factoring blog for news and views from the world of factoring
Factoring and invoice discounting news, views, warnings and gossip written for real people and not search engine bots
I am just about to sign up my second client in recent months where the company has insisted that the factoring company sign an NDA as the principal is either a well known celebrity or else someone “well connected”
Perhaps I should put a logo on my website “factoring broker to the glitterati” 🙂
Complaints about factoring companies are something that quite a few companies are interested in investigating judging by the gizmo on this blog that tells me what search terms people have used to arrive here as complaints about XYZ Factors” or “XYZ Factoring Complaint Forum” are search terms that turn up with monotonous regularity.
With well over 40,000 companies now taking advantage of factoring and invoice discounting there are bound to be some that are dissatisfied with their factoring arrangements but the intriguing thing is the “XYZ” aspect as with the exception of the factoring company searching for complaints about themselves the vast majority name three specific factoring companies with one being a High Street bank subsidiary and the remaining two being independents.
I’m not sure what people do after arriving here and reading the blog but surprisingly few contact me and ask if I can do anything about it so if anyone with a complaint about their factoring company arrives at this blog and reads this, please feel free to contact me and I will do what I can to assist as I do have close relationships with many factors and can often help sort out problems
For quite a long time the Google rankings for that all important word “factoring” has been dominated by an obscure website factoring.org.uk which consisted of a few articles, no contact details and a contact form that no-one in their right mind would use not knowing where it would be ending up.
According to Nominet the domain was owned by an anonymous person in the home counties but I had a sneaking suspicion that there was more to this website than met the eye as the website was the recipient of inbound links from none other than my old friends Touch Financial Support with the word factoring on Touch’s inside pages being keyword linked to this anonymous site.
All has now been revealed as I had a call from a broking buddy today to tell me that the Nominet details had been changed and the domain name was now showing as owned by SFP Brokers LTD trading as Touch Financial.
It will be interesting to see what happens now as the website as it stands hardly inspires confidence but if it’s over developed like their main site it could end up suffering the same fate and being dumped into the boondocks by Google
Factoring has had difficulty shaking off it’s reputation as the lender of last resort which it acquired in the late sixties and early seventies. It’s one of those soundbites that has carried on through the decades because everyone seems to have had a brother who’s wife’s cousin’s next door neighbour used factoring and when his company went bust he chose to blame the factoring company rather than his own poor management skills.
Well that title can now be well and truly buried thanks to the entrance into the commercial lending market of Wonga – yes, them of 4,200% APR fame.
Wonga will be offering loans to businesses of between £3,000 and £10,000 which will be available for terms of between one and 52 weeks. The cost, including a variable application fee and interest, will start at 0.3% a week and the loans will have to be repaid in weekly instalments.
The phrase “will start at 0.3% a week” sounds quite good but one has to wonder what realistic rates will actually be
I have just received an email stating that “As per our email two weeks ago we are pleased to write that we have received a nomination in your name in the Banking category of the 2012 Acquisition International M&A Awards.”
Normally one would be proud to be the recipient of such a nomination except that in this particular case the email was addresssed to a non existent person at a non existent company as it’s a spare email address that I have for anti spam purposes but which I’ve never actually used.
The email asks me to confirm that I’m happy to be shortlisted for this prestigious award so perhaps I should tell them that I am honoured and then ask you all to vote for me/him 🙂