Prosper.com - collections fluff

In one of my favorite scenes in The Wizard of Oz, the little dog Toto pulls back a curtain, exposing the fact that the great wizard of Oz is really just an ordinary old guy putting on a show. This teaches kids to question authority, look behind the facade. Good stuff.

Two weeks have gone by since Prosper fired Penncro, and there's no visible action. Is anyone at all collecting on our loans?

On Jan 28, 2008, Prosper announced in email to (some) lenders that the collection agency Penncro wasn't doin' a good enough job. Lenders have of course known this and discussed it openly for over a year, but it was good to hear Prosper finally say it. Lenders were given until Feb 4, 2008 to state their objections.

Well, then a normal person would expect that on the next day, Feb 5th, these loans would be in the hands of the new agency Amsher, and their workers would be dilligently working on our late borrowers. Not so. Two weeks have now passed since Feb 4th, and Prosper's stats still show that no loans have transitioned to Amsher.

What gives?

You can see the data yourself at https://www.prosper.com/secure/account/lender/collection_agency_select.aspx

It shows that Prosper is still sending new loans to Penncro every day, and none to Amsher.

There are many possibilities. One possiblity is that the loans have been moved to the new agency, and Prosper is simply reporting bad data to lenders. If so, they should tell us they're feeding us bad data. Another possibliity is that the loans have not been moved. That would be bad, because Penncro knows they're fired, so I can't imagine they're doing any work on our stuff these days.

What gives?

Time is money.