CaliforniaLoanFind.com is owed and managed by Bonavista Web Inc. located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Office location in the MKS Building located at: 4511 Glenmore Trail #75, Calgary, AB T2C 2R9, Alberta, Canada – contact us using this page.
The primary content writer since 2008 is Brent Truitt, author and personal finance blogger.
CaliforniaLoanFind.com was launched in 2008 and our mission was simple – help people avoid predatory lenders, and further help people find lenders who were operating in a manner that more resembles the financial institutions of yesteryear.
Because of the Internet (and laws written by lenders for lenders) shady companies have flourished, duping honest borrowers with ballooning APR, hidden fine print, and magical fees that manage to pop out of nowhere.
Our aim was to direct people away from the loan sharks and toward lenders who still practice business fairly – lenders that don’t charge ridiculous APR, don’t charge hidden fees, don’t destroy the credit ratings of honest hard working Americans, and don’t use strong-arm collection agencies to harass the minority of people who have fallen on hard times and been forced to default.
As our team started engaging our visitors, we started hearing their stories. Then we asked their permission to tell their stories here at CLF. We change their names and private information to protect them, and publish it. The result has been astounding! Our visitor numbers have climbed 3 fold every year since we began!
THEN…..we started hearing stories from all across America. We’ve kept on writing about CA, but now we allow all visitors to tell their story in our comments sections. NOW…..we allow hand picked lenders to access our database and if they feel they can help one of our visitors with a loan or debt settlement, they do so. Some lenders are private, and some are presented on our pages with links to their sites.
NOTE: if you are a lender and want to have a link from our site, you must submit a FULL DISCLOSURE of your business practices, including your rates, fees, sub contractors, lead generation tactics, collection practices, etc. If we find that your lending institution is not playing fair ball in any way, your business will never see the light of day on this site – enough said?
One of the most frustrating things we found when we first started investigating some of these Internet loan sharks (and investigating legitimate lenders) was the deception tactics used by the shady companies. A classic tactic they use is “Online Assassination”. They register in online chat groups, forums, blogs, etc. and they create mythical individuals who have been “treated badly” by their competition – in fact the predatory lenders use this tactic to besmirch real and ethical lenders the MOST! Their work is quite sneaky – you would never know the person writing the review or complaint was just a fictitious character. Very sneaky indeed – complete with typos and personal stories to convince you that they are the “real deal”. Basically, it’s still the wild wild west out here in cyber space – it’s really hard to know the good guys from the bad guys.
Our mission is to help the good guys.