Refunding the agreed upon loan + interest if someone scams the loaner

[Moonsong]

5 minutes ago, Martyn said:

Maybe consider not loaning to people before you've done a proper background check on them to see if they even have the means of paying you back, either through colletoral or anything else. It's completely on you if you loan money to people you don't know and likely have no way to pay you back any money. I've seen some of your reports and also some of the roleplay related to the loans you do on your thread and I could've told you before you loaned the money that they were never going to pay it back.

 

There should however be much, much harsher punishments for people who do this to deter them from it. It would also help with your loaning company when you can remind people that if they scam you and try to avoid consequences by namechanging that they'll be in big trouble. 

 Definitely agreeing that loaners should be careful and that it's very risky but if you're running a legit company I still think there should be legitimate avenues available to help with recovering debt, why should they be deprived of roleplay opportunities just because someone vanishes OOC and doesn't pay the court? That shouldn't be the end of the matter, imho.

[Martyn]

3 minutes ago, Wasloos said:

I mean, one namechanged literally right away and the other two stopped playing right afterwards. Not sure how I was supposed to foresee that.

 

 

 

You loaned a person nearly one million with 0 collateral  and I very much doubt you genuinely checked if they had a legitimate job and double-checked their monthly income to see if they would realistically speaking be able to pay for the loan. Did you ask for evidence of their last received salary for instance? Did you check if they had enough assets such as houses or vehicles that could ICly been taken away from them if they default on their loan? Even if they namechange OOCly, those assets will still RPly be on the characters name since they wouldn't of been able to sell those assets while they're used as collateral and they've signed an official document stating this.

 

Simply put, if you're extremely careful this will NOT happen or at the very least you'll reduce the risks involved. However, like I said before? If people are namechanging to avoid the consequences to avoid paying anything back there should be much more severe punishment unless the person got CK'd and its out of his control.

 

6 minutes ago, Moonsong said:

 Definitely agreeing that loaners should be careful and that it's very risky but if you're running a legit company I still think there should be legitimate avenues available to help with recovering debt, why should they be deprived of roleplay opportunities just because someone vanishes OOC and doesn't pay the court? That shouldn't be the end of the matter, imho.

 

You can't recover any debt with a person that has no money or assets, nobody's going to give a loan to someone who doesn't seem to have the ability to ever pay it back. Loaning someone without a job and no assets close to a million is just unintelligent. Loan companies should also not feel like they've got OOC backup/protection and put less effort into background checking their clients before passing over any money. That's just lazy and very, very bad roleplay. 

 

If someone does end up namechanging maliciously to avoid the consequences you can temporary ban these players and wipe their assets for all I care. As long as it deters people from using OOC means to ruin the roleplay.

[StiffChocl8]

+1.

The concept of RPing giving/taking loans opens up a lot of opportunities for genuinely fun RP and something has to be done to protect the players who have to end up making reports in forums over players who shelf their characters to avoid repaying loans. Imo it amounts to OOC toxicity to some extent.

[Moonsong]

11 minutes ago, Martyn said:

 

 

 

You loaned a person nearly one million with 0 collateral  and I very much doubt you genuinely checked if they had a legitimate job and double-checked their monthly income to see if they would realistically speaking be able to pay for the loan. Did you ask for evidence of their last received salary for instance? Did you check if they had enough assets such as houses or vehicles that could ICly been taken away from them if they default on their loan? Even if they namechange OOCly, those assets will still RPly be on the characters name since they wouldn't of been able to sell those assets while they're used as collateral and they've signed an official document stating this.

 

Simply put, if you're extremely careful this will NOT happen or at the very least you'll reduce the risks involved. However, like I said before? If people are namechanging to avoid the consequences to avoid paying anything back there should be much more severe punishment unless the person got CK'd and its out of his control.

