Prosper Holiday Offers: Free iPads & iPods for Lenders and Borrowers

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Person-to-person lending site Prosper.com is running a few holiday promotions for both borrowers and lenders. If you have great credit, check out how your loan fees could be much less than the value of the iPod you get!

Free iPod Nano with Personal Loan
Borrowers who apply for a Prosper loan through this Monday, November 28th, 2011 get an Apple iPod Nano when the loan originates. I can’t tell if the iPod Nano is 8 gb ($129) or 16 gb ($149). Note that the fine print for this offer does not exclude AA loans with 1-year terms, which have very low origination fees of only 0.5% of the amount borrowed; a $2,000 loan would have an origination fee of just $10. There is no pre-payment penalty for paying off your loan early, so do the math. 🙂

Before committing to anything, you can get a free rate quote without affecting your credit score. You’ll even get a free credit score afterward unless you get the best AA rating, at which point you know your credit score is sky-high anyway.

iPad Nano, Bose Noise-Canceling Headphones, or iPad 2 for New Lenders
New lenders who register by December 12 and invest the minimum needed for each gift by December 23, can get the following:

  • $5,000 – Apple iPod Nano, 16 GB ($149 value)
  • $10,000 – Bose® QuietComfort® 15 Headphones ($299 value)
  • $25,000 – Apple iPad 2 32 GB WiFi model ($599 value)

“Lenders who receive promotional offers from Prosper may be subject to IRS Form 1099-MISC reporting requirements should the total value of those items exceed $599 in a calendar year.” Gee, look how nicely that worked out.

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Comments

  1. Paying $125 for an iPad 2 doesn’t seem like a bad deal, but not sure if it’s worth the hit on my credit score for a new inquiry.

  2. Is this a reasonable way to get a free credit score? How far through the process do you have to go to get that?

    @Tyler, I think you misunderstood. Borrowers can only get the nano. The iPad is for investors. You have to invest $25k to get it. No credit inquiry, though…

  3. Could you get a free nano by getting a loan and paying it off completely immediately? Would there by any interest if you did that?

  4. Jonathan, you left out the $5k sweepstakes:
    http://www.prosper.com/prm/sweepstakes.html

    @GregK – It’s a good way to get a quick look at your credit from Experian. What you get isn’t FICO, but Experian Scorex, a different score product that’s similar but more targeted toward creditworthiness for unsecured loans. You also get the summary – # of delinquencies, public records, %utilization, etc. Yes, you can start to fill out a listing but not actually post the listing, and all you get is a soft hit on your credit.

  5. So I have been vaguely aware of Prosper from earlier posts on this site, and others like it. However I had never really investigated Prosper at all until today. And I’m a bit confused.

    I created an account, entered all of my personal info, etc. They shot me an e-mail with y credit score, which was a bit lower (20 points) than the last time I got a copy a couple months ago, but was still a pretty descent score (above 750). However, then when I got a rate for a $2,000 loan from Prosper not only were the rates were outrageous, but the numbers didn’t even seem to be accurate…

    $2000 loan (faster payoff option)
    $184.66 monthly payment
    1 year term
    19.36% rate
    29.29% APR

    That is what the site quoted me. However, 184.66 x 12 = 2215.92 – 2000 = 215.92 / 2000 = 10.796% interest paid. That i definitely not 19.36% rate, or 29.29% APR. How could the APR even possibly be that different than the rate if it is a 1 year loan term. For a 1 year term the rate & APR should essentially be the same. Just doesn’t make sense.

  6. @ Anonymous

    Your basic math is right, but it’s conceptually wrong. Two points:

    Rate is the annualized interest rate. As you’re paying down the principal, it’s being applied each month to a smaller and smaller balance. That’s why you’re not paying 19.36% over the year. Plug $2,000 and 19.36% into a payment calculator, and you’ll get exactly $184.66/month payments.

    APR takes origination fees into account. Because of this, you actually have it backward — typically, the shorter the loan term, the higher the difference between rate and APR, since that fee isn’t spread across as many years.

