Hacker News Reader

Comment by nulbyte | Hacker News Reader

> We propose to ban the practice of obtaining a single consumer consent as grounds for delivering calls and text messages from multiple marketers...

I honestly don't understand how this isn't already a thing. The bit about Lending Tree struck a chord with me. I tried it once. I expected offers on the screen. Instead, I immediately received text messages, emails, and phone calls from multiple lenders at the same time. I was furious at every one of them.

> Caught in the middle are the innocent companies trying to sell their legitimate products to interested consumers. They want no part of fraudulent leads or fraudulent lawsuits. They’re just trying to help someone buy a home or get car insurance.

No, not innocent. "Hey, I've got a get rich quick scheme! I'll give you leads for customers, but you have to call them fast before my other customers do!" Nothing innocent about that. You sign up for that, you know exactly what you are doing, and you know damn well it's wrong.

View on HN

And there’s a trivial solution for the lending tree scenario (I’m making a big leap of faith that consumers really want txt spam from a dozen different lenders)

Instead of handing off customer contact info to a dozen different lenders, they can send the loan request to the lenders, and the lenders can send their offers back to lending tree who can then send it to the customer since the customer only authorized lending tree to contact them. Ideally lending tree would consolidate the responses so instead of a dozen txt messages, the customer receives a single one from lending tree.

The other wrinkle is that vendors don't want the broker to control the relationship. They want to have it themselves. So a big part of why companies like Lending Tree can exist is because they sell the leads and don't have to do the work of being a CRM.

They don't have to give up control, if the offer is appealing they can consent to further contact.

In their minds, if they do not have contact info they do not own the relationship. If the broker has that, the broker owns the relationship. Making an offer through a broker means making an offer where they do not own the relationship.

In short - you are defining control differently than they do and coming to a different conclusion. You can do that, but expect vendors to be unmoved by it.

I think 6510 was proposing that the broker would present the smorgasbord of offers to the client, and after the client selects an offer, the lender would get the client's contact information. The lender would own their relationship after the client consents to that solitary relationship.

I understood what 6510 was proposing. My point is that the lenders consider this to be them not owning the relationship and it requires the broker to do all the CRM work. Neither sees the smorgasbord approach as good for them.

Could it be done that way? Sure! This just comes with the caveat that finding lenders willing to do it might be harder and they would likely pay less per-lead. So a higher volume would be required to make financial ends meet for the broker, who also is now developing and deploying more sophisticated software in addition to the whole sales funnel and marketing operation.

You may be thinking "Gee, this is great for everyone except the customer". Yes, it is. It sucks for the customer who gets spammed by a dozen lenders.

Right. Lenders and brokers want to exploit the customer for maximum profits. They do not want to respect customers, because they might make a little less money and it might take a bit more effort. The customer does not like that behavior, but an unregulated market rewards the worst actors so the customer cannot find what they would really want and is forced to settle. The FCC is supposed to protect the customer and regulate the market in this situation.

It would filter down the leads to a much smaller number of much greater quality (as people showed an interest in their specific product and access to their info is more exclusive) The budget would stay the same as would the number of customers. I think they should welcome the money saved on competitive harassment. You kinda had to do it because everyone else was doing it.

> expect vendors to be unmoved by it.

There's a large part of me that doesn't care what the vendors think. Their attitude toward potential customers is a not insignificant part of the problem.

control is all they have though. Big banks are behind the scene doing all the real work. All the people you talk to are doing is getting a contract signed. There are enough steps that this is valuable work that needs a lot of customer service (which is why big banks outsource it to 'independent' entities), but in the end nobody can actually give you a better rate/extra costs from the banks and credit unions already near you. The rate you care about is decided by your credit score and the current market. The closing costs are somewhat competitive, but they are in the end small.

I suppose if you have really bad credit these places might find someone willing to do a risky loans (at really bad interest rates) while the local banks and credit unions won't talk to you at all. However overall the places buying leads don't have anything to offer.

Yup. Too few people understand that almost all of these companies are solely loan origination and loan servicing.

They are not providing the capital, they are not making money through interest. They have almost no control over the rates they offer you.

They make money when a borrower signs a new loan agreement (origination) and by collecting the payments the borrower owes and passing them along to the real lender (servicing).

If you're wondering why your mortgage company used to keep calling you telling you to refinance (and some still are, even with the higher rates), it's because that's another loan origination for them - another payment. They don't care that you save long term on the interest, they want the payment for closing a new loan.

Same for loan consolidation (ex: consolidate your auto/credit debts!) style pitches. They're ONLY interested in originating a new loan, because that's how they get paid.

----

Basically - these guys don't have anything other than you, the borrower.