 

 

You can't recover any debt with a person that has no money or assets, nobody's going to give a loan to someone who doesn't seem to have the ability to ever pay it back. Loaning someone without a job and no assets close to a million is just unintelligent. Loan companies should also not feel like they've got OOC backup/protection and put less effort into background checking their clients before passing over any money. That's just lazy and very, very bad roleplay. 

 

If someone does end up namechanging maliciously to avoid the consequences you can temporary ban these players and wipe their assets for all I care. As long as it deters people from using OOC means to ruin the roleplay.

 

Fair points tbh, but realistically how are you going to run background checks or asset checks on people? The only way I can see this working is if it was checked via admins perhaps roleplayed as some sort of background check service? If you're telling people to do more thorough background checks for assets, it needs to be facilitated.

Edited June 22, 2022 by Moonsong

[StiffChocl8]

2 minutes ago, Moonsong said:

 

Fair points tbh, but realistically how are you going to run background checks or asset checks on people? The only way I can see this working is if it was checked via admins perhaps roleplayed as some sort of background check? If you're telling people to do more thorough background checks for assets, it needs to be facilitated.

I have not dealt with giving out massive loans, but I have had the opportunity to give out small loans to working class characters. Doing a background check could be possible through PD or could be facilitated with the help of a lawyer I assume. Also, it's been seen that people check the client's ID and proceed with loaning the amount. There HAS TO BE collateral in exchange. I don't see how any money lender would have the confidence to hand out money without any form of actual security. 

[Martyn]

13 minutes ago, Moonsong said:

 

Fair points tbh, but realistically how are you going to run background checks or asset checks on people? The only way I can see this working is if it was checked via admins perhaps roleplayed as some sort of background check? If you're telling people to do more thorough background checks for assets, it needs to be facilitated.

 

Simple? You ask the person who wants to the loan to provide you with information. Where they work, the salary they receive. You ask them for bank records to back this up, show a pattern of legitimate income that flows in regularly. You then do the math and see if there's enough cash flow for the person to pay off whatever amount you agreed on, on a monthly basis. I'm not trying to be rude but its not rocket science and you don't need James Bond to go on a mission to look for all this information. If they give you a job, name of their employer and address you can just check it out? Make sure the business is legitimate, speak to the boss, check if the business isn't a scam itself and make sure it actually opens frequently and is able to pay the client enough to the point where he can make his loan payments. There are many ways to do this, especially since the person who wants the loan is pretty much forced to cooperate with anything you ask from them. Make them provide any and all information you ask for or simply do not give them them the loan if they do not cooperate. 

 

 

Just be a lot more strict and put more time and effort into the roleplay scenarios in regard to loaning money and you'll find yourself being scammed much less. You're also genuinely opening yourself up to legitimate and IC loan scams, I'm not gonna give people any ideas but due to this persons method of giving out loans there are a bunch of ways to loan scam this person ICly and keep the money without a care in the world.

Edited June 22, 2022 by Martyn

[Moonsong]

1 minute ago, Martyn said:

 

Simple? You ask the person who wants to the loan to provide you with information. Where they work, the salary they receive. You ask them for bank records to back this up, show a pattern of legitimate income that flows in regularly. You then do the maths and see if there's enough cash flow for the person to pay off whatever amount you agreed on, on a monthly basis. I'm not trying to be rude but its not rocket science and you don't need James Bond to go on a mission to look for all this information. If they give you a job, name of their employer and address you can just check it out? Make sure the business is legitimate, speak to the boss, check if the business isn't a scam itself and make sure it actually opens frequently and is able to pay the client enough to the point where he can make his loan payments. There are many ways to do this, especially since the person who wants the loan is pretty much forced to cooperate with anything you ask from them. Make them provide any and all information you ask for or simply do not give them them the loan if they do not cooperate. 

 

 

Just be a lot more strict and put more time and effort into the roleplay scenarios in regard to loaning money and you'll find yourself being scammed much less. You're also genuineely opening yourself up to legitimate and IC loan scams, I'm not gonna give people any ideas but due to this persons method of giving out loans there are a bunch of ways to loan scam this person ICly and keep the money without a care in the world.

