The payday loan business is most definitely a huge one and despite the limitations (or downright bans) imposed by some US states, various operators (in some cases, they cannot even be called “companies”) still look to outbid each-other for the attention of the public at large. This battle is one of attrition, and it has long spilled over the boundaries of decency or any kind of fairness. BetterLoansMutual.com is the perfect example in this regard.
This operator has adopted a rather unusual – and extremely annoying – way to push the deals it peddles, thus eliciting general condemnation and ire.
What exactly is it though that BetterLoansMutual.com is looking to accomplish?
The operation is a payday loan business, meaning that it offers various small, short-term loans to its would-be clients, spanning the $100-$5,000 range.
To this end, a website has been set up, which is the epitome of shadiness. The copy is obviously created to appeal to greed, or worse: the offer desperate people a seemingly handy solution to an acute problem.
Obviously though, Better Loans Mutual does not hold its clients’ interests in any kind of esteem. It is merely an intermediary, which collects personal information from those foolish enough apply for a loan through its site, and then submits it to various loan-providers, hoping to get the two parties to agree on a deal.
Whether the personal information collected this way is used for anything else, is unclear. In fact, the Privacy Policy page of the BetterLoansMutual.com site makes it pretty clear that the operator can (and probably will) use your personal information in any way it sees fit.
Separate personal information handling policies are featured for states where limitations in this regard are in place, but whether or not these policies are truly observed, is anyone’s guess.
The bottom line in regards to the services offered by this operator is that even if you do manage to secure a payday loan through them – which is quite doubtful (more on this below) – you’ll end up saddled with massive fees and interest, wishing you’d never run into these crooks.
How does BetterMutualLoans.com promote its services?
This is probably the biggest “sin” of the operation. They acquire phone numbers through various underhanded ways and then they group-message them at the weirdest hours, promoting their loans.
Not only do they disregard people’s right to privacy, they expose their phone numbers to a bunch of unknown people.
In addition to that, they truly go overboard with their messages. There have been cases where people received around 60 messages from Better Loans Mutual within a 4-day period.
Unsubscribing from these messages is not really possible either – according to some victim feedback. The Better Loans Mutual website does offer an unsubscribe option, but people who have tried it, say it does not work and the flood of messages cannot be stopped.
Some have been driven to the point that they changed their phone numbers just to escape the BetterMutualLoans.com message trap.
How do we know that Better Loans Mutual is indeed a scam?
There are scores of red flags raised by this operation every step of the way, in addition to the above described dubious promotional practices.
The website itself is peculiar, since it offers no way for users to contact anyone. For all we know, there may not even be a corporate operator behind the whole setup.
The Better Business Bureau (BBB) page of the operation delivers another red flag in this regard. While the page has the company name and address listed, it mentions that the operation no longer seems to be in business.
The said page was created at the end of July, 2017, and the BBB had trouble contacting the company on September 3, 2017.
That raises the question: was BetterLoansMutual.com ever an actual company? Was there ever any corporate actor residing at the said address?
BBB had attempted to send the operator mail, which got returned as undeliverable by the US Postal Service.
In addition to that, the said BBB page is a collection of complaints and negative feedback from disgruntled victims of the above described marketing scheme. In fact, there are no positive reviews about Better Loans Mutual: the best they could muster is a neutral review, which still has a negative spin.
While most of the complaints are about the aggressive marketing techniques used by the scammers, one user actually registered for a loan with them, as a result of which he ended up with his bank account blocked.
What other red flags have we spotted with BetterLoansMutual.com?
The whois information of the domain name does not contain any kind of information relevant to the identities of those pushing this setup.
Someone was obviously keen an making sure that he/she could not be linked to this scam in any shape or form.
Is there a link between BetterLoansMutual.com and LoansMutual.com?
LoansMutual.com is an operation pushing the very same business model as Better Loans Mutual.
Given the similarities between the two domain names, one would indeed be tempted to consider them linked in some way.
The website design is similar as well, and LoansMutual.com presents the same red flags BetterLoansMutual.com does. With that in mind, we can indeed state that they probably belong to the same scammer.
LoansMutual may be the successor of the already busted Better Loans Mutual, as that would be well in line with the MO of scammers pushing these schemes.
We have to note however that the two domain names are hosted at different IPs and that the their whois data (completely irrelevant – as stated above) does not confirm this link either.
That said, watch for LoansMutual.com taking over where BetterLoansMutual.com eventually fades away.
The bottom line
The operation looks like a phishing scam rather than one that’s after your wallet.
These scammers collect your personal information then sell it or mishandle it some other way.
Steer well clear of these people and under no circumstance give them any kind of additional personal details (even if they request them to “unsubscribe” you from their spam message service).
These people are driving me freaking crazy