BBB Warns About Online Payday Lenders

The Better Business Bureau is warning people about the practices and claims of some online payday lenders.

"Desperate times are leading people to the Internet to apply for payday loans and many are falling deeper into debt after getting tangled up with a lender who has zero regard for the law," said Stephen A. Cox, President and CEO of the Council of Better Business Bureaus.

"Unlike a payday loan that you might get from a local business, online payday loans require your bank account number and, as a result, the borrower is at the mercy of the lender as more money than they counted on is withdrawn from his or her account."

Hundreds of people have complained to the BBB after signing up for a payday loan on sites like OnceClickCash, 500Fastcash and rbloans. Consumers complaints said they agreed to what they thought was a one-time payday loan, usually a few hundred dollars to be paid off in two weeks. They provided their bank account information to the lender and the money was then deposited.

The arrangement leads to a debt spiral.  All of the subsequent payments went toward paying off recurring finance charges and never toward the principal. As a result, consumers report paying two and three times the amount of the original loan and still having the same amount of principal to payoff.  One Massachusetts woman who received a loan from Ace Cash Services said she made over $1,700 in payments to payoff a $225 loan.

Many consumers were surprised to hear that the online lender was not licensed by the state and charged interest rates well over what was allowed by their state laws. When confronted, the lender usually responds they don't have to follow state or federal laws, claiming they are based in another country or on a Native American reservation.

"The bottom line here is that if you are handing over your bank account information online to get a payday loan without doing your research, you are setting yourself up to pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars more than you bargained for," added Cox.




 

eBay Launches Series of Seller Events

eBay is starting a new series of events to help small businesses and part-time eBay sellers "accelerate their businesses" on eBay, which has 90 million active users. The series is called eBay: On Location, and has dates set for Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, and San Jose.

"eBay sellers are creative entrepreneurs who understand that eBay’s global reach and dynamic marketplace offer the ideal setting to start and build a business online," says eBay Marketplaces President Lorrie Norrington. "We invite our sellers to eBay: On Location to connect with each other and to take the next step in making their eBay businesses even more successful."

The goal of the series of events appears to be to let sellers network with one another and share ideas for maintaining a successful eBay business. There are also courses on "top seller secrets", productivity to boost sales and reduce costs, and utilizing social media to drive sales.

"eBay sellers have become savvier about how to use eBay in ingenious ways," says Jim Griffith, eBay senior manager, Seller Strategy and Dean of Education. "eBay: On Location is a great way for the seller community to come together and share those strategies—and learn something new from experts."

They are only letting in 500 people per event, and registration is offered on a first-come, first-served basis. It costs $45 to get in.


Have You Read This?

> eBay to Make Changes to Seller Fees

> eBay Fined $2.6 Million Over LVMH Sales

> eBay Previews Possible Geotargeting Feature For Sellers

Yelp Adds ‘Check-Ins’ To Reviews

The review site Yelp has been interesting to watch over time. It gets a lot of interest from different businesses like Google who was interested buying it. Then it gets more investment from VC’s when those deals don’t pan out. It has been vilified for business practices and then has worked to make the service more ‘balanced’ as well. Regardless of your point of view of the service it certainly has established itself as the leader in the small business online review space. This month’s Inc. magazine’s cover story is on the service (take note of the what not to do story that opens the piece ….. creepy.)

Now Yelp is looking to make the service even more interesting by adding a location based feature that allows reviewers to show how many times they have “checked in” to a location that they have reviewed. Mashable tells us more

Last week, the battle for your check-ins took an interesting new turn as Yelp rolled out a set of location features for its iPhone app. Today, Yelp’s expanding the feature to include check-in information alongside user reviews on its website.

With that small step, you can see exactly why check-ins are such a big deal for Yelp and a big threat to upstarts like Foursquare and Gowalla. We’re told that Yelp just passed nine million reviews, and now, with the ability to connect check-in data to individual reviews, the company is hoping to add further credibility to its users’ ratings.

According to the article this feature is only available for iPhone apps but versions for Android, BlackBerry and the like are on the horizon. Here’s a look at how these check-in appear in a review.

They also show up in a user’s profile by their reviews. This is important because it gives some level of participation to the site by giving users the ability to add more depth and credibility to their reviews if they have repeatedly “checked in” from that location.

Mashable’s Adam Ostrow makes an interesting observation about this feature as it relates to the level of competition this service could provide to a much smaller high flyer of late, Foursquare, which is a location based ‘game’.

……..the most interesting aspect of Foursquare is not the game, but seeing where your friends are, and Yelp’s doing that too. Given Yelp has a big headstart, it’s hard not to see it representing a big threat to the startups — though Facebook and its expected location features still loom large as well.

I am not a participant in any of these location-based activities personally. There are a lot of reasons for it and I explain a few here. Whether I use it or not though is obviously not the point. There appears to be a real growing wave of moving toward filling this apparent obsession of knowing where everyone is at all times and letting them know where you are. It’s like a location tweet of sorts.

As marketers, there could be tremendous value that will be discovered with time. Who will be the players that really take advantage of it and allow themselves to ‘stub their toes’ early on in the ‘monetization of location’ game should be fun to watch.

Are you seeing any real effective early adopters marketers who leverage location based services out there? Do tell.

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Yahoo Survey Finds Optimism for Holiday Online Retail

Yahoo conducted a survey of small business online retailers to find out how they think they'll perform this upcoming holiday season compared to previous years.

"Surprisingly, based on the current economic landscape, the results show an optimistic outlook, with over 60 percent of the Yahoo! merchants surveyed expecting sales to be the same as most years or even stronger," a representative for Yahoo tells WebProNews.

"Only 25% expected sales to be weaker than most years (with the remaining 15% expecting sales to be weaker than most years but stronger than last year)," she adds. "After last year in which sales were plagued by the recession, this holiday season just may shape up to mark a rebound of sorts for small business online retailers."

Some other findings from the survey include: 

- The most optimistic industries are beauty and fragrances; clothing, accessories & shoes; and food – in all cases more than 40 percent think this will be a stronger year than most years.

- Several industries feel sales will be back to normal this season after being way down last year, including books and magazines, electronics, and music.

- These sectors tend to include lower cost gift options than some of the more pessimistic sectors such as computers & hardware (in which only 6% expect this year to be stronger than most years and 64% expect sales to be weaker than most years).

A recent survey from Google found that by last week, half of consumers had already begun holiday shopping. However, research from MerchantCircle found that only about 23% of merchants believe the worst of the recession is behind us.

Have You Read This?

> Holiday Shoppers Want Deals Even More Than They Did Last Year

> More People Plan To Shop Online During The Holidays

> Good Chunk of Holiday Spending Will Be Online

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