Do not invest in Bondora | P2P lending

P2P lending
https://veg-buildlog.blogspot.com/2016/09/p2p-lending-risks-and-rewards.html
https://veg-buildlog.blogspot.com/2017/04/just-invested-few-tenners-in-primestox.html
https://veg-buildlog.blogspot.com/2017/08/p2p-lending-risks-and-rewards-bondora.html 

Bondora review: do not invest in Bondora
http://p2pindependentforum.com/thread/4853/invest-bondora

Glad that not many of my loans turned-out like Bondora loans, with worse returns than Funding Circle a few years ago or early Zopa personal loans. Worse than Bitbond. I could be wrong, but my Bondora login screen writes my account as worth €4,160 except that I can't withdraw it. The amount I can withdraw is €0 (worth €4,160 in Bondora money). If I click "sell loans", a high figure for salable loans appears sometimes, and then with a few clicks corrects itself to zero, so I can't withdraw Bondora money and I can't sell Bondora money, and I can't eat it or live in it or anything else either.

While Bondora write €4,160 on the account, profit is minus €834 (suggesting 8% or 9% bondora returns with the Bondora portfolio manager). Meanwhile they are happy to take card payments and pay commission for referrals. I imagine that a lot of people borrow on their credit cards to lend, and for some reason, nobody has written articles about what a scam the whole thing has become after a promising start before the firm tried to expand very quickly into new lending markets like Spain and relied more and more on equity finance companies to buy them out.

http://p2pindependentforum.com/thread/4853/invest-bondora has dozens of Bondora trading reviews from people who have lost money on the site, but for some reason there are no search results saying the same thing from newspapers and website claims look impossible to justify. There is another thread for the technically-minded showing just results: None of the technically-minded people look pleased.
http://p2pindependentforum.com/thread/4340/general-bondora-statistics

I don't see ads from Bondora so I can't forward them to the UK advertising standards authority - they do a lot of web and PR stuff and those Trustpilot reviews you can get done, but I'm surprised that it isn't sombody's job in some country to get the claims changed or just stop Bondora taking-on new loans. There are loads of very good euro P2P lending sites that loose trust because of their neighbour.

If you would like to nominate Bondora and their equity finance backers (who don't invest in the loans themselves I think) for the Fintech awards, please add a note saying "not seriously".

Primestox.com - I have just invested in a new P2P lending site

P2P lending related pages

• Rebuildingsociety business & asset finance
  
• Investly invoice finance
  
• https://veg-buildlog.blogspot.com/2016/09/p2p-lending-risks-and-rewards.html another post on this obscure blog
  
• http://p2pindependentforum.com/thread/8588/primestox-company-platform-stock-finance Place for comments on the P2P independent forum for now
  
• Veganline.com for vegan shoes on-line - author's advert
  

P2P lending on this blog
https://veg-buildlog.blogspot.com/2016/09/p2p-lending-risks-and-rewards.html
https://veg-buildlog.blogspot.com/2017/04/just-invested-few-tenners-in-primestox.html
https://veg-buildlog.blogspot.com/2017/08/p2p-lending-risks-and-rewards-bondora.html 

Just invested a few tenners in Primestox.com , a P2P lending outfit that has trappings of sanity like a nice web site. It has high annual percentage payback rates on very small short-term small investments if all goes well, and next to no references from other web pages. So I decided to invest about £100 yesterday, and write this referring page which I revise now and then. There's also a link to a P2P invoice finance company further down which might interest the same businesses, and a P2P business capital company which is good for secured loans on equipment. I don't know why I wrote "capital" rather than "finance" but I think it looks good for larger amounts.

( Update February 2018 - Every Primestox deal has paid on time or early, one or two have posted freebies, and the system has worked exactly as described. Most of the deals have sold-out within hours, so the rates on offer are dropping. Below 12% it is harder to get P2P lenders interested quickly because sites like Lendy and Fundingsecure offer that much for bridging loans; at the moment Primestox offers are about 18% with free card processing. )

The Primestox contract

primestox.com/faq/ + a brochure or ask customerservice@... or the formal version: primestox.com/terms-and-conditions

Investors have a right to a parcel of food on default

The firm finances food for investors, and, being a P2P platform, investors own the food. Other P2P systems are a bit theoretical about this, but not Primestox, where it is a point of pride and and spelt-out in some detail, with inevitable gaps. The food is financed over about three months allowing its manufacture, sale to a shop, and payment back to the manufacturer or importer. Each investor owns the right to an individual parcel of food, with free delivery, if the process goes wrong. A pound of flesh for example. The earlier deals have been branded, upmarket, and valued at a near-retail price somewhere like Waitrose. More recently there have been bulk spice imports as well.

There is no link from one lender to one physical piece of food until the parcel is made-up, but it's a safe bet that a food company will have food to spare if not money, and there is a more general link between one batch of loans to the food company and one batch of food produced.

