Borrower Rewards Program
Good borrowers get rewarded. Every completed rental and every positive review from a lender pushes you up to the next tier, unlocking perks like reduced deposits and early access to new listings.
- Standard deposit
- Full booking access (no early-access window)
- Bronze badge on your profile
- Silver badge
- 10% reduced refundable deposit on standard items
- Gold badge
- 20% reduced deposit
- Priority signal shown to lenders
- Platinum badge
- 30% reduced deposit
- Priority signal
- 24-hour early access to brand-new listings
How tiers can change
- Tiers are recomputed automatically after every review or completed rental.
- Deposit reductions never apply to high-value items or vehicle rentals — those keep the full deposit floor.
- Forfeiting a deposit (damage, loss, late return) immediately disqualifies you from Platinum and may lower your tier.
- Three open reports in 60 days, an average borrower rating below 3.0 over 5+ reviews, or two forfeited deposits will auto-suspend your account pending admin review.
- Lend Me may revoke tier perks at any time for abuse, fraud, or policy violations.
Trust score formula
Every profile shows a 0–100 trust score next to the tier badge. It combines time-decayed star ratings, completed rental volume, and reliability penalties. The exact computation is:
weight(age) = 0.5 ^ (ageDays / 180) // 6-month half-life weightedAvg = Σ(rating · weight) / Σ(weight) ratingPts = clamp((weightedAvg − 1) / 4, 0..1) · 70 volumePts = min(completedRentals / 20, 1) · 20 reliabilityPts = max(0, 10 − forfeitedDeposits·5 − openReports·2) trustScore = round(ratingPts + volumePts + reliabilityPts) // 0..100
- Ratings (0–70): a borrower-direction average of 5.0 maxes out this component; 1.0 zeroes it.
- Volume (0–20): reaches the cap at 20 completed rentals.
- Reliability (0–10): each forfeited deposit subtracts 5; each open report subtracts 2.
- Review age: a review is worth half as much after 6 months and a quarter after 12 — recent behavior dominates the score.
- Bands: 85+ Excellent · 70+ Strong · 50+ Building · Limited history below 50.
Concurrent rentals & trust gating
Higher trust unlocks the ability to borrow from more lenders at the same time. "Active" means any booking that's requested or approved but not yet completed or cancelled.
| Tier | Trust score | Max concurrent active rentals |
|---|---|---|
| Newcomer | < 40 | 1 |
| Bronze | 40 – 59 | 2 |
| Silver | 60 – 74 | 3 |
| Gold | 75 – 84 | 5 |
| Platinum | 85+ | Unlimited |
When a booking is blocked, the request screen lists every applicable reason — low trust score, forfeited deposits, suspension, lender block, minimum tier, Platinum-only early-access window, or concurrent-rentals cap — so you know exactly what to fix.