It's been awhile since we talked about Black Bear Advance and I thought it was time for an update. More than anything else going on with the company the biggest news by far is the absorption and integration of the Red Mountain Loans business. This includes the client base and the outstanding loan portfolio of Red Mountain Loans.
There is no other instance in the tribal lending industry where this has happened before, where a merger (or the acquisition) of two different Native American loan companies. It's impossible to know how much new business the Red Mountain Loans portfolio provided new business to Black Bear Advance but it surely helped the company and it's just an overall sign of the strength of this tribal lender. While so many other Native American loan companies are folding up their tent and surrendering their business, the operators of Black Bear Advance are picking-up new customers and growing.
WHat else is new for Black Bear Advance? Well, there is the troubling problem of fake websites popping-up pretending to be tribal lenders when in fact they are not tribal loan companies and may not even be legitimate lenders at all. A good example of this was done on January 9th, 2014, where if you were to search for the term "Black Bear Advance" in any standard search engine (most people use one of four in the U.S. these days) you would discover that the first result would be a listing of a company that resembles Black Bear Advance, however if you look closely it is a fake (or at least an imitator) of Black Bear Advance.
That search provides you with a link to "blackbearadvancenow.com" which appears on the surface like it's the tribal lender. When you go to the site it's all fine, there is the standard information about loan products, there is an FAQ page, all the same stuff we're so accustomed to seeing. But notice that there are three things that are quite amiss upon further review of this imitation Native American lender, or website I should say because we are not even sure this is a real company.
Those three signs that we are not dealing with the real Black Bear Advance are as follows:
1) The website is not correct. The real Black Bear Advance site reads just as you would expect it to, which is "blackbearadvance.com" and that's no surprise. But look closely at the imitator, where their site has the url of "blackbearadvancenow.com" - notice where they have inserted the 'now' to quietly blend in with the rest of the site name that we are looking for. This, in my opinion, is a very deceitful and underhanded way of doing business on their part. It does not matter to me whether this is a scam site or if it is a legitimate corporation (or LLC) because their methodology of getting customers has already led me to believe they are garbage operators who are not to be trusted at all.
2) At the bottom of nearly all (and perhaps every single one) of the tribal lending firms there will be a message written that advises the reader that they are at a tribal lending company website. Sometimes they use jargon such as 'tribal lending entity' or other fancy wording, but it's all the same thing. They are just informing you (making the statement) that they are a tribal lender, which implies that they are free from state and federal regulation in their business practices. It doesn't actually say that part but that's the concept, they make the statement to set themselves apart from all the other state licensed lenders that are so prevalent across the internet. Nowhere on the fake "blackbearadvancenow.com" website does it mention anything about being a tribal lender. This is a very good sign that they are not a tribal lending company and instead are trying to just pose as one with their sneaky name and titling of their company and site.
3) The "blackbearadvancenow.com" site states that they are a loan matching service. So this firm technically doesn't issue any loans they are simply locating (matching) lenders with their applicants (would-be borrowers) and creating loans through that process. And again, all of this is technically taking place, assuming these aren't simply predators trying to garner your personal information. But assuming they are a legitimate firm, they are not putting their money into any of the loans. This is in stark contrast to the real Black Bear Advance company that does issue loans using their own capital structures. The real Black Bear Advance does not do any loan matching or loan shopping, they simply either approve your loan request and lend the funds, or they deny your application and that's it.
There are more than a few of these fake Black Bear Advance companies out there, but this one I've been talking about is by far the biggest impostor. I'm not a big fan of Black Bear Advance (mainly because I prefer tribal installment loan firms like Mobiloans and Plain Green Loans, while this firm is a tribal payday lender) but that doesn't mean their business should be going to imitation shops. And it most certainly means that anyone intending to use Black Bear Advance should not be using some loan matching service that is obviously not the company that most borrowers intended to reach and do business with.
Be on the lookout for these fake tribal lenders, where they switch some small element in the name of the company and then essentially hope that people (new customers, returning customers, old customers) will stumble into this very similar loan operator's site.
Tribal lenders often leave much to be desired. They lend money with too little time to repay, their interest rates are often very expensive, and for my personal taste they simply do not lend enough money, although sometimes they do fine in that department. But it doesn't matter, because for all the failings (and whatever good) come from the tribal lenders we definitely do not want to use fake, pretend, impostors who have structured their companies so as to resemble an established tribal loan company. Those firms are much worse than the actual tribal lenders themselves.
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