A way of funding food production before it is produced without borrowing

primestox.com/producers/ is the new producer's page or ask producers@...com
+44 (0) 207 846 0153

I'm not a producer and pick this up from examples under each past loan, headed "the proposal". The gist of it is that you pre-sell some of the product before it's cooked - while it is a sack of oats for sale at a supplier's warehouse, worth so much less than the finished product that you can offer a very attractive rate of return to a few investors. These are some notes from a proposal, with the adjectives left-out.

Fund the production of ... snacks.
Oat, Almond, Carob, Seed, Apricot, Brazil Nut main ingredients for chewy or chunky squares
Packed in retail cases of 20.
Sogud will produce of 4 varieties x 70 cases  (280 total)

Product Review
Good

Location

Lanarkshire, Scotland

Producer

Sogud Ltd

Duration

4 months

Repayment date

26th Sep 2017

Profit offered

5.5% absolute, 17% annual

Security

100% of the product

Product

Sogud Single Serve Gluten Free Squares (20 per case)

Marketplace

Fife Creamery, TK Maxx

• Promoting the food, retail, wholesale, and the brand in the background
  

  P2P finance makes your business public to a few dozen people on each platform who become interested in your brand. A few is better than none. It also allows you to offer a cash-back deal that encourages some lenders to think about buying your food. Some do. Some remember to claim cash back This is a more targeted kind of promotion than a loan raised on Seedrs or Crowdcube, where some of the same food firms have funded production.
  
  If lenders want food instead of repayment on a small loan, better still - Primestox encourages them to email, and will forward requests on to you.
  
  "CrowdCube does a fantastic job of publicising SMEs. But does this always lead to sales? PrimeStox's product focus can boost revenues of our producers. " -primestox.com/comparison
  
  "From the manufacturers perspective this will finance inventory and drive sales to consumers. A positive double whammy! ", - review in Informatia.
  
  Lenders are called "friends". I'm a blogger; I don't know much about human relations, but this doesn't sound quite right.
  
  Even a blogger can sense some connection between an invester and the food. Some lenders may be bloggers or tweeters or chatterboxes or dinner hosts or potential stockists. They might offer the cash-back deal to someone else. They also have an incentive to fund small amounts, simply because of the risk (a theoretical risk so far) of defaulted borrowers' food plonked on their door step, so there are a more plonkees per batch of food than lenders per loan on other P2P sites - it's like crowd funding with extra incentives to buy food.
  
  The link to your brand and sales pitch remains on the Primestox site for as long as they want to show their track record, which is probably a long time.

• Formal way for informal contacts to lend
  

  If a food producer has relatives, partners, staff, customers, or any kinds of contacts who want to take a flutter, this provides a formal way that they can do it without having to draw-up a contract. So your 50% partner can put more money into the batch and remain a 50% partner. Paroducers just put-up a poster for Primestox. Contacts sees the url, log-on out of curiosity, and your family or your customer might take a punt. Or take a punt on the next deal if they ever have spare money in the bank.

• Promoting the food for clearance wholesale
  

  This is un-tested, but from a food producers' point of view it might be good to be known to a lot of foodies, just in case one of them can offer a price for specialised food near its sell-by date. Maybe another person who puts money in is a shopkeeper who will try selling the stuff and order some more when it runs-out. My search for investers on twitter reveals a physics teacher, a football journalist and a P2P lending enthusiast who likes bitcoin. I am a P2P enthusiast too, but one who advertises a facebook page to vegans for a vegan shoe shop, so I could help try to clear products for the vegan market. I guess that one food industry person tends to attract another over time. Maybe they all live together in a special building somewhere ... or maybe I'm going off the point a bit here.
  

Incentives to borrowers compared to invoice finance, banks & crowd funding

Security. The name says it. Other lenders start by asking about the business, then very quickly ask for as much security as for a personal loan. If the loan goes bad they can hardly be bothered to think about the value of stock. A personal guarentee can only be given so many times. For example at Investly invoice finance, when either side somehow messes-up - either the shop or the supplier - then the loan is backed by the supplier's personal guarantee. Called-in for payment, this could be a distraction that causes stress and legal costs all round rather than paying-back the lenders or letting the borrower get-on with earning a living, so anyone who is short of credit might use Primestox for all of a loan, while another borrower might use some combination of Primstox and Investly. I don't know the contract, but there is certainly not much stated to investers about personal guarantees. The contract probably evolves from experience over time.

Small loans allowed. The track record says it. The smallest loan on their web site so far is £3,000, while Rebuildingsociety has a minimum loan amount of £25,000. Investly will lend from 1,000 and Marketinvoice has a calculator that starts at £5,000 with a minimum £250 fee to match.

• Compared to 1.65-2.6% monthly interest for invoice finance on Investly
  

  Investly is a P2P site where lenders lend the value of an invoice not yet paid.
  It doesn't have regular stream of loans for lenders, compared to other P2P sites, but might appeal to the same people who are looking to borrow or pre-sell; the companies that sell food on Primestox.
  
