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Goldman and Apple 'illegally sidestepped' obligations to credit-card customers

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Goldman and Apple 'illegally sidestepped' obligations to credit-card customers

#151

Post by dartos »

refurb wrote: post #148
dartos wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fine might be tiny part of worldwide revenue, but how much money are they making off apple cards? If that's tiny as well then the argument is moot. I disagree. I don’t think the fine should be relative to money gained by breaking a rule. Then it’s not a deterrent for large companies. You end up in a situation where very large companies can act in illegal ways and just absorb the fine. A company doing anything w…

This still makes no sense. If a company with $1B in revenue, rolls something out to make $10M, then anything over $10M is suitable punishment - you turned a profitable venture into a money losing venture.

Yeah that works fine if the company in question is $1B. $10M is 1% of that company. That’s a deterrent.

But if that company was $1T then that fine is effectively the cost of legal research. It won’t deter that company from trying to weasel their way around regulations in the future as the cost of trying justifies the potential upside.

Re: Goldman and Apple 'illegally sidestepped' obligations to credit-card customers

#152

Post by janalsncm »

wkat4242 wrote: post #130
rootusrootus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an auto payment taking a week to withdraw from my bank account As an aside, for anyone using an Apple Card today, a handy way around this is to not make payments via ACH. Use your debit card with Apple Pay to pull money instantly into Apple Cash, then use that to instantly pay your credit card bill. An extra step, sure, but it's instant .

Why would you even use a credit card if you have the money? You don't have to bother with the loan aspects of the card then (and the paying off). You could just use a debit card. This is what keeps me from even considering an apple card, I don't need any credit and getting credit registered against my name will make it more difficult to get a mortgage.

> I don't need any credit and getting credit registered against my name will make it more difficult to get a mortgage

A mortgage is credit. And as far as FICO scores go, having high available credit would make it easier to get a loan, not harder.

Re: Goldman and Apple 'illegally sidestepped' obligations to credit-card customers

#153

Post by throwaway2037 »

bostik wrote: post #34
downrightmike wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goldman thought they were going to be able to fleece Apple's customers, but they can't. Good job Apple!

For some reason I think it will have been even more mundane. It is quite a long time ago, but Matt Levine wrote at the time that GS was (for whatever reason) desperate to get into consumer finance. They saw the market as an open opportunity, and paired up with Apple to get a foothold reaching well beyond their Marcus brand. [Still paraphrasing Levine.] As one would expect, that didn't go well. Goldman Sachs as a comp…

    > Goldman Sachs as a company is geared to do complex low-volume, high-margin deals.
They trade billions of dollars of equities on exchange per day globally. Usually, each fill is tiny. Then do plenty of simple, high volume, low margin business. Same for spot FX, FX/equity options, all types of futures. Tiny margin, and Goldman is big in all of them.

It is funny that you think Goldman is so monolithic. They have 45,000 employees, and a vast array of businesses. As a related point, JPMorgan is both a mega commercial/retail bank plus ibank. They do both types of transactions.

Re: Goldman and Apple 'illegally sidestepped' obligations to credit-card customers

#154

Post by Corrado »

themadturk wrote: post #77
_mlbt wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe if you fail to make the entire monthly payment by the end of the month you will be charged interest.

Also, you do need to explicitly specify you want to use the interest-free installment option when making the purchase. It's not automatic, even when buy an Apple product at an Apple Store.

Yes. I found this out after purchasing a new laptop for my wife. One call to the Apple store that I bought the device at fixed it though. It really was (mostly) painless.

Re: Goldman and Apple 'illegally sidestepped' obligations to credit-card customers

#155

Post by DaSHacka »

justinclift wrote: post #107
xyst wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably payment on GS backend was processed late even if customer initiated payment on the due date. So customer was charged interest. I was an early adopter of the AC during my Apple glazing days. Everybody has the same due date (end of month) and GS systems just could not handle the volume. I remember an auto payment taking a week to withdraw from my bank account and applied to account. I wasn’t charged interest a…

> Apple glazing What is "Apple glazing"?