  7. watch out for the ‘closing fee’. they list me as a 796 credit score. $2,000.00 @ 7.53% (15.172% APR) loan quoted, but they only give me $1921, they call $79 a prepaid finance charge, then below call it a closing fee.

    So $79 + the little amount of interest + the hassle isn’t worth it for me. if it was only $10 like mentioned in the article, i would have done it.

    good luck to everyone else,

  8. The closing fee (or origination fee, or prepaid finance charge) is 0.5% for AA borrowers, 3.95% for A and B rated borrowers, and 4.95% for C-HR borrowers. This is the only fee for borrowers other than fees for missing payments.

    0.5% of $2,000 is $10, 3.95% of $2,000 is $79. But if you’re not AA at least you’ll get a free credit score. 🙂

  9. $2,000.00 @ 25.76% (35.840% APR) is what my wife was offered with a 819 credit score. So her closing fee was even more than mine at $99 with a 20 pt higher score. I couldn’t find what constitutes an AA rating

  10. iPad Nano for new loan offer extended to Monday November 28th at midnight.

  11. So when I put in my info the offer I end up with is a closing fee of $79, so I’d receive $1921 for a $2K loan. And an interest rate of 14.663% APR. If I understand this report correctly, I can take out the $2K loan, and pay it all back next week and end up with the iPod nano for just the $79 closing fee and ONE WEEK INTEREST (not a full year interest), is that right? If so, its not quite as good as the original offer mentioned (because of my credit) but I might do it today, because an iPod nano for ~$80 sounds like a good deal to me.

  12. @Stephen:

    Yes, if you paid back the loan in one week you would only have paid one week’s worth of interest. The interest is calculated daily.

    Here was the skinny on today’s iPod Nano offer, which I also received in my inbox:

    To qualify to receive a silver iPod® Nano, you (i) must be the recipient of this email; (ii) must post a loan listing on Prosper.com before 11:59pm PT on December 28, 2011; (iii) have to reach Verification Stage 3 within 1 week of posting the loan listing; (iv) cannot have posted a loan listing on Prosper.com within the past 30 days; and (v) may not withdraw your loan listing. If you meet these criteria, Prosper will fulfill send the reward via U.S. mail to the residential address on record for the account. Prosper may substitute the reward for a reward of equal or greater value at its discretion. This promotion cannot be combined with any other promotional offer from Prosper.

  13. @Dan:

    I got the same e-mail… sounds to me like you don’t actually have to get a loan to get the Nano… I’m thinking I might put up a listing asking for money to invest in a cat breeding business my wife’s uncle pitched me on haha. No origination fee if you don’t get funded, right??

  14. GregK, haha! Awesome!

    Unfortunately, if you have good credit, you’d probably fund anyway, as a lot of lenders bid automatically based on preset criteria from the credit details. And Prosper tries to set the rates to attract lender bids. So unless you can magically add a bunch of delinquencies to your credit report, even your cat breeding business will probably fund, and withdrawing the listing would violate requirement (v).

  15. Has anyone gotten their free iPod nano from this offer yet? I took out the $2K loan on Dec 28th when I got an e-mail from them offering this deal again for just that one day (I think). Anyway, I repaid the loan in full a week and a half later. And a month later I haven’t heard anything from them yet about the iPod nano. I wrote about 5 e-mails to customer service any never get any response. When I called on the phone they said I qualified, and gave me a case number, but said they had no idea when the iPods would go out, and that they may end up giving the cash equivalent ($129) instead. So, has anyone who did this offer earlier (back in November) gotten one yet? I’m just wondering if I got suckered in to paying the $79 loan origination fee for nothing.

  16. OK, I got my “iPod” today. Actually, they gave me $129 cash instead of an iPod nano. I guess they ran out. So I ended up paying $79 finance charge + $2.xx interest, and receiving $129 cash. About a $47.xx profit, although I really stressed & worried about this one for some reason. Thanks Jonathan.

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