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Why I'll never use Affirm again

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Re: Why I'll never use Affirm again

#191

Post by harles »

mymllnthaccount wrote: post #39

This is kind of OP's fault, right? I don't think it was appropriate to initiate a charge back on a payment to affirm since they provided their service to OP, that is they already paid for whatever OP was buying. I have a feeling that timing between OP opening the chargeback and the shipping of the item was actually coincidental. I'd think if you paid affirm and the merchant hadn't shipped the item, then your recourse…

Yikes, I can’t believe all the comments blaming OP. It was clearly the retailer in breach of Affirm’s terms, not OP. Charge backs also have a limited window to claim - I can’t see anything that was done wrong here by OP. Yes, OP could’ve attempted to resolve with affirm up front, but why should that be necessary?

Re: Why I'll never use Affirm again

#192

Post by goldtownjac »

I understand the mathematical argument for using these BNPL services, but I wish that we as a society were not so comfortable with debt that some are willing to incur it on a pair of shoes or a fashionable t-shirt. Personally, it gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Re: Why I'll never use Affirm again

#193

Post by 411111111111111 »

aunty_helen wrote: post #183
mymllnthaccount wrote: post #39

This is kind of OP's fault, right? I don't think it was appropriate to initiate a charge back on a payment to affirm since they provided their service to OP, that is they already paid for whatever OP was buying. I have a feeling that timing between OP opening the chargeback and the shipping of the item was actually coincidental. I'd think if you paid affirm and the merchant hadn't shipped the item, then your recourse…

What? How are you going to charge back against someone you didn't actually deal with financially? Your arguement is that Affirm should be able to clip the ticket and hold no responsibility for their client fufilling their duties? The charge back goes to who you paid for a service, if they need to pass it on, it's for them to do.

I cannot say anything wrt this specific case but it definitely depends. Where I'm from you'd basically make 2 contracts: one purchase agreement and then another one for the money, which is basically just a credit you've gotta pay back.

So here you'd have to contact the seller, as the other party merely gave you a credit with hopefully good terms

Re: Why I'll never use Affirm again

#194

Post by colinmhayes »

crisopolis wrote: post #142
mymllnthaccount wrote: post #39

This is kind of OP's fault, right? I don't think it was appropriate to initiate a charge back on a payment to affirm since they provided their service to OP, that is they already paid for whatever OP was buying. I have a feeling that timing between OP opening the chargeback and the shipping of the item was actually coincidental. I'd think if you paid affirm and the merchant hadn't shipped the item, then your recourse…

I agree it does read like the OP triggered the entire issue with payments using a chargeback originating from Chase, regardless of the support/platform issues with Affirm. I don't believe charging back the loan provider had any outcome to getting their product/service. Affirm was the wrong target.

Who should OP have targeted? The seller wasn't responding and OP had no way to force them to other than charging back against affirm.

Re: Why I'll never use Affirm again

#195

Post by hiq »

knodi123 wrote: post #180
after_care wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because spreading the payments out over 12 months means more investment capital This is essentially borrowing money to invest. It doesn't matter if the investment makes money or loses money the lender will expect payment. This strategy can make a lot of money, but it's also ruined many people. One key thing to watch while implementing this strategy is your debt to assets ratio. Also understand that during a market…

> This is essentially borrowing money to invest Yeah, I don't know why more people don't see it this way. Everyone seems to agree that you shouldn't eagerly make extra mortgage payments to pay off your home loan ASAP. Because you can pay it off over 30 years and presumably make more $$ investing than whatever paltry interest rate you had on your home loan. But the same people can't explain why it's a bad idea to take…

> But the same people can't explain why it's a bad idea to take out a 2nd mortgage to invest in the market, or even secure a low-interest loan with your home as collateral. But isn't it exactly the same thing?

So what was their reasoning?

In the end it's all math, where some numbers are random variables with the corresponding variance. So this all depends on what rate you get, what returns you expect from the market, what's your risk tolerance, etc.

