An interest free loan is a benefit.

 

The lender shouldnt be rewarded for being stupid enough to give out a crazy loan. Both parties are at fault in that situation and the lender shouldn't be rewarded for making stupid loans with interest. Both parties have the responsibility of possessing basic common sense, the person taking the loan needs to pay it back sure but the lender needs to make sure it is possible for it to be paid in the first place.

I would feel differently but I have never, ever seen the moderation fail to enforce a loan with terms and late fees that were even vaguely reasonable. Make a reasonable loan with capped late fees and the moderation will enforce them, it is as simple as that.

In the situation of a "crazy" loan we have two users who have both been foolish and neither should be rewarded for it. It should be handled precisely as the moderation has been handling it which is simply to undo it and get the money received back to where it came from.

And if the lender has given "crazy" loans before they should be punished for scamming users by loansharking.

 

Surely you have seen on a few complaints that late fee's have indeed been capped off at a certain point as they have specifically stated that you need to have a specific amount of days of late fees and have to been deemed appropriate.

Or did you miss all of these complaints as well?

 

Last I checked the interest wasn't removed, just lowered to reasonable levels. I can't exactly call that a benefit.

And besides, if interest free loans are problematic then people will just stop giving outrageous loans because they wouldn't benefit from it. Sounds like a good situation to me.

 

It's removed

 

I just edited my post to add something to that.

 

If lenders realise that, if you give out loans with a ridiculous payment amount/date, they will not receive interest on their loan. This should discourage this kind of predatory lending because it has no benefit for the lender.

And I can see what you mean with the idea of "it's a no-interest loan, that's a benefit". Yes, in a way it is. But we can't have a solution which punishes both parties. Both parties made a stupid decision, it just happens to be the person that receives the loan that gets off lightly. If we increased the amount required to pay back, that would benefit the person that loaned out the money.

Either way, one party will " benefit" from these ridiculous loans. The way we handle it is just the fairest, because it's like the loan never happened. The lender gets their money back. That's what counts the most.

 

Personally I am on the side of, if the person borrowing the money agrees to it, then they need to pay it. The fact that they might not be able to pay it and get banned is the risk both parties take. If I make my loan so outrageous I never see any of it, I understand that risk. But for someone else to say that the loan that me and the other party agreed to was not a fair loan... it was agreed to by both of the affected parties. For me, the higher the risk, the higher the potential reward makes sense. People want to make as much money as they think they can make. If I can't charge enough interest to make it worth my risk, then why bother? At this moment what exactly is high interest payback seems to be a blurred line that no one is on the same page about.

With that said, it is only my opinion and I have to respect the opinion of others. I know that is not how things are being enforced. It seems the only way to be sure you are not going to be at risk, is to no longer do in-game loans without a forum contract that is approved by a staff member. Otherwise you risk the loan being called unfair even when none of the parties involved thought it was.

From now on, just get staff approval on your lending practices by making a forum contract. Otherwise risk giving out interest free money.

I may not agree to the principle, but I am willing to adapt to cover myself. If the loan is needed in such a short time that they can't do a forum contract and get staff approval on the terms, then maybe it shouldn't be done in the first place.

 

Not really, you still have to pay back - Anyway, why should we be rewarding the lenders for their stupidity then?

 

I have not seen any complaints of that sort, unless they are outright predatory - Mind linking one? That surely can't hurt your argument.

 

You're essentially expecting small children to make the right decisions all the time - The truth is, it doesn't really work out that way. It doesn't matter whether they both agreed to it or not - the loan is clearly meant to take advantage of people and there's large amounts of small children and not just that; People who are unfamiliar with the ECC economy. All we'll gain from enforcing these absolutely stupid loans are more players quitting and banned.

This just reminds me of the "melon and a sword" attempted scam. Sure, you can argue that both parties agreed to it, but in the end, you're just taking advantage of the naiveness of certain users.

If a user is that high risk for you, just don't loan to them. Period. Why should you be loaning to players when chances are, you won't see your money again?

 

This is a deception, a player thinks they are getting something they are not. There is no deception in a loan.

Maybe they want to take the risk. Why do people loan to permabanned players when chances are they won't see their money again.

 

Uh, yes really. A loan without interest. Hello, clearly a benefit I get upfront cash with no downsides.

I'm not saying people should have to pay back the full agreement (at least not in this thread). I say if a loan is declared predatory the person who took the loan must pay back 125% of what they borrowed. This means no one gets away with a benefit as the loan profit is less than a normal loan and higher than just getting back nothing.

