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Why I'll never use Affirm again

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Re: Why I'll never use Affirm again

#251

Post by wildrhythms »

sithadmin wrote: post #74
o10449366 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Affirm does allow people to open a chargeback dispute, but personally I was always taught to go through your credit card/bank. Also, after reading this account I would be very hesitant to go through Affirm for anything. Chase seems responsive on the other hand.

>personally I was always taught to go through your credit card/bank. For direct merchant/service provider purchases. Different beast than an installment loan, legally speaking. Regardless of Affirm botching things after the loan was paid, I suspect that the party reversing and withholding payment on the loan was taking a contractually and legally indefensible position.

The way I'm reading it is that Affirm doesn't know how to handle chargebacks gracefully. Maybe the chargeback system doesn't allow Affirm to "pass along" the chargeback to the merchant?

Re: Why I'll never use Affirm again

#252

Post by chernevik »

senko wrote: post #233
chernevik wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope he doesn't. It sounds like your customer service is the usual cost-minimization nightmare, and I don't see how fixing this one case will make it any better. Companies like yours make it hard for customers to reach capable representatives and routinely break service promises. Because hey! who cares if we have treated people decently? it has nothing to do with the business model. There must be dozens of ways to…

>> Please email me [...] it will help us prevent poor customer experiences. > I hope he doesn't. [...] Don't fix this case, fix your systems. He's literally trying to do exactly that (and acknowledged the customer is pissed and likely can't be bothered to). How would you hande this situation? Not the hypothetical "I'd never let this happen", because if you haven't given at least someone a bad customer experience, you…

I would send them an email at the address listed in their HN profile (it's there, I checked). I would NOT respond to a complaint like this on Hacker News with some performative demonstration of concern.

I would ask my VP for customer service to explain the state of the operation and why this case is such a mess. Who knows, maybe they aren't getting adequate resources or support. I'd do a deep dive: - What are our average call hold times? standard deviations? what is our response to outliers? - How do we QC these calls? - When we promise to contact a customer, what is our average response time? standard deviations? what is our response to outliers? - How do we QC the quality of those responses? - What are our escalation procedures? How often / effectively are they invoked? - What is our track record with credit bureau reports -- how often are they challenged? what is the outcome of those challenges? - What is our plan for customer service? How do we know it is properly resourced?

I'd expect answers to these questions in a day or so, if they can't answer these quickly they aren't the right person.

I would be preparing to tell my board, subject to the answers received above, that we have serious problems in customer support, we need new leadership/strategy there, and this might be expensive.

These are the guesses of a zero-management experience dude. I'm sure a real CEO would have a better list -- but they should be doing something serious about problems that are clearly systematic.

Re: Why I'll never use Affirm again

#253

Post by tehlike »

uoaei wrote: post #241
tehlike wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should notice that a CEO may not necessarily be aware of everything going on, and cases like this might trigger a deeper look on his side. Whether affirm has this kind of issues as a pattern or not, i don't know. But assuming malintent is not a great pov imho.

> a CEO may not necessarily be aware of everything going on "Everything" in the micro sense, sure. "Everything" in the macro sense, well, that's literally the job description of CEO, so it sounds like you think the CEO does not deserve criticism. If customer service is not working to the benefit of customers, I'd say that's something a CEO should already be aware of and represents a lack in organizational awareness,…

You are making plenty of assumptions.

But let's entertain what you said is true.

What if this is a recent regression that even his people (c-level, vp level etc) is trying to solve recently?

Assuming CEO has visibility into every macro thing(who decides what is macro?) at any given point in time is not fair, especially these days when there is so much economic volatility to be honest, which impacts his company more than many others.

He doesn't get a pass because he is the CEO. I believe him to be a decent humble person, that will make a honest attempt to address this specific problem and at large.

That's all.

Re: Why I'll never use Affirm again

#254

Post by pxx »

aunty_helen wrote: post #237
jallen_dot_dev wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author never disputed the transaction with Affirm, he just went straight to chargeback after getting nowhere with the merchant.

> and they were unresponsive to my requests for a shipping date There wasn’t an issue with Affirm not paying the money onward, why go to them. Once again, Affirm have agreed to give credit to this company, that relationship is theirs. If their client isn’t fulfilling their duties it’s Affirms problem too. Credit cards work like this, you pay your 2-4% fee and you’re guaranteed what you expected to receive. Hence why…

> airlines changing peoples tickets out for credit during the pandemic was easily routed around via a cc charge back

You still owe them the money. The airline can stop you from boarding a future flight. Chargebacks are not magic debt elimination tools.

https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/12/ryanair-ban...

