. I'm an eBay employee and I work closely with LendingPoint on the eBay Seller Capital program. I apologize that you've gone through this experience - it shouldn't be that difficult. We will review this issue specifically. Do you mind if I reach out to you after we've had a chance to look it over? Thanks! 

[ronsam-197]

ebay's so called Seller Capital program isn't even remotely close to what we used to have through PayPal Working Capital Loans.

But what do you expect from a company that so obviously doesn't trust it's sellers?