 

There isn't any deception in the melon and a sword though - They clearly said melon and a sword, did they not? ;)

People can be stupid or naive.

Why should we be giving the lender an advantage for making a predatory loan? You're essentially giving them interest on a loan that they shouldn't have made in the first place. The current system works fine - it's combating supply, while you're proposing to combat demand of predatory loans.

We should be combating supply, as when there's no supply of predatory loans, there won't be demand related issues. Combating demand solves nothing.

 

Because they're really damn stupid, that's why.

 

No.

I see what you are trying to say, however I would like to point out that you cant just blame lenders. Just as people can abuse the system to give predatory loans they can also abuse them by intentionally getting predatory loans. Let me give an example.

I message a builder. I say hey, can you give me a 20k loan. Ill pay back 200k in a week. The builder thinks about this for a minute, looks me up on the forums sees I dont have any bans. Then he says, sure, ill loan you. Now a week goes by and I dont pay back the builder. He posts a complaint on the forums saying. Hey, you know @RyanBlocks2 didnt pay me back 200k that he owed for this loan. The mod looks at the screens and sais well, this is a predatory loan we cant enforce this. Ryan pay this builder 20k back. I say alright throw the builder 20k and its all over. Now what did I get in exchange for this deal? I got 20k to lotto with for a week. What did the builder get. Well he had 20k taken from him for a week. Maybe he wanted to get res with that money or invest it but instead all he got was his deal denied. Instead of that loan to me paying off like he meant it to he just got taken advantage of.

Now, whats my point with this. The point is that if you plan on enforcing these kinds of deals then both people need to not get an advantage. A loan with no payback is an advantage. Thats why I suggest, if you plan on enforcing these kinds of loans you walk the middle of the road. I consider the middle of the road 125% payback and here's why. No interest helps the one who took the loan. Normal interest (or higher) helps the one who gave the loan. I consider normal interest to be around 150% eg if I take a 100k loan I expect to pay back around 150k. So, I think making people who take these loans give 125% payback is reasonable. Its not killing the person who took the loan like the full amount, nor is it giving a person a large advantage for giving out the loan (they could have made more giving out non predatory loans). I think this is more fair.

To put what I stated in my last paragraph into my example. The builder files his complaint, now I have to pay him back 25k. So what happens is he makes 5k profit. Its not his 200k, its not a great advantage but he doesnt get taken advantage of. At the same time I dont get rewarded for taking a 20k loan from a builder.

 

Actually no. just the fact that they are asking for the loan shows me they are not making sound decisions. A loan is very rarely a solution. If you can't afford to do what you are trying to do, then you shouldn't be putting yourself in debt to do it. That is my opinion.

My money, my risk. If I do these high risk loans and get 20% of them to pay. I may lose the other 80%, but that 20% makes it worth it if the payback is high enough. On a side note, I don't take that large of a risk. Personally, this really doesn't affect me. I don't loan out anything I can't afford to lose. If I do loan to a player that is a high risk, I'll usually do a small amount first and see if they can handle that. I also have a strict policy not to loan to anyone addicted to lotto. That is the real evil.

And just to reiterate:

From now on, if I loan money, I will just a forum contract to make sure it passes the staff smell test. I am OK with doing this. I can be reasonable and understand the reason behind the rules, even if I don't agree with them.

 

So should we make loaning to permabanned players against the rules too. To protect the stupid? Thats my point. However, thats not the point im trying to make in this thread. In this thread im just trying to say that having no interest required back doesn't necessarily solve the problem of predatory loans, it helps the person who took the loan unfairly. See my above post for that.

 

wat. They said "melon and a sword" - They aren't deceiving, lol.

Yeah, but then you're just giving the lender a fail-safe. They understand that they can literally max out limits by offering predatory loans - This will encourage predatory loans, not prevent them. We should be going for the supply, not the demand. Don't want no interest on your loans? Don't make predatory loans. Seems simple to me.

 

Yes they are this is just a ridiculous statement I wont respond to this.

Your ignoring the fact that the one I got the loan from is the very ignorant builder you were trying to protect in the first place which was the whole point of that post. He wasn't the offering loans I solicited one from him cause he was ignorant. You're saying: We want to protect ignorant builders that take loans but not ignorant builders that give loans. And it wont encourage predatory loans because they make LESS than they would giving normal loans so why would they give predatory loans now? Did you even read my post cause it seems like you just copied and pasted your previous statement.