  Investly's site says borrowers pay 1.65-2.6% a month - about 20-35% annually. If the invoice has not yet been agreed, there is no loan; it is only for a month or so between sending an invoice to the shop and getting paid. Assuming the shop doesn't want to pay before production, that leaves a lot of ingredients and work to finance, even before sending the food and the invoice. So invoice finance just competes with the last month or so of the three-month cycle that Primestox typically finances. Primstox' one press mention, in Informita New, December 2016, says that there aren't many stock or inventory finance companies - "there are some out there who have had limited success, but none have hit the market in a bit way", so the niche-within-a-niche of "perishable" could do with a specialist P2P firm. There has also been a shortage of cheap bank loans to smaller firms, allowing P2P markets like Rebuildingsociety to fill the gap and make loans secured on equipment or buildings.

• Benefit compared to a bank

  It's a kind of civic duty to find alternatives to banks at the moment, but there are financial reasons to avoid them as well. Everybody knows that they have high costs and are short of money.
  
  
  Our experience tells us that business owners are in distress about having their overdrafts and other bank products pulled with short notice. In fact, research suggests that banks are pulling £5 billion in overdrafts from business in the UK each month! What’s more alarming is that this is not new and has been a trend for almost a decade, since before the financial crisis, and banks are still not lending anywhere near as much as they did prior to 2007.
  
  
  The alternatives to SME bank lending have all notably moved away from a ‘one size fits all’, ‘computer says no’, ‘box-ticking’, approach, understanding that different businesses have different financial needs at different times. - K Grieff of Rebuildingociety , 7/6/17
  
  The Primestox alternative offers a little very targeted advertising, tempting people to go into shops and buy the food. A better deal than borrowing more money to pay for advertising. Which is presumably why some firms experiment with sites like Indiegogo and Crowdcube to raise cash; Primestox pitches itself in the same producers.

• Primestox.com/comparison v Indiegogo, Market Invoice, Crowdcube & Ratesettter

  A neat point-by-point comparison chart. - Indiegogo is a donation or investment platform that doesn't necessarily offer rewards to investors. - Crowdcube offers shares as a reward, which pay no dividend and can only be sold at another funding round. There is no other security like security on specific stock or a personal guarantee. - Market Invoice is an invoice finance site, that I don't know about as a lender because they have a very high minimum investment. - Ratesetter is a consumer credit and low-risk lending site.

My first two or three investments...

• £30 for 16 x ¼ litre fruit juice, cold-pressed @ £15 a litre.
  
• £20 for 20 x 60g fruit energy bars @ £16.66 a kilo. For comparison, ClearanceXL tries to sell 60g fruit energy bars at a quarter the price - four for a pound plus delivery. If they were buying they'd want to pay - what? - 10p a bar sale or return for some minimum amount?
  
• £20 for 200g of vanilla paste @ £100 a kilo
  
• £25 for 10 x 200g pots of fermented pickle @ £12.50 a kilo. This is usually home-made or sold in wholefood markets apparently.
  
• £20 for 10 x 500g packs of frozen chips, sweet potato, battered @ £4 a kilo. MySupermarket shows a few shops selling sweet potato chips, usually not battered, with the smaller packs or upmarket brands around £4 a kilo while typical prices are £2.60 or less on special offer or under £2 at Aldi. Waitrose sells these battered ones at £5.60 a kilo. The same brand has some crisps at ClearanceXL (see below) but I get this wrong at first glance - they are crisps and not these chips.
• If I update this page after any of my loans default, I'll mention it at the top of the page but repeated loans on different deals have all gone well so far.

Incentives for lenders

• Cashback
  

  If you buy the food in a shop, borrowers might offer a cashback deal, should you be organised enough to keep the receipt and send it in. Maybe when the payment comes, you could use it to buy a packet of food with the cashback deal. Primestox suggest you email them if you want food instead of interest,
  

• Flutter of excitement - food is delivered to you if the borrower can't pay
  

  For investments of a few tenners, the excitement is in the flutter. A parcel of food might turn-up one day if the payment doesn't. If payment does arrive, you could use it with a cashback scheme to get a packet of food, or put it towards beer and fags and gambling debts, or leave it in the account to spend on the next deal to come-along and watch the money grow.
  
  For investments of two or three hundred pounds at a time, it's trickier. Nobody knows the risk of the borrower not paying - whether one in twenty or one in a hundred. If a borrower can't pay, nobody knows the chance of some compromise offer like selling at clearance prices to Approved Food at a lot less than the price you paid. The bottom of this blog post lists some firms that make offers for wholesale food near its sell-by date. If you have to take delivery of more food than you can eat, there is not much else online to say what you can do with it but you might have some use for bulk food and have all sorts of schemes. Talking of excitement, the hobby of thinking about food might encourage you to curry some over-date veg in the fridge instead of throwing it away, so you save that way as well.
  

• Interest
  

  There is interest of one or two pounds on the sizes of investment I've described and a three month loan, but there is a tick box you can tick to invest a lot more. One or two pounds is a lot of interest on ten or twenty pounds, for a three month loan. The annual percentage rates are at the top end of what investors can get, I think. In comparison Investly invoice finance pays around 10-20% to lenders on an auto-lend system: The loans only last a month or so, but your cash is re-lent automatically to the next one if business picks-up (it's a bit slow as I write) and it costs nothing to sign-up.  Other platforms like Rebuildingsociety had high rates of interest on offer when they started, which gradually dropped in an auction system.
  