They're not selling you a loan, they're selling you to real lender, which is almost always the large government backed mortgage lenders (Freddie/Fannie).

This is why they jump to call you, or text you, or harass you. They are out there fishing for new borrowers to make money.

This is already a thing in the leadgen space it's called RTB. Tree has likely simply figured out that it's more profitable to sell the data multiple times.

Hot leads are very valuable, especially in the pay-per-call space. Every single one of those calls the GP is complaining about likely "reached duration" and paid out to Tree. Hehe.

Sausage factory goes brrrrrrr

I ve worked in an equivalent of lending tree. Literally no one in our company, no one, cared about loans. We were a marketing front for banks, spoke only to banks, optimized "funnels" to, well, funnel the poor souls to them, whatever the law allowed us to do. I had never met any sort of "lending expert" in that company, only SEO experts, data miners, adwords optimizers, former bank marketing managers, email copywriters, javascript programmers, etc.

I work in a bank now, and we can calculate interest rate, understand consumer default profiles, calculate acceptable risk ratio for our own capital, all those stuff that have to do with loans.

Point is, you cannot expect an externalized marketing department to do what you suggest. They dont care about borrowers one bit, lending is not their jobs. Banks just want to start a relationship with people and send whatever they can to whomever present an email adress, and they ll pay their marketing guys by the amount of converted leads.

The other trivial solution is to just list all the vendors that the customer could potentially deal with and give them the ability to select the ones they'd like to receive offers from. Yes, there's less potential overall revenue there, because less leads means less revenue for lead generation companies, but it's still better than the footgun they're currently being presented with.

That's how a mortgage broker works. It would probably require a lot more staff to operate that way.

That’s how it typically works in the UK, probably because of GDPR.

Might not stay that way now the EU laws are potentially getting ripped up.

That's not how it works in the UK and not because of GDPR.

Currently, organisations can claim both consent and legitimate interests as a legal basis so it is already possible to take my data from somewhere, pass it to other people and have those third-parties contact you.

"Legitimate Interests" was presumably some attempt to allow things like research and things that hadn't been thought of elsewhere but this leaves a nasty loophole that is already being taken advantage of.

In fact, some cookie consent banners, if you click "options", disable the consent tickbox by default but leave "legitiimate interests" ticked in some kind of dark pattern to imply that "we'd rather have your consent but we don't need it".

UK GDPR under threat? Do you have a link?

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=retained+eu+law

(GDPR is UK's implementation of an EU directive, the kind of law that the Retained EU Law bill seeks to get rid of.)

Thanks for the link. In this case, the Data Protection Act 2018 is the UK's implementation of GDPR. GDPR is the EU regulation.

I don't see anything in there that would revoke the DPA, though. It even requires DPA-compatibility at one point, so to avoid recursion I imagine it won't be for that purpose.

I knew I remembered something else. There's also

https://www.itpro.co.uk/policy-legislation/data-protection/3...

When I was shopping for car insurance a few months ago, I used the Burner app to give temporary phone numbers to each vendor.

Allstate called before I had even completed the online application, and proceeded to call at least once a day until the number expired.

Geico called once.

Progressive didn't call at all. AND they were cheapest. You can guess who I went with.

Instead of going by price alone, take a look at how easy or difficult the claims process is… for any kind of insurance. You don’t want a carrier who drags its heels or refuses to pay on some technicality when you make a claim. I have a good source for this data, but am hesitant to share since i don’t want you thinking I’m biased.

I recently had the displeasure of filing claims with Progressive. An insured party of theirs was transporting my vehicles and the hauler crashed. Totalled my car and did a number on my wife's. Took 5 months to get my wife's car fixed and a check for my car. We were told multiple times my wife's car was repaired only to immediately, as in before I drove off, things wrong with or omitted from the repair. I hope to never deal with Progressive again. Scumbags as far as I was concerned. I was damn close to involving lawyers and or police in the matter. It should not take 5 months to cut a check for a totalled car. Sorry for the rant. Fuck Progressive.

I have a survey link in my inbox from Progressive with the subject "Follow-up on your recent claim" for a minor accident where their insured was at fault. It's been 4 months since the accident. Progressive denied my claim, so I filed a claim through my policy with Liberty Mutual. My car is not fixed. Progressive sucks.

Counter-point, I moved from Liberty Mutual because when I switched from a heavy pickup truck to a cheaper compact SUV with more safety features, my rate went UP, against all reason. Multiple customer service agents refused to look into why that was the case. I got quotes from four other companies -- the most expensive quote was still 1/2 the price Liberty Mutual was giving me. The plan I went with was 1/3rd the price. I'm saving $3,000 a year. And Progressive hasn't spam called me even once.