Its a term common amongst sussy sigma zoomers paying Fanum Tax to Baby Gronk in Ohio (blud thinks he's edging a goofy ahh Kai Cenat, we ain't rizzing outta the goon cave with this one) that Grimace Shake Skibidi glaze was craaaazy bro frfr no cap on bussin

Re: Goldman and Apple 'illegally sidestepped' obligations to credit-card customers

#156

Post by throwaway2037 »

Ensorceled wrote: post #14
bangaroo wrote: post #5

I'm struggling a little bit with the "misleading consumers into getting interest-free monthly payments" part. I never found the checkout flow particularly unclear or obtuse. It kind of sounds like consumers assumed that making a purchase with the apple card automatically enrolled you in the payment plan, versus having to go through a different checkout flow. I do kind of recall that when I used that feature once, it…

> I'm struggling a little bit with the "misleading consumers into getting interest-free monthly payments" part. I never found the checkout flow particularly unclear or obtuse I really wish everybody who makes claims like these would go to the local library and do volunteer tech support for the elderly, poorly educated and cognitively challenged for a day. The bar for these things is not "would the average HN reader f…

    > more than half of the US population reads below the grade 6 level.
I find this hard to believe.

Re: Goldman and Apple 'illegally sidestepped' obligations to credit-card customers

#157

Post by fastball »

justinclift wrote: post #108
fastball wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It actually sounds like some customers thought any Apple purchase would be eligible if they paid with their Apple Card, but that is not how it works – you actually need to choose the interest-free monthly installment option when buying the device. A case of potentially misleading advertising, but also customers being dumb. I personally found the whole process quite clear with regards to how the interest-free installm…

> I personally found the whole process quite clear ... Maybe there were earlier versions of the advertising/process that weren't as clear, and it was made clearer over time?

Possibly, but I got my Apple Card in early 2020, so fairly soon into the program.

Re: Goldman and Apple 'illegally sidestepped' obligations to credit-card customers

#158

Post by StackRanker3000 »

dartos wrote: post #150
gruez wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So going back to the Liechtenstein example, if Apple did a bad there what would be the appropriate punishment? Based on what you're saying you'd want them to be fined a significant portion of their worldwide revenue, which seems absurd. It would basically deprive people living in small countries access to products from multinational companies, because nobody would want to risk 5% (or whatever) of their worldwide reve…

> It would basically deprive people living in small countries access to products from multinational companies, because nobody would want to risk 5% (or whatever) of their worldwide revenue to get 1% more market share. Sorry, I’m not sure I follow. How would selling products to smaller countries automatically incur fines for illegal activity?

I don’t think anyone’s saying it would be automatic. But the risk of running afoul of laws and regulations is non-zero, and if the penalties are too steep, then it may be a wiser choice to stay out of small markets entirely.

Re: Goldman and Apple 'illegally sidestepped' obligations to credit-card customers

#159

Post by gruez »

dartos wrote: post #150
gruez wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So going back to the Liechtenstein example, if Apple did a bad there what would be the appropriate punishment? Based on what you're saying you'd want them to be fined a significant portion of their worldwide revenue, which seems absurd. It would basically deprive people living in small countries access to products from multinational companies, because nobody would want to risk 5% (or whatever) of their worldwide reve…

> It would basically deprive people living in small countries access to products from multinational companies, because nobody would want to risk 5% (or whatever) of their worldwide revenue to get 1% more market share. Sorry, I’m not sure I follow. How would selling products to smaller countries automatically incur fines for illegal activity?

Apple wants to operate in Liechtenstein. Under your proposed regime of a "deterrent", that would put them at risk of fines worth 5% (or whatever) of their global revenue. Of course, they're not going to intentionally break laws, but shit happens and despite their best efforts they might still get fined. Faced with that prospect, they go "nah" and stay out of the market entirely, because the extra 0.1% profit is massively outweighed by the potential 5% revenue in fines. All 40k Liechtensteiners are worse off as a result. This isn't a hypothetical. It's happening in EU right now, as Apple doesn't want to deal with the legal headaches associated with Apple Intelligence and therefore opts out of the EU market entirely.

Re: Goldman and Apple 'illegally sidestepped' obligations to credit-card customers

#160

Post by blitzar »

wkat4242 wrote: post #130
rootusrootus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an auto payment taking a week to withdraw from my bank account As an aside, for anyone using an Apple Card today, a handy way around this is to not make payments via ACH. Use your debit card with Apple Pay to pull money instantly into Apple Cash, then use that to instantly pay your credit card bill. An extra step, sure, but it's instant .

Why would you even use a credit card if you have the money? You don't have to bother with the loan aspects of the card then (and the paying off). You could just use a debit card. This is what keeps me from even considering an apple card, I don't need any credit and getting credit registered against my name will make it more difficult to get a mortgage.

Not having credit registered against my name made it more difficult to get a mortgage. No credit history, no credit.
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