  

  

  the morning after

  Rebuildingsociety are good at dealing-with defaults, but still have enough bad debts to take average returns down to the mid-teens. Lenders' experiments with sites like this will loose on a few like Bondora who just shovel-out money like Leaman Brothers and shrug when it doesn't come back. A better investment could be in selling cocaine to the director of Lehman Brothers - pictured - but that's probably illegal and I don't know whether he took decisions and drugs at the same time - it's just the way someone took a photograph that suggests it.
  

For borrowers and lenders - Default: what next?

This is a hunch. I have never dabbled in commodities trading so I might be quite ignorant about how often it comes to the crunch and commodities get delivered to lenders. And none of this has happened.

If there is a deliberate and very convincing fraud, the producer disappears leaving no commodity. This is a very old problem. Contracts were invented for this kind of situation. Anyway I doubt that a deliberate fraudster would pick such a public way to do it, with so many different people looking at the details, so that's a very tiny chance. Then there are natural disasters, illnesses and the like but I guess that just about every batch of food gets produced, into shops or warehouses and worth a lot more than the original sack of oats.

I guess that food companies want good publicity from their borrowing, and will do a lot to avoid defaulting on the loan if they can pay, but these things happen. "the situation could arise that [they] could not pay. In that case you continue to hold title to the the product until it is sold. You also have the option of requesting that the product be sent to you or a location you specify - at no additional cost. " - FAQ An online vote, run by Primestox.com, allows other investors to out-vote you on the best option, but I guess that a vote would allow some people to take the stock and others to hold-on for repayment or accept an offer if available. If the borrower is still in business and half solvent, I imagine that they want to pay later for the food that will sell, rather than return all of it. There are degrees of mess-up, from late-payment to late payment under legal threat to receivership to wind-up and non-existence, and I suppose that nobody wants to work down the list if they can stay at the first stages. "the producer may experience production issues affecting the quantity or quality they can produce. Alternatively they may have difficulty selling their product in the market. In such cases delays may occur to your payment. However in all cases you continue to hold title to the product until you're repaid in full with profit. If during this time period you wish to receive the product which you paid for, you can request its delivery to any UK address at no additional cost. " Late payment turns into the chance of no payment after a while. Sell-by dates get nearer.

With luck, the borrower might organise an option of very cheap sale and lenders might discuss whether they could do better. Takestock.com allow you to do something similar by opening an account and try to sell surplus food on a free small ad via an 18% escrow service. Takestock's details are further down the page. If 18% for an escrow service sounds high, you can see what other links I have found at the bottom of the page as well. There are loads of them under the heading "selling food from home and on classifieds sites", but none says "we pay near retail price at somewhere like Waitrose for an upmarket brand". They all look a bit clearance-ey.

Getting back to Primstox, their contract does
- not say that Primestox will use their commission money to pay for deliveries
- not say that Primestox invest in every loan so won't flog duds. I imagine that Primestox do invest in loans at this stage, just to try to balance lenders and borrowers, so they will learn from experience what works. Their low-budget way of working suggests that they don't have equity finance people pushing them to make money fast at all costs. There isn't a staff team and an office and a bunch of bills to pay in the short term; they can think in the long-term.
- not say that Primestox will run an eCommerce site or help any lender who does so, selling surplus food to other investers. I imagine that other investors are a sympathetic market for the one or two who have a tonne of soup on the doorstep. So after a default, in the worst case, you have invested far too much, and more food than you want to eat is plonked on your doorstep..

• If you have anything to do with catering you might find other uses. If you need contacts in catering, you might use the app that connects restaurants and their surplus food and customers who want cheap deals, you might already have a restaurant contact who might be open to ideas or make a suggestion, but the ones near me are generally bakeries. Anyway, a caterer might offer a dish of the day, or a special offer by the restaurant to bargain-hunters who use the app for that restaurant.
  
• If you have anything to do with food sales, an idea might come to mind like... - special offer food by a shop counter. Maybe your newsagent would borrow some food, and give you a credit note for 50p per jar sold for you to spend on other newsagent stock.
  
• If you have nothing to do with food sales, but want to start, Takestock.com membership is free. - free small ad and escrow service that charges  you 18% on any offer you accept
  
• If you plan to eat it the food, freezer space might help -for-sale.co.uk/freezer includes ads on sites like ebay and gumtree. Local searches are most likely and you might even find a free one on Trashnothing, or join the same site to give some food away. An app called Olio comes-up on search engine results, specifically for giving food to neighbours if they happen to have the same app. Maybe someone will offer you an apple crumble two miles away once you subscribe.
  
