KivaFriends Liaison: call write-up (most recent: 10 JANUARY 2011)

[Guest]

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[AccountAbility]

Here are my notes from yesterdays call with Gerard. 

The paypal situation with autofilling anonymous lenders address fields has been taken care of.  Kiva will continue to collect the address data for the ability to contact the payee in case of transaction errors, which have happened.  As kiva accounts can be families, businesses or other entities this allows them to contact the payee if the need arises.

I do hope that Gerard and Kiva are aware that a shipping address is often not a valid mailing address.  If they mailed something to my Shipping address, it would get returned to sender (hopefully) but marked undeliverable.

Dan

[waywardcats]

Here are my notes from yesterdays call with Gerard. 

The paypal situation with autofilling anonymous lenders address fields has been taken care of.  Kiva will continue to collect the address data for the ability to contact the payee in case of transaction errors, which have happened.  As kiva accounts can be families, businesses or other entities this allows them to contact the payee if the need arises.

It seems me that if this is the reason that Kiva is collecting physical addresses, then they need to change their Privacy policy which explicitly states (emphasis mine):

By establishing an account on Kiva, you agree to receive emails based on your account activity (for example, confirmations of loans you have made, confirmation receipts for donations you have made, notifications of loan repayments you have received, statements on the amount of credit available in your Kiva account, confirmation of email address or password changes, or customer service inquiries regarding activity in your account).

There is absolutely no mention in the current privacy policy that Kiva is collecting physical addresses from a third party or plans to use them in any way.  I am glad that they are no longer disclosing the address information on lender profiles, but I am very uncomfortable that Kiva has chosen to collect this data from lenders without disclosing clearly that they are doing so.

-Kerry-

[YowieFreak]

The paypal situation with autofilling anonymous lenders address fields has been taken care of.  Kiva will continue to collect the address data for the ability to contact the payee in case of transaction errors, which have happened.  As kiva accounts can be families, businesses or other entities this allows them to contact the payee if the need arises.  As money is going toward lending and not just as a donation, when there is a problem,  being able to access this information from paypal makes correcting it much easier.

If there is a "transaction error" between the person crediting funds (which may, as stated, not necessarily be the lender) and PayPal, PayPal should contact the person crediting the funds - Kiva should not get involved.

If there is a "transaction error" between PayPal and Kiva, Kiva should contact PayPal - Kiva should not be directly contacting either the lender or the person crediting the funds.

(Kiva shouldn't even know who is crediting the funds - all they should know is whether the funds have been successfully credited or not.)

If there is an error in some other area after the credit transaction has been finalised (e.g. credit applied to incorrect loan somehow, or not applied to any loan) Kiva should contact the lender at the (email) address the lender has supplied for that purpose when setting up the lender's account with Kiva.


I didn't like it when Kiva was just getting my address from PayPal and when I thought they were doing it because they had no idea of how computer systems work.  If they are doing it deliberately and not just getting my address but obviously my name as well (I can't imagine that, if there is a problem, they would just send the letter to my shipping address with a name of "The occupant") .... well, I just can't imagine that they are that stupid ... or can I.

[David2051]

I'd still love to have the ability to leave out loans where Currency Risk is possible (the blacklist/whitelist plugin has ceased to work for me), but I won't hold my breath about it.

thanks again,
--Diane.

Diane, Chris Means updated the plugin to work with the new changes Kiva made.  Did you try installing the new version?  There is a direct link to the new plugin in the message in my signature.  Please let me know if you install it and are still having trouble with it.  Thanks

[wind5001]

I have to agree with Kerry: Kiva has to make public that they are receiving and storing the address information from Paypal. It is rather hideous to do it, and not let people know about it.

Also, I believe that Ian is very right in pointing out that there is no need for this collection of data on Kiva's part. I cannot wait to find a letter from them in my physical mailbox. That is ridiculous. If they are collecting this data for the purpose stated, it is just a huge amount of unnecessary data. If they have yet other reasons for storing the information, they should let us know...

Charmaine: Any chance you can follow up on this?

[KFLiaison]

Two things. 

I have gathered all of the information from PM's and this thread in regards to the paypal collection of addresses and have sent it off to Gerard.  I will follow up with him later today after he has had a chance to get through it. 

Also as it is not posted yet Gerard has sent me the benchmarks for star ratings.  Still waiting for the pilot status benchmarks.  So here is what I do have.

STAR Rating
Credit Limits
1 * $        31,250/12=$2604
2 * $      187,500/12=$15625
3 * $      437,500/12=$36458
4 * $      937,500/12=$78125
5 * $   1,250,000/12=$104166

EDIT:  This is a yearly number that is used, which didn't make a lot of sense to me since Gerard told me last call that there was no yearly number, so in asking about, it this $ is divided over the 12 month period to get their monthly allowances.  They are considering going to a yearly number and doing away with the monthly numbers.  They feel this would greatly help MFI's that work with agricultural borrowers, and the growing seasons, but would it cause great fluctuations on the site?  This is only a benchmark, but from the journal entry by Vision Finance Company in Rwanda which is a 4 * MFI, it looks to be right on track.  Here is the post that shows the entry and their monthly allowance of $75,000

[carien]

Charmaine thank you for all the work you are doing and I assume those figures are for a year. So now Ian has a nice new job, or is that impossible to do.


Carien

[iampaul]

Also as it is not posted yet Gerard has sent me the benchmarks for star ratings.  Still waiting for the pilot status benchmarks.  So here is what I do have.

As I understand it, these credit limits apply to the loan total that can be posted on Kiva for a particular Field Partner in a given month?

What about the total outstanding loan portfolio balance for a given field partner at any given time?

The particular case that has caught my attention is Fudecosur, a 3* pilot in Costa Rica that has been on Kiva 4 months and channeled over US$106,000 from Kiva lenders to 132 borrowers - so far. This MFI focuses on long-duration loans - repayments usually annually at 1 year, 2 years, or 3 years. The first $550 repayment on this portfolio isn't due until July 2010. A total of a only bit over $9000 is due by the end of 2010. That strikes me as quite a spread.


Thanks,
Paul

[Jan & John]

Agreed, it's not a problem, but it is confusing. But the issue I was reporting was that the expected behaviour wasn't happening. That is, having posted a message, one should return to the same page but with the message added, not apparently get kicked out to the main page looking like you're logged out. Two separate issues.

Thank you, Charmaine, for passing this along, and for your excellent write-up. It looks like we are in very good Liaison hands.

I sent two team messages today.
the first one posted immediately and I saw it in the message box, no problem.

Just now, the second one sent me to the Home page and has the 'log in' at the top...
...checking my other open tab, I clicked my portfolio and was still logged in and see that my message was sent correctly.

In both cases I typed the message in the box on the Team 'view messages' page and clicked 'add message'.
It's very disconcerting to snap to that Home page...
and I can understand why some messages are duplicated.
People 'think' something went wrong.

-jan-

edit: I just noticed that the address for that home page I was sent to is...
http://www.kiva.org/?team_id=594#messages

[KFLiaison]

I will be posting my notes from the call with Gerard that I had last evening after I have listened to the community conference call today regarding the Sam's club grant that is going on this month. 
There are things that non Sam Club members can do to help will be talked about today...I was assured by Gerard we don't have to sign up for the $40 Sam's Club membership to help, since mine wouldn't get used much.    There are some other things we can do on twitter, etc. to help with some double vote days, etc.
So I will post notes from both calls tonight, or in the morning depending how late the call goes since it does not start until 2330 CET.

Charmaine