Why I'll never use Affirm again

> whoever actually takes your money be it affirm or walmart has no right to be paid if the goods aren't delivered

This is 100% not true for third party creditors, at least in the US. They do have a right to be paid, regardless of the services you purchased with that credit.

The only reason that you can dispute your credit card transactions is because congress passed a law specifically requiring this process: https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/statutes/fair-credi...

This and similar carveouts notwithstanding, any loan you take out, you are required repay, regardless of the experience with the seller.

You are correct that it is inconvenient when you obtain loans with poor conflict resolution processes. However, this does not negate your legal responsibility to pay those creditors. This is why laws like the FCBA were passed.

> It would make little sense for chase to expect to be paid $500,000 for a house it turned out the seller had no right to sell or $50,000 for a car that was never delivered due to mischance. In both cases even though you had agreed to borrow that money the transaction would be unwound and not merely by you. This unwinding in case of a failure by merchant to deliver product financed is an expected part of such an interaction in part because such transactions almost always concern a great deal of money.

This might surprise you, but in the US, you are still legally required to pay your loans in both of those circumstances. This is the entire purpose of products like title insurance. The bottom line is that the bank is not culpable for other people's misdeeds.

In a circumstance where you spend $500,000 on a house that could not legally be sold to you, you would have to take the seller to court to recover that money so that you could pay back the loan. Or, more commonly, you'd contact your title insurance company for recovery, because your bank likely required that you bought title insurance for this exact reason.

There is no level of inconvenience that makes a bank legally liable for something that someone else did wrong.

Ok - maybe it's more clear if I phrase it this way:

You paid 2022 dollars for a mattress priced in 2021 dollars. Because of inflation, 2022 dollars are worth less than 2021 dollars (each 2022 dollar is worth ~93% of a 2021 dollar, if we have ~7% inflation)

The mattress would have cost you $2000 2021 dollars if you paid for it immediately. But because you paid the 2021 price tag with 2022 dollars, you are receiving a discount: 2000 * .93 = $1860. You are only paying $1860 2021 dollars, vs the 2000 you would have paid.

Now - and this is very important - none of this matters if you're just shoving those dollars under your mattress for a year. You have to be taking advantage of the inflation by buying an asset that holds its real value over time, and then exchanging it back for the nominal value in 2022.

As an example - assume that we have ~7% inflation, and the total stock market is exactly flat: it neither gains nor loses value compared to inflation (its real value stays the same). You have exactly $2000, and the mattress costs exactly $2000.

Option 1: you pay right now. End result: you have 0 dollars.

Option 2: you pay one year from now, and invest the 2000 in the market until then. End result: after 1 year, when you sell you investments, you have 2140 dollars. you pay 2000 for the mattress. End result: you have 140 dollars.

That's the discount.

Now - the Corollary to this is that you have taken on risk. It's possible that the asset you buy won't hold real value compared to inflation. So while you stand to potentially make 140 bucks in a neutral situation, you also might end up losing money on the assets you buy, and not being able to pay the 2000 dollars.

Such is life.

I almost used Affirm the other day because deferring payments at 0% is attractive, but then I realized it would result in a hard credit inquiry, equivalent to opening a new line of credit. (Which it sort of is, but why defer $200 when you could open a real credit card and get introductory 0% for 18 months on potentially $10k or more instead? Even if you only spend $200 on your new credit card, presumably this is better for your credit score as you would be using a tiny fraction of the available credit on that account.)

It’s unfortunate for society that pretty damn evil people would be fine in most other life scenarios.