Everyone seems to have horror stories about ALL the companies out there.

> the most expensive quote was still 1/2 the price Liberty Mutual

Likely because of the intense advertising they do. Every other YouTube as is liberty mutual for me. I have had Amica for years and have no horror stories. They are great, and offer an annual dividend.

I’ll pile on with a Progressive story - my car was hit while parked in a parking garage. The other party admitted fault but my insurer (Progressive) ended up paying for the repair after they hashed it out with the repair shop and the offending drivers’ insurer, Allstate.

Fast forward a few months and I get my renewal letter in the mail - my 6-month premium went up 47% for no particular stated reason. I’m basically ending up paying for the repair over the course of the next year and a half.

I’m currently in search of the highest deductible, lowest premium insurer I can find, because I’m never going to file a claim again unless a car is a near total loss.

Progressive prices that way. Not all insurers do. Some will just drop you with an accident others have grace periods.

With car insurance, it’s all about price in most states. You should be shopping annually if you want to optimize for price. That may vary in a place like New Hampshire or Florida that is more lax from a regulatory perspective - cheap insurance there may be too cheap.

Age, car, history, address tend to matter. As a boring 40 something, I’m paying less for $0 deductible, $1M limit insurance than I did for a 100/300 $2500 deductible 10 years ago. If you drive a Tesla, live in Brooklyn and have moving violations, forget it.

Happened to me, too. Wife's car got rear-ended by a delivery truck at an intersection and the car was totaled. Mysteriously, our rate basically doubled the next cycle. I called them multiple times about why the price went up so much, especially since my wife wasn't at-fault. They just said that's the price and there was nothing I could do. Switched providers to Safeco and haven't had any issues with any claims or random price hikes since.

FWIW I've had 2 at-fault fender-benders over the last 6 years with Progressive and my insurance has gone down by 5-10% over that time (for some reason adding a second motorbike lowered the entire premium instead of raising it). YMMV insurance pricing is really weird, location specific, and imo designed to be difficult to predict.

I don't understand how your insurance ended up paying when the other driver was insured, and admitted fault.

Some states allow for really awful insurance programs.

Florida allows minimum coverage as low as $10k in liability. They also like collecting fees and are very lax in enforcement for passenger cars for plates, etc. Thats why you’ll see hooptie mobiles with Florida plates all over the place.

If someone doesn't have high coverage you can sue them directly. The reason most people have a million in coverage as the when it is that high it is really hard to convince the courts your damages are more that. Plus if they actually are your liability is so much that you will never be able to pay up. Lawyers will always ask for the maximum liability even if they actual costs you should owe is more than that because insurance can pay, but you cannot anyway so it isn't worth. However if their liability coverage is only $10k it is worth sueing them for a million - insurance will pay $10k, they will then have to figure out how to get the rest - which basically means it ruins their life.

This is why you need to have enough insurance. If you make a mistake (odds are you will), you want enough money such that you can pay off whoever you wronged without it killing the rest of your life.

You have high limits if you have assets. Typically, someone who is foolish enough to carry $10k liability has no meaningful assets.

Saving a few bucks with car insurance is rolling the dice with your 401k!

I’ve always just found all insurance companies terrible and self-serving and just learned to go with the cheapest possible. My ceiling collapsed in two different houses and both insurance companies called it an act of God and that they couldn’t help me. So I had to fix it myself. Many stories like this in my life. Insurance is largely legalized extortion money unless your house burns down or you total your car. For those type cases every company is the same in my opinion.

Instead of going by price alone, take a look at how easy or difficult the claims process is…

A bit of a market failure there if the insurance being purchased is only or primarily liability.

I don’t understand your comment. Can you explain?

If I buy collision insurance (that pays if my car is damaged) then I care about how good the claims process is. If I buy liability (that pays out if I damage you or your car) then the claims process doesn’t matter to me.

Thankfully I've never had to make a claim, and I hope it stays that way!

When you need it, you don’t want to deal with a company that’s not responsive.

Sure, but given that they almost all seem to suck roughly equally, with the exception of consistently high ratings for USAA (which I can't get) I might as well go with an affordable one AND the one that didn't harass me with spam calls.

Amica. They consistently get great ratings. And it’s not limited membership like USAA. They are owned by the policy holders, like a credit union. Not publicly traded so the shareholder pressure is absent.

Second Amica. They've been great for me. I've never filed an auto claim with them, but I did have a pretty serious homeowner's insurance claim (leaky pipe from another condo in my building which illegally didn't have insurance). They didn't question any of it, didn't drop me, and didn't raise my rate.

I'll remain all about price. The only thing I need car insurance for is to meet the legal requirements for car insurance. So price is the only thing that matters.

