Like PersonalLoans.com, BestBadCreditLoans.org is an online review site that helps you find the best bad credit loans for your specific needs. Whether that's a long term installment loan or a short term loan, we rate each lender by the same 5 categories. What are those categories? We thought you'd never ask!
We break down each bad credit lender by focusing on interest rates, payment date flexibility, fees, and customer service to bring you the best of the best!
Our reviews are straightforward and honest, showing real numbers pulled from each company's website. The loan companies may try to hide their fees deep in the fine print, but we find them!
The first thing that comes to mind when comparing bad credit personal loans is the price of the loan, or the interest rate. Bad credit personal loans, especially payday loans, often have high APRs and interest rates (PersonalLoans.com reviews do a great job of highlighting the difference between APR interest rates) but that is only a fraction of the total cost of a loan.
The fine print in loan documents often contains additional fees that are not included in the published APR of the loan. In certain cases, the fine print can double or even triple the total cost of a loan. The most common fees that we see in bad credit personal loans are origination fees, late fees, overdraft fees, payment change fees, and early repayment fees.
We also consider how easy it is to find and understand the fees. Are they clearly communicated or buried in the fine print? The worst fee is the one you find out about weeks later when you’re trying to figure out why your payment was twice as large as it should have been.
Our customer service category evaluates how easy it is to get in contact with your lender, the response time, and if they were able to help you. One of the recurring trends that we’ve seen among online bad credit lenders is the lack of a publicly posted telephone number. The second factor we evaluate is how long it takes to get a response. Questions for your lender are often time sensitive. It’s important to know if you can rely on your lender to respond in time. Last and most important, we want to understand how effective the customer service is, do customers feel treated well, and if the problem was actually resolved. All of these factors create good customer service, one of the most important things it takes to be provide the best installment loan.
Credit reporting is not a common feature with bad credit personal loans. Some lenders will offer it to certain “tiers” of customers while others don’t offer it altogether. This is one of the most common distinctions between a bad credit lender and more traditional lender. Our research shows that even long term installment loans with no credit check up front can still report credit to the major bureaus. We believe credit reporting is a huge benefit to customers because it rewards them for making payments on time. Installment loans with no credit check that offer credit reporting to all three major bureaus for all customers score top marks.
Can you trust your bad credit lender to the do the right thing? In 2017, Wells Fargo made the news for creating over 3.5M fake accounts without customer consent. Bad credit lenders often have a worse reputation than banks due to a history of scandal, predatory lending practices, and evasion of usury law. Our score in this category is based on our review of a lender’s history, customer reviews from PersonalLoans.com reviews, and overall trust factor.
Companies that are committed to maintaining positive relationships with their customers will receive better customer reviews here and on PersonalLoans.com reviews. Unfortunately, some lenders pay for fake positive reviews, so it is very important to read the negative reviews as well to see if the reviews as a whole make sense. Independent review sites like the Better Business Bureau, Google, PersonalLoans.com reviews Facebook, and TrustPilot will often be your best source for reviews.