 

No I agree, I've personally never given out loans for this very reason. It's way too risky, but for those who do use due diligence as you and @StiffChocl8 mentioned they should be supported. At the same time, I can understand the appeal to the roleplay, it's very niche and risky but a valid area of roleplay all the same. Should there be collateral? 100% yes but again, how can that be facilitated if players can abscond with minimal repercussions (even if it was secured with assets) and not loose anything but the money they gained just because the loaner engaged in risky business? There needs to be at least some degree of fairness imho

[Martyn]

9 minutes ago, Moonsong said:

 

No I agree, I've personally never given out loans for this very reason. It's way too risky, but for those who do use due diligence as you and @StiffChocl8 mentioned they should be supported. At the same time, I can understand the appeal to the roleplay, it's very niche and risky but a valid area of roleplay all the same. Should there be collateral? 100% yes but again, how can that be facilitated if players can abscond with minimal repercussions (even if it was secured with assets) and not loose anything but the money they gained just because the loaner engaged in risky business? There needs to be at least some degree of fairness imho

 

Again, if people maliciously namechange to avoid repercussions they should be banned as it's a gross common courtesy violation and puts a strain on both the player and the admin who has to handle it. The money should also be handed back, but I do NOT believe admins should also take the money that the loaner charged for the loan. Simply because if that's the case I'm going to start handing out 1mil loans at the airport to new players and have them sign a contract to pay back 2mil. And if they end up not playing again I'll have made a million out of thin air. Obviously that's exaggerated but it's still what's going on here at a smaller scale at the moment.

 

If these loaning companies don't have the time or resources to investigate people properly? Hire a private investigation company, there are plenty around including my own (shameless self advertisement) and they'll happily roleplay with you. Instead of accepting loans right away let people provide you with all and any information you need and then let them know it'll take a few days before they'll hear if their loan request has been accepted or not. In these few days the private investigators can fact-check all the information provided and give a risk assesment which the loan company can then use to make their own determination if its worth their time and money.

Edited June 22, 2022 by Martyn

[Bagacius]

For real there is some issues that people and loan companies does wrong and it would never happened in normal country IRL - first of all 1) Loan companies does very shitty or sometimes even none 'credit check" as ex-prisoners , unemployed guys "with magical income" - gets 100,000 or even 200.000 loans still (as loan companies still knows they will get refund later in case money are not returned) , usually credit checks and simmilar procedures takes just few minutes and money gets transfered to "clients" bank account - why is that? So Loan companies mostly just thinks about "profit" and not about RP or something like that - yes I DO understand Loan companies main idea is profit , but as we're here it should be taken more seriously. 2) Also another problem is that for real we do not have any loan system scriptly - It could be nice if we could have some commands to agree with loan (to avoid scamming with contracts and similar stupid shit) and it could be shown later on your /stats for example. 3) Loan companies sometimes has insane interest rate - so we should have rules of maximum interest rate if we want to make refunds with a interest rate - as some companies does normal 5-10% but some companies takes 15-25% and client takes that loan if he needs it as he can't get it done somewhere else.

[Lucas Welch]

This is an older discussion, but I do completely agree that loan + interest should be returned. I own Los Santos Loans and feel this is a great place to discuss this issue. Let’s say you take out a loan for a month term, which is what I typically do. A month passes and when you request the money back the character got deleted. Now you get the money back but no interest, but that’s just the beginning. You have bills to pay on that loan. I personally have a office rent that is 10k a month. So now I am out interest + office rent. That could cost anywhere from 20k to 40k depending on the amount. Some of the bigger companies have employees. Now you are out interest + rent + employee cost. I used to charge 5% to 8% on a monthly loan, but due to a recent lawsuit and the extra risk that is involved in this business, I have had to raise my rates to 20% to 30% on a month loan. Honestly if this rule doesn’t change, I will have to continue to raise my rates and expect more of these rules to be broken.