281–290 of 298 posts
Planet Money is looking for people who have had questionable experiences with BNPL providers, I'd take a look if you haven't already: https://www.npr.org/2022/02/10/1079837232/have-you-used-buy-...
So basically reporting, with an agenda and selection bias?
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…
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Until there's a credit crunch or a recession, in which case all that "real-time" risk management will be moot and losses will be massive.
Banks have been saying that about online lenders for over decade now…and yet LendingClub, Upstart and SoFi loan books are still fine (and this three companies are taking 1/3 of all personal loan originations in the US)
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…
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…
I worked at one indirectly that was part of a major bank.
They used to even have local branches (stores in Wells Fargo parlance).
Citi, Wells, etc so had them back in the day before they were shamed into shutting them down.
Financing small purchases is just bad financial hygiene.
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> 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…
The "$2000 0% APR mattress loan" is useful because $167/ month is much easier to budget for and doesn't require a huge hit to savings.
One of these is just sane budging, the other is minmax gambling.
OP may not realize how bad the dispute process is with banks. When a merchant gets a charge disputed, they may not know about the dispute for many days. Then, if the customer lifts the dispute, the banks most often continue to hold the funds, and not release any information to the merchant for 90 days. It's horrible for merchants and customers.
Then there’s buyers who just use chargebacks as a way to get free stuff. Buyer asks for a refund, seller asks for it back (even offering to pay for shipping), buyer says no and issues a chargeback.
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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.
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I used Affirm for a Casper mattress back in the day. Much the same scenario, it said "make X payments in Y months" and I was like "Ok". I think that's Affirm's wheelhouse, providing smaller merchants of largish ticket items an easy way to do financing. So OP may not have had an option outside of Affirm to do the financing. I'm not sure how much Affirm would care about the issue as they're pretty much a 3rd party to t…
Plenty of people think Casper is pure junk. I understand taking a gamble, though... https://www.reddit.com/r/Mattress/comments/ejx6za/my_casper_... I guess it would have been smart for OP to think of that purchase as an attempt to get that item from that merchant, and just to eat the $ rather than spend a lot of time and get their credit dinged. It isn't totally different from getting a physical mattress that may or…
We don't know if he bought a mattress or not. I did. Years ago. And the fact that people online don't like Casper is neither here nor there. It's fine. It's a mattress. It's better than a spring mattress.
I merely brought it up because I used Affirm to purchase it because that was the option given to me by Casper for their "pay in X in Y months" option.