I just put this in the merchant cash advance group on Facebook yesterday... Now I feel like I need to put it here after seeing this...


As many of you know, the industry is getting a bit harder especially for smaller shops. Over the course of the past couple of years I have entertained buying leads from various providers but I am seeing some trends I believe we should talk about. I have went to a full organic system that was considerably tougher and more costly for me to really get off the ground but I also understand that there are shops on here that are not as lucky. The next time you get offered "full packages" from a leads provider, I want you to ask yourself this simple set of questions:
Where did these come from?
Why are they selling them and not sending them in as ISO's
Are the applicants aware their information was sold like this?
(if they came with an app) Is that shop aware their pack just got sold?
The more disturbing part to this is not only are these packs being shuffled from hand to hand but they also are getting in the hands of these debt settlement companies causing problems for funders and merchants alike, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that many of these types are a direct result to someone's business and dreams being destroyed.
Before anyone starts going ham in the comments, there is nothing wrong with you if you are buying data, calling it, or buying leads, the point of this post is to bring awareness to this industry issue. Be careful who you buy data from, and always remember, it could be your shop's data being sold to someone else, we all have a duty to be aware, and to stop people from selling stolen or ill-gotten data. Funders should be more aware of how origination is happening, a funder should not be accepting packages that are not on the ISO's application that submitted it. ISO's should remember buying shady data will only result in shady results, or worse.
Just remember, if they sold you someone else's stuff, they will sell your stuff to someone else.
Have a great day everyone, feel free to follow, I will be dropping tidbits of useful information like this every-so-often.