Have you received text messages similar to the texts below from Alexis at Consolifi regarding a personal loan?
Source: Google.
Will you get a 7.99% interest rate loan if you apply?
Let’s review.
What Is Consolifi?
Consolifi pitches that you can use their website to obtain a personal loan. The company touts fast and easy approvals, $200M+ in funded loans, low fixes rates, and no hidden fees.
Source: https://consolifiusa.com/
It’s interesting to note that the footer of the home page states that “loans may involve brokerage services”, which is interesting because I checked the California lender licenses and could not find Consolifi. That may just mean that if you get a loan, you may be getting it from another lender, and that Consolifi is essentially refers out it’s leads from the website to another company.
I like to look at how long a company has been around, so I searched BBB, and found that the business started in August, 2014, so the company has been around for over 10 years according to BBB.
Now that I know a bit more about the company, I wanted to look at reviews to see if anyone else mentioned that they received a 7.99% interest rate loan.
Consolifi Reviews
I found three main sources for Consolifi reviews: BBB, Google, and Trust Pilot. Let’s go through Google first, as I found a couple of interesting things.
Firstly, on Google, Consolifi has a 4.7 rating based on 130 reviews. Let’s look at two positive reviews.
The first review mentioned that the process was fantastic and that he was comfortable moving forward with a program.
Another review mentioned that Neil was patient to introduce to him the concept of debt consolidation, and that Neil recommended Americor as a solution. I’ll explain how this type of product works, but if you’re interested in learning more about what Americor offers, you can read more here.
One thing that can be helpful to understand is that a debt consolidation program (similar to Americor above) is NOT a loan.
If you are looking for a loan, you can check your rate with the lenders below, where you can check your rate (without it affecting your credit score), provide fixed rates, no prepayment penalties, and send funds to your account.
A debt consolidation program (also known as debt relief) involves an entity negotiating and settling your debt for less than what is owed. It can be helpful to review pros and cons of debt consolidation/debt relief. Debt consolidation can be beneficial for some people, but it has cons, such as your accounts having to fall behind and your credit score could be hurt.
One negative review from Rey stated that he received a Consolifi text at 11:00 pm and then at 3:00 am. He also mentioned that he never requested information about a loan.
Next, let’s look at the BBB rating and reviews.
BBB
According to BBB, Consolifi is currently not a BBB accredited business. The company has no reviews, but 8 complaints in the last 12 months.
The BBB page highlighted an interesting alert for Consolifi that I provided below.
I do not understand exactly what happened, but according to the BBB page, Daniel Crenshaw is the current CEO of Consolifi, which may be why the company has the alert.
Let’s look at TrustPilot reviews.
TrustPilot
On TrustPilot, Consolifi has a 4.5 based on 439 reviews.
I saw two positive 5-star reviews that mentioned debt consolidation companies in their reviews, but nothing that stood out in my research.
What Are Alternatives?
Let’s look at a couple of alternatives.
1. A Different Lender
One alternative would be to search for a different debt consolidation lender with a strong history of issuing loans.
The two lenders from the link above offer APRs from as low as 6.6% and 7.99%, and you can check your rate without a soft credit pull. That said, it could be quite difficult to get a rate that low, so just understand that before applying.
2. A Different Service
If you are behind on your debt or are likely to fall behind on payments on your debt, you may not be able to qualify for a loan.
So, it could feel like a waste of time to keep applying and constantly getting denied because of too high credit utilization or too high a debt-to-income ratio.
If so, you could consider non-profit credit counseling or debt consolidation. In non-profit credit counseling, a credit counseling agency would create a debt management plan for you and then potentially negotiate down the interest rates on your credit cards. So, if you have a 29.99% interest rate, the credit counseling agency could negotiate that much lower, providing relief.
The debt management plan is also fixed, so there’s an end in sight, which can be comforting if you are currently stuck in the credit card minimum payment trap. If you’d like to estimate qualification for that option, you can take the free credit counseling calculator below.
Final Thoughts
Consolifi has both positive and negative reviews. It appears that the company uses text messages to reach out to potential applicants for a personal loan via someone named Alexis.
I looked through a number of reviews and couldn’t find someone who stated they got a loan, but was able to find people who got approved for a debt consolidation program. The two are very different, so it could be helpful to understand what you may qualify for.
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