• I don't know much about those food bank collection points that you see in places like supermarkets. There are a few sites on search engines for locating organisations and collection vans that can use food. I suppose that a one-off donor of a freezer-load needs some scale between the nearest collection-point and the agency that can send a van. This list covers foodbanks, who might help. - theguardian.com/society/datablog/2012/jul/12/food-banks-uk-directory-guardian-readers

Background to the Primestox.com company

There are practically no references to the site on other sources. It looks more polished and sane than some sites that do things like bitcoin lending, or my own shoe shop that you should try, but less referenced from anywhere else. The borrowers are food businesses with web sites linked and which tend to link back.

https://www.check-business.co.uk/business/09915596/primestox-limited is the company. The check-business site would drop a couple of tiny hints from an Equifax report if there was anything to say, but there isn't - the business is too new. The Companies House entry doesn't state much more - just connections to West London from previous employers that are confirmed from the director's Facebook page and choice of software engineer, so the business looks UK-based. Linked-in profiles mention some people related. There are three shareholders and one of them seems busy employed in South Africa; only one is an "officer" on the Companies House form. The postal contact is the first floor above Starbucks in London's Oxford Street, also home to BG Partnership accountants and 23 other companies. There is no mention on P2Pmoney yet; I added a post on P2P independent forum, and P2P money have added this site to their list of P2P lending sites, just as one or two food companies have given the site a mention.

Software

The software looks a like crowd-funding software, which can be had for free. I don't know if it is Selfstarter.us but if there is one free open source piece of software, there will probably be others, cheap or free, and this company has used something similar-looking for the new purpose of P2P lending, which is otherwise expensive to get going, I think, for lack of free software. I don't know if this is unusual - it's good to see that it can be done. The company paid Alex Panichi, user interface web designer who answered an upmarket job ad and "worked to improved various steps in the user journeys. The user interface has been enhanced and refined. There has been lots of sketching, wire framing and hundreds of iterations to de-clutter the interface. In fact, the main challenge was to show the most relevant information to the user at each stage" So, £200 an hour for several evenings and weekends doing iterations on a general theme is a few thousand pounds, but not bad.

blog background

Written as a hobby and to promote Veganline.com for vegan shoes online - an online vegan shoe shop selling boots belts and jackets mainly made in the UK

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Selling food from home and on classifieds sites

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Ebay and the mainstream sites tend not to advertise food, but I have a log-on for Takestock.com that allows selling! The site doesn't have a huge amount on it, with a lot of the guide prices well over supermarket basics prices per kilo. People use it to advertise sales to new customers, I guess, rather than for regular turnover. I hope this list helps borrowers to shift surplus stock and repay their loans, but, when they default and can't make a decent offer for the food. maybe someone else among the lenders can use one of these to get something better or maybe it helps if a borrower has to take delivery of too much food to eat.

Takestock.com classifieds - allowed login

• Buy from their advertisers by signing-up and contacting them. It's a classifieds site for food. A photo and often a minimum order is available for each advert once you sign-up; guide prices are cheeky-high except for the odd overdate thing which is low.
  
• Delivery - postcode or place name on each advert but no map or search-by-distance. Most offer to help with delivery. Some have a place name like "London" which helps searching; a lot are in north england or Norfolk for vegetables. There is a box for questions which is a good place to ask if the seller would use your favourite cheap courier such as Parcel2go's UPS shop-to-shop service for up to something like 20kg for not much money. Parcelmonkey are good for courier quotes too.
  
• Sell to their readers by signing up and advertising - they take the money via their bank account and take ? 18% +VAT if there is no dispute. 8% on fresh food.. The selling page recommends a low minimum order and to offer help with delivery.
  

Amazon not yet sure

• Buy from them - for example https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scarlett-Mustard/b/ref=bl_dp_s_web_5324604031?ie=UTF8&node=5324604031&field-lbr_brands_browse-bin=Scarlett+%26+Mustard
  
• Delivery -
  
• Sell to them - not yet sure if it's possible. Hermes delivery costs are a problem. I don't see a "sell" tag next to the items on Amazon Groceries either, and if the brand isn't already for sale on Amazon, you have to persuade the site to list it.
  
  Amazon is the only classifieds site that comes-up if you search for words like "peas" "biscuits" or "chocolate" on for-sale.co.uk, bar the odd rare add on ebay or gumtree
  

other home retail

• There are ecommerce add-ons for facebook, I think, which might be free. Maybe Paypal links or something specialised. I don't know if facebook contacts would use them, but they might see the page and offer you cash. An idea for someone with a zillion facebook contacts.
• http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5232467 mentions facebook selling groups, a gumtree-like thing that I didn't know about
  
• Leaflet a hundred letterboxes with an explanation and half-price offer. Someone might be intrigued enough just to say hullo to a neighbour. Cheapest paper is from Wilko or supermarket basics. Cheapest ink is a CISS system on a printer or Epson Ecotank.
  
• Fly pitching, pop-up stalls, honesty boxes , vending machines... all a bit unfamiliar to buyers I think, who would pass-by to avoid being bothered, or assume the goods second-rate in some way. My aunt - do you know my aunt? - anyway she used to sell potted herbs in a market for the womens' institute. They were cheaper than the garden centre but people were just programmed to buy them from the garden centre. Anyway, if you know my aunt, you are on to something. If you don't know my aunt, you might want to try door-to-door leafleting to advertise an honesty box or a fly-pitch or a ring-the-doorbell-and-ask offer. Ringing other peoples' doorbells doesn't seem worth the hassle to customers, even ignoring the stress to you.
  