Re: Why I'll never use Affirm again

#255

Post by tehlike »

chernevik wrote: post #252
senko wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Please email me [...] it will help us prevent poor customer experiences. > I hope he doesn't. [...] Don't fix this case, fix your systems. He's literally trying to do exactly that (and acknowledged the customer is pissed and likely can't be bothered to). How would you hande this situation? Not the hypothetical "I'd never let this happen", because if you haven't given at least someone a bad customer experience, you…

I would send them an email at the address listed in their HN profile (it's there, I checked). I would NOT respond to a complaint like this on Hacker News with some performative demonstration of concern. I would ask my VP for customer service to explain the state of the operation and why this case is such a mess. Who knows, maybe they aren't getting adequate resources or support. I'd do a deep dive: - What are our ave…

Something can be both performative, and honest at the same time.

He probably got notified by someone in the company that this is getting attention, he felt responsible so he responded AND got people to pull numbers for example.

Re: Why I'll never use Affirm again

#256

Post by tehlike »

michaelmrose wrote: post #245
shmoogy wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bringing the attention of a systematic failure/issue to a CEO that may be caused by policies that force KPIs internally that lead to frustrating encounters is the best way to resolve these kinds of issues.

I have never seen the CEO of any organization I've ever worked for fix anything of note even company or life threatening situations unless it was actually to the point of threatening the immediate existence of cash flows right away as in this quarter. Honestly anyone who expects Affirm to fix an issue where a fraction of 1% of users are fucked and 99% are OK is dreaming. All it would have to do to negative the benefi…

I was an engineer at Google, in admob specifically.

We would get issues all over the place. 99% was publisher bug, but it would help us detect patterns and potentially improve the API, or onboarding flow etc. On the 1% we would sometimes figure out later because support Frontline didn't realize the issue properly and we had to address it few months later.

All that is is a feedback. I believe we tried to do better by people but our scale probably grew faster than our process could scale.

And i say this as a victim of Google's account support (or lack thereof). It is horrible, but you figure nothing is perfect.

"Smart folks" tend to know how sausage is made and take things into account and not simply abandon. Don't project your own opinion on others.

Re: Why I'll never use Affirm again

#257

Post by tomnipotent »

gscott wrote: post #147
kelnos wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think that the better thing -- in an ideal world -- would be to contact Affirm and tell them to withhold payment from the merchant, since the merchant had not provided the goods. That way you'd still be in Affirm's good graces. But considering how this particular situation went as-is, I doubt Affirm would handle that request in any useful manner. Then again, I feel like this was a bit of an unusual situation…

Affirm is not like a credit card. They actually put your loan with Cross River Bank and are just the middle-man who collects commissions and collects fees from merchants for advertising on Affirm.com/app. I learned this the hard way... they care not if you get the item, or if it is good, or if it is a scam. Affirm is oblivious to it all. Just collecting fees.

Affirm makes money on both sides - interest from the customer, and a percentage of the transaction fee based inversely to the customer interest rate (e.g. you can do 0% interest but the retailer pays more per transaction).

Re: Why I'll never use Affirm again

#258

Post by krallja »

jonny_eh wrote: post #209
sam0x17 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they literally told me if I didn't cash it their system was just going to keep sending checks every 90 days so I might as well cash it now.

Why not wait a year and cash all the checks at once?

Because that is fraud and you will go to prison.

Re: Why I'll never use Affirm again

#259

Post by krallja »

faeriechangling wrote: post #138
victorvosk wrote: post #134

"I'm fortunate to be in a financial position where damage to my credit score wouldn't be the end of the world.." Then why did you bother using a pay later scheme for a few hundred dollars on some sketch retailer? This is like the person that chose to walk down a dark alley in a large unfamiliar city and can't believe they got mugged.

The incentive seems pretty obvious to me. You can take the money you save, put it into an ultraconservative investment vehicle, and effectively end up paying less money overall for the same purchase. Most people who finance through these providers do not run into any problems. To put it another way, if you don't take advantage of 0% APR financing, you are effectively paying a surcharge to not have to deal with the ad…

> ultraconservative investment vehicle

Which pays less than 1% APR. Over six weeks. On a purchase of $271. Congratulations, you saved 31¢.

Re: Why I'll never use Affirm again

#260

Post by dwild »

michaelmrose wrote: post #244
kube-system wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was clearly the retailer in breach of Affirm’s terms Yes, and that's why the payment to the retailer should have been the one in dispute, not the loan payment to Affirm. This is how it always works when you finance through a third party... it works the same way for a car loan, a mortgage, a credit card, etc.

How do you dispute a charge that took place between Affirm and the delinquent merchant? Affirm has your money. Affirms partner hasn't delivered on your merchandise. Affirm by being the one in possession of your money for which you have received nothing is the one in breach of your agreement and has no power to enforce terms for an agreement it has violated.

How do you charge back usually? You contact your credit card provider right? You don't just avoid paying your credit card... you contact the ones that credited you the money. In this case this is Affirm the creditor (I know you got 2 credits here, but that's a choice).

You got 2 contracts here, one to pay back a loan, an another with the merchant, and sadly, when you don't pay back a credit, it get on your credit report...

So the one to contact, is Affirm, just like the one to contact in case of issue with a payment you made, is your credit card provider, and not your bank.

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