Re: Why I'll never use Affirm again

#196

Post by Brystephor »

I work on payments related systems. At Amazon, this meant connecting to banks and being dependent on them. At Snap, we use payment processors to facilitate things relating to payments.

What I've learned is that the U.S. payments infrastructure is quite far behind, it's complicated, and frankly makes building with it more difficult than it should be.

For example. There's this new (as of like 2017 iirc) payment rail called Real Time Payments. Think "ACH transfer" but in It's advertised as 24/7 however banks are actually allowed to go offline from 3am - 6am on Sundays (it may be once a month, memory is a bit fuzzy). So if you initiate a payment to a payee who's bank is offline, the payment is "rejected". So now you have to tell your customer "hey sorry, the payment has been rejected, it's not actually going to be available for a few hours".

Also there's no centralized way to tell when banks are down and as far as I know, there was no system built to track which banks are down and which are not. So if you want to avoid sending payments to a bank that's offline, you need to look at the history of payments to see for recent reject codes, have a direct line of communication with the banks, or use a third party API which probably does one of the prior mentioned things.

There's also some fun (sarcasm) edge cases in the state machine for a payment and there's a state of payments where it's said to be completed but actually the payment is in limbo and hasn't been received.

Remember, this is a payment system that was released in the last 5-10 years. Also, only ~70% of banks are onboarded to this payment rail so you have to look at payment destination routing numbers to validate if it's an option or not.

I mention all of this to try and convey the complexity and difficulty of working with the U.S. payment rails directly. I don't know if charges applies in the same manner, but I bet it's just as complicated.

With that said, this is Affirms bread and butter for their business. They should be aware of these things. Build the tools to enable their support team to do their jobs and help customers.

p.s. can't forget that ACH transfers are built to be done in batches for business hours only. That's a whole other topic.

Re: Why I'll never use Affirm again

#197

Post by ensignavenger »

colinmhayes wrote: post #194
crisopolis wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it does read like the OP triggered the entire issue with payments using a chargeback originating from Chase, regardless of the support/platform issues with Affirm. I don't believe charging back the loan provider had any outcome to getting their product/service. Affirm was the wrong target.

Who should OP have targeted? The seller wasn't responding and OP had no way to force them to other than charging back against affirm.

OP could have initiated the chargeback through Affirm. I have used this process with Affirm before with much better luck. That being said, this does not excuse Affirms alleged poor customer service in this situation.

Re: Why I'll never use Affirm again

#198

Post by mlevchin-affirm »

Hi, I am the CEO at Affirm. I am sorry for the bad experience you appear to have had with our customer support — it is certainly not what we strive for.

Please email me at max.levchin @ affirm.com with either the transaction ID or the email address you used to register, and I will track down exactly what happened here. I realize you may not care at this point, but I’d greatly appreciate it, as it will help us prevent poor customer experiences.

Thank you. —Max

Re: Why I'll never use Affirm again

#199

Post by drdec »

bena wrote: post #173
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I would just pay it again. 25% of $271 is cheaper than a credit score hit. You can simultaneously dispute with the Attorney General office.

This isn't the worst advice if he has the money to float it. I recently had a non-renewal on my homeowner's insurance so I had to get new homeowner's insurance. Through a whole bunch of stuff, I wound up effectively sending three payments to two separate insurance companies. I had to float about $7000 - $8000 for a bit. The insurance agent I had found seemed to be a bit inept, so I wasn't confident they had everythin…

Just FYI, but depending on your situation, you do not need to pay for homeowner's insurance (or real estate taxes) via escrow. You can handle it all yourself so you'll only have yourself to blame if the payments get screwed up.

Re: Why I'll never use Affirm again

#200

Post by colinmhayes »

ensignavenger wrote: post #197
colinmhayes wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who should OP have targeted? The seller wasn't responding and OP had no way to force them to other than charging back against affirm.

OP could have initiated the chargeback through Affirm. I have used this process with Affirm before with much better luck. That being said, this does not excuse Affirms alleged poor customer service in this situation.

Affirm doesn't respond to emails and it's incredibly difficult to get anyone on the phone. So no, I don't think he could've charged back through affirm.
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