But I have a bad taste in my mouth about the insurance industry in general, so color me jaded.

How do you actually do that?

Most I've seen is just terrible ancedata.

If you call a poll of 56,000 consumer reports readers anecdata, then you should stick with what you have for insurance. Anyway as I posted elsewhere:

This is a good starting point, but not the only one:

https://clark.com/insurance/car-insurance/best-auto-insuranc...

No affiliate links and no kick backs taken by Clark Howard.

That is pretty interesting. I have USAA but from time to time I look for a better price. I drive the base trim of the cheapest car Honda has ever marketed in America, just 3000 miles a year, and in 35 years of driving have never had a claim of any kind or a ticket. But I still pay $125/mo for this service, which strikes me as crazy. It's nice to know that if I ever have a claim I will get award-winning service, I guess?

I've had to deal with USAA for insurance claims a couple times. Every single time, without fail, has been amazing. It really feels like they care, and want to help. Plus, in my experience, their rates are good. Well worth it if it's an option for you.

Family member works for USAA and really likes it there. I can attest they truly do care for their employees and customers.

You might want to look at your levels of coverage and adjust to better suit your risks. I have USAA as well, and pay less than that for a truck I drive 25k miles/year. That includes comprehensive (and a not pristine driving and claims record).

There are a lot of different levers that affect insurance pricing. Are you paying for comp? If your car is a beater, maybe you shouldn’t.

I'd love to look at the data!

This is a good starting point, but not the only one:

https://clark.com/insurance/car-insurance/best-auto-insuranc...

No affiliate links and no kick backs taken by Clark Howard.

I’ve noticed this more and more - I half filled out a contact us form on a company site and got an email as if I had submitted a few minutes later.

Talk about dark patterns! Now I never put my email/phone until I am to hit submit (or maybe I should continue as normal to know the scammy companies).

Lending tree and a ton of other companies in that space are just lead gen, they couldn't care less about you as long as you fill in their form and they can then resell the data to other companies. Who in turn, if they can't make a buck on you will sell it to someone else in order to try to recoup some of their expenses.

The fact that you fill in a form signals 'intent to buy' and that makes those leads worth a lot of money. The only way they can make that work is if they sell the lead as soon as possible after you've filled it out because of the competitive nature of the market. So that's exactly what they do: sell it to multiple parties at once. It's a terrible model and one of the reasons why as soon as some online calculator is broken up into multiple steps I already know where it's headed: the last form will ask for my email address to mail the offer to and my phone number for verification. I simply abandon the process at that point, and I hope their funnel analysis tells them that story a million times a day.

That’s not the only way, they can make that work, it’s the way they’ve chose. That’s why it’s a terrible model.

Trip planning sites may sell leads to companies, but they don’t have to for the system to work. They have taken a different route to getting you a deal on a product.

FWIW, I found dinkytown.net for basic online financial calculators with no frills or upsells a long time ago. They sell to websites that want to use financial calculators, so they don’t care about consumers.

Good one, thank you!

> [businesses] couldn't care less about you as long as you [provide revenue]

That's...not specific to leadgen.

That cynical take is false. Many businesses care about their customers, as if you care for them they will come back again and again, while if you don't they will leave.

Lead generation firms care about their customers - but their customers are not the users, it is the people buying the leads. This disconnect is why they don't care.

You get the same problem at ad supported companies (news, social media...). For a long time news papers had careful public policies in places to separate the editorial side from the ad side, so they could be independent. Many advertisers hated it because the editors they were paying did things against them - but they put up with it because those editors brought in the readers of the ads. That has broken down in the modern age though.

It would be nice of course if this actually applied to the sale of the data, and not just consent to contact. But then that would hurt banks and credit rating agencies, which regulators wouldn't dare piss off, so the FCC goes for roundabout regulations like this one, which treat the symptom but not the underlying cause.

FCC has different jurisdiction from FTC. It's in the name.

If the state of email providers and software companies (google / apple) have created features around getting you off mailing lists then you know that this is a problem. I agree with the FCC and they have been very aggressive about other things like robocalling .

OP: "...on subjects beyond the scope of the original consent"

That drastically changes the meaning of the title.

The one-at-a-time request is from an outside advocacy group Public Knowledge ( which calls itself a "free expression" group, but doesn't want free expression for advertisers... ")

> I'll give you leads for customers, but you have to call them fast before my other customers do!"

Why is incentivizing prompt customer service bad, or any kind of scheme? Competition drives better performance.

So they would now have to step up and act as a broker. – What, no, I just wanted to sell this lead, I'm innocent! /s

Reply on news.ycombinator.com