• Pop-up restaurants. There is something in this; I am not sure what
  
• Buying from self-employed people like stallholders could be a good habit to get into, in case one of them can suggest something if you are caught with a lot of stock. Easier if they know your face.
  

Expirybuy.com classifieds - didn't send a login

• Buy from their advertisers - it's a paypal system
  
• Delivery - ads say things like "ships to Blackburn"
  
• Sell to them - I've signed up, waiting for confirmation by email. No mention of commission yet. Still waiting for confirmation a few days later.
  

Gumtree

• Buy from their ads -  https://www.gumtree.com/search?search_category=all&q=freezer
  
• Delivery - parcel2go or similar
  
• Place an ad - there is only one food ad and two non-food in this category, but it might be free
  

Merkandi.co.uk classifieds - want £86 sign-up fee

• Buy from them - https://merkandi.co.uk/categories/food-beverage/26
  
• Delivery -
  
• Sell to them - same
  

Stockondeals.com/ - mainly Denmark so crossed out - typically electrical but some food

• Buy via their site
  
• Delivery -
  
• Sell via their site - it's EU and Danish state funded, so the commission might be low
  

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Selling to shops and wholesalers

Approvedfood.co.uk

• Buy from them - http://approvedfood.co.uk/
  
• Delivery - http://store.approvedfood.co.uk/delivery_charges £6 delivery on £17 minimum order
  
• Sell to them - http://store.approvedfood.co.uk/page?name=sell-to-us
  

Clearance Wholesale

• Buy from them - https://www.clearancewholesale.co.uk/contact no web shop - Grimsby cash & carry
  
• Delivery - apply for pallet deals
  
• Sell to them - https://www.clearancewholesale.co.uk/sell-my-stock
  

ClearanceXL.co.uk including Swinco.co.uk

• Buy from them - http://www.clearancexl.co.uk/epages/es136752.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/es136752/Categories/%22Food%20%26%20Drink%22
  
• Delivery - http://www.clearancexl.co.uk/epages/es136752.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/es136752/Categories/NEW__399_DELIVERY - £5.25 most areas. Free collection by appointment in Sheffield S9
  
• Sell to them - https://www.epayments.co.uk/epages/es136752.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/es136752/Categories/%22ABOUT%20US%22/Supply_SWINCO has the email address

Companyshop.co.uk

• Buy from them - membership scheme offered as a staff perk by some employers.
• Delivery - sites around the UK. HQ in Yorkshire
• Sell to them - they sell surplus food and write about it - not sure if they pay or get donations

Eatbig

• Buy from them - http://www.eatbig.co.uk/shop/ - possibly cheaper per kilo on nuts, but usually expensive
• Delivery - http://www.eatbig.co.uk/delivery/ - £3-£5 or free over £40
  
• Sell to them? - they tend do sell catering-size packs - not sure how to contact
  

Factoryfoods

• Buy from them - no web shop
  
• Delivery - walk-in at Rotherham or Barnsley http://www.factoryfoods.uk/directions/
  
• Sell to them - http://www.factoryfoods.uk/sell-to-us/

Frugalitis

• Buy from them - https://frugalitis.com/ aka Essential Brands Ltd. Also sell to ex-pats.
• Delivery -
• Sell to them - ?  Phone: +44 116 3440001 Address: Online Division, Celandine  Road, Hamilton, Leicester, LE5 1SW.

Self Trading

Not quite sure what this one is - it once bought a supermarket's stock. Found by googling "short dated food"

SOS Wholesale

• Buy from them - apply for an account or use the Derby cash and carry.
  
• Delivery - apply
  
• Sell to them - http://www.soswholesale.co.uk/residual-stock-management/
  

---

Unlikely

This lot are listed to save looking at them again, or just because they looked interesting http://www.londonpopups.com/p/advice-resources.html

Bargain Outlet

• Buy - discount shop in Newkey and Weston. Prices from 25p. May be the same as Affordable  Foods, who have a franchise system with a branch in north Blurton, Staffordshire.
  
• Delivery - walk in, retail
  
• Sell - "supermarkets get in touch" .... "buys from supermarkets"
  

Bigbarn.co.uk

• Buy
  
• Delivery
  
• Sell - looking for regular producers; food is sorted by manufacturer
  

Grapepip.com - wine only

• Buy - postcodes not given - prices start about £100 for 12 bottles - no licence or business needed. Buyers and sellers both pay 5% + VAT
  
• Delivery - "Please note that the location of each lot is clearly stated; as a Buyer, it is your responsibility to take note of the location prior to bidding as any subsequent transfer/delivery costs are the liability of the Buyer." Clearly stated to people who understand "Location: Octavian: Duty status: Under bond" on the first ad I looked-at.
  
• Sell - wine only - 5% + VAT "As long as your wine has been professionally stored in the UK since its original sale/shipment, you can list your wine on GrapePip. Please note, however, you will be required to provide documentation to confirm original purchase and subsequent storage in a UK warehouse of every lot listed on GrapePip. To find out more about how to sell your wine on GrapePip, please go to our Private Vendor Information Page. If you are a wine merchant looking to sell your wines on GrapePip, please go to our Trade Vendor Information Page." Winebinends is another wine-only firm that works as a broker - charging 30% commission to find a buyer with only one delivery hop to pay-for. They say that other clearance companies that have warehouses charge 70% and two delivery trips.
  

Mackenzietrading.co.uk - frozen food clearance wholesale for trade sellers

• Buy - "Essentially we are a frozen food broker: purchasing surplus stock from frozen food manufacturers...."
  
• Delivery - can involve storage and repacking in Lancashire
  
• Sell -  "... and selling this onto high street retailers and catering companies"
  

Nifties

• Buy - https://www.dontwastethetaste.co.uk/shop aka Nifties, Good for onions at a first look, but the web site is turned-off this February 2018 so you'd have to walk-in.
  
• Delivery - Delivery - https://www.dontwastethetaste.co.uk/ - £7, £2 in Dover or walk-into their Dover shop.
  
• Sell? - probably not for specialised upmarket products by the look of them
  

The Peoples Supermarket

• http://thepeoplessupermarket.org/  - no web ordering - £25 annual membership to work 4 hours a month and get 20% off
  
• Delivery - walk in supermarket in Lambs Conduit Street, North Central London
• Sell? - now owned by one wholesaler - history of one-off deals before that - web site statements about avoiding food waste
  

Toogoodtogo.co.uk

• Buy- app links you to bakeries or restaurants with closing-time bargains.
  
• Delivery - you need to link to a restaurant near you via the app which works on Ios or Android. Pay the app and go to collect the food.
  
• Sell - restaurants welcome. If you know a restaurant on the system, they might use the app to try to sell for you on commission.
  

Yumbies

• buy -
  
• delivery -
  
• sell - looking for regular batch producers not surplus stock - 18% charge
  

Not trading C...a ran just for the end of 2016 and start of 2017 Foodbargains Discountbargains.co.uk

P2P lending risks and rewards

related pages about P2P lending
https://veg-buildlog.blogspot.com/2016/09/p2p-lending-risks-and-rewards.html
https://veg-buildlog.blogspot.com/2017/04/just-invested-few-tenners-in-primestox.html
https://veg-buildlog.blogspot.com/2017/08/p2p-lending-risks-and-rewards-bondora.html 

Moneywise wrote a page putting people off investments in Funding Knight and others under a "ones to avoid" heading. The article is no longer online; this is a better one with the same time.

P2P lending risks and rewards (scroll down for rewards)

After a few weeks of wanting to write some kind of blog post about P2P, there are a couple of triggers.

• Bondora ring-up and email and avertise to suit the shareholders in their business, while their P2P lenders are let-down. Nobody comments.
• Funding Knight is a bit quiet and short of new loans after letting-down the investors who helped fund their office and salaries, but it still does a good job for lenders. This has put journalists at Moneywise into a panic and they have warned lenders not to take-part.

Lending on P2P sites is partly an emotional choice. You decide to take a little flutter, and then more, but spread the risk. You glance at a few facts about the loan if you have time, just to avoid feeling silly if it goes wrong and it's a big one. A few bad experiences persuade you to avoid certain types of lending in future or to keep them on a small scale. Generally, in my experience, the results are much better than shares and bank accounts, and sometimes more socially useful. The only problem is how to encourage other people to enjoy the same results without annoying those with no money to invest and without sounding like a sales rep.

I should start with the bad news by saying what's wrong with Bondora, even though it has no stack of licences or big number of lenders in the UK. Bondora management used to be a thrifty cautious bunch, but sounded as though they had swallowed a textbook about ending their "bootstrapping" and reaching a tipping point at which equity finance could help them expand to a new level. This is a very very bad idea for companies that lend; it forces them to take uncomfortable risks. Fundingcircle suffered the same process in the UK with Alex Moulton's equity finance company pushing them into ever bigger and riskier loans.
.
Clicking-around on the internet, you find reports by disgruntled Bondora lenders message boards like P2Pmoney.co.uk and now even in the Financial Times .

Bondora's estimated future returns are in double figures; reality is 2.68%
Bondora's estimated current value of my loans are €5,730; reality is €8 today

So that's the glum news.
There is a huge amount of extra detail now on the Bondora site, with videos and technical jargon, but, frankly, I have seen enough. There was also a head of investor relations, presumably on a high salary that adds to cots. You can look it up because he quit and they're advertising the job - https://www.bondora.com/blog/bondora-capital-is-searching-for-head-of-investor-relations/

Moneywise on Funding Knight changing ownership, which really is fine; it doesn't matter.

"putting 900 savers’ money at risk"

Funding Knight's statement about change is much like any other P2P lender:

"In the event that FundingKnight ceases to trade, we have appointed Complete Cash Management Limited to administer the collection of loan repayments and apportion them to the relevant investors. You will continue to receive the interest and capital payments due to you."

"Any un-invested funds held in your investor account are held by our bank in a designated client account and ring-fenced from the assets of FundingKnight. These funds would therefore continue to be separate from FundingKnight Ltd and not available to its creditors."

Reasons to believe Funding Knight and not Moneywise:

(1) Experience

I lend about £100 on any P2P platform that seems to offer a good return over 10% and have invested over a dozen. (Except Bondora where I lent too much). They don't close, raid the client account, and leave remaining loans un-collected. It simply doesn't happen. Fundingknight got me about 11½% with their auto-lend system, now dropped to 9½% while they've had less staff to recover bad loans and get new ones. Rebuildingsociety, on which I lend with my own rough hunches as well as auto-lend, got me 8% at minimum now risen back to 12½%. The rough hunches are often to invest at 20% as well as lower rates, and hope that the 20% bids are among the winning ones.

The only one that seemed to loose money from the client account was Quakle, a tiny social enterprise that offered consumer credit without credit checks. I don't know how much went missing from the client account towards winding-up costs - possibly none - but the site dissapeared offline a few weeks after ceasing to take-on new business with nothing but an email address for explanation. I think that anyone investing, like myself, could see that it was a pretty strange idea, and knew that there was no Financial Conduct Authority regulation of P2P lending at the time. That's why I only invested about £50, and I doubt anyone else invested more.

Bondora has a few thousand euro of my cash listed in un-salable loans and a quoted return of 3% at the moment, because I have turned auto-lend off and withdraw when possible.

In contrast, 20 other P2P lenders have simply ceased to take-on new lenders, failed to start taking-on business, or merged into rival companies, as you would expect in a new market. Here is a list:
http://www.p2pmoney.co.uk/companies.htm

The only similar companies to Quakle trading today are the bitcoin P2P lending markets, which have software and people interested in lending and borrowing, but not many borrowers who look plausible and evidence-based in their requests. The options are to wait, or to invest one bitcoin on the most slick-looking platform, which I think is Bitbond, and see how it goes by investing the minimum amount that can be invested whenever cash comes-back in repayments. I would like to this but their ID recognition system has just changed, but I hope to get back into the habit after re-proving my ID. So far, there is some turnover of money but my loans are still too young to judge. The platform itself is odd too. Slick and well-funded by venture capitalists, I guess that some of this money goes towards pretend loans placed just to make the site look busy. When that money runs out and more of the other kinds of borrowers take-over, then returns may fall, and whenever the people running the sites learn how the market works and what debts are collectable, returns may rise.

An old Funding Knight borrower has just asked for a new loan and dozens of current lenders have bid to fund it, so I am not the only one who thinks this platform is still worth using.Funding Knight has a very good web site for presenting data, which I suppose it what keeps the lenders lending. It tells me that I have earned just under 10% on new loans and just over 10% on second-hand loans bought on the after-market, mainly with their auto-bid system set to re-invest my earnings.

(2) References regulatory checks and reviews

These include interim licencing from the Financial Conduct Authority, and membership of trade associations that have minimum standards for members. Lenders on the site are free to post on public message boards, with their detailed knowledge of individual loans that the company has offered - which is a far more transparent system than applies to banks. Lenders can also check prospective borrowers against check-business.co.uk as well as reading the detailed story that's offered behind each loan request. If I take the first loan, alphabetically, on my list of loans I see that it's descibed as "above average risk" and "lower than average equifax credit score".  I only bought £30-worth with the auto-lending robot, but the people who bought more asked eight earnest questions on a message board while the loan was auctioned, and read a more detailed breakdown of what the assets are. Stock has no value because the business is a school, but are other assets apparently. The blackboards or "tangeble assets" are valued at £792,374 which looks high. If I were investing hundreds, I would check all the questions that lenders have asked and the replies. Someone probably asked about the assets, and got a reply.

There are regular articles about Funding Knight on sites like P2Pmoney.  So, without knowing how to check the contract between Funding Kight and Complete Cash Managment or how it would work in practice, I think I can trust that it would work. It may be in place at the moment: Funding Knight hasn't posted any new loans for a while, but if one came-up, I'd consider investing.

Nothing much - just wondering how to price risk

I suppose that a 50% instant risk of total loss is worth 200% instant interest to a robot with money to spare and no costs, or a hobbyist like a mild gambler.

Anything more complicated, I find, is better expressed in some form like building-blocks than algebra, but one more layer of complication might be worth a shot.

I suppose that a typical risk on a P2P lending site is that loan will fizzle-out to less value after a while. I would like to see this expressed as building blocks but here is an example. A loan defaults after one year and there is nothing to recover. Supposing I am a person who invests other cash at about zero percent in a deposit account, and has money to spare, does this for fun, then I suppose this is the same as it happening tomorrow; if half of loans do this I want to earn double my investment on all the ones that pay.

I must come back to this.

Rewards over 10%

I did found calculators for internal rate of return and applied them to Property Moose estimates of how much will come back as rent and how much as capital gain after three years, and the result was under 9% so I'm taking money out.

I do see measures of the percentage I am making on loans to small business, which vary a lot in results. These are higher and have an extra benefit of encouraging employment and tax-paying in the economy where I live.

https://p2pblog.co.uk/10-percent-club/ is a blog post about the less useful but high-paying sites that fund bridging loans and maybe the odd second mortgage. I've found similar results.

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