81–90 of 298 posts
I feel like all these online "buy now pay later" services are just there to prey on poor people
> tldr: I'll never use Affirm again because when there are issues with their payment system that could severely impact your credit score for years, their customer support is unequipped to help and their underlying support infrastructure is poorly designed. The story of pretty much EVERY startup. What will it take to get these clowns to focus on customer service and properly build out infrastructure? How much is enoug…
Simple: Regulations with teeth.
There's a reason why this kind of service isn't popular in Europe - not just are us Europeans more averse to debt in general and our banking doesn't rely on paper checks (which eliminates payday loan services and other check-associated bullshit), but one of the core benefits that the EU provides to its citizens is consumer protection. The EU parliament doesn't have much else under its authority which is immediately visible to every consumer, so they put in an extra effort to make life in the EU easier.
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> Everything else is based on some imagined harm that might or might not come to you or some other imaginary person at some point in the future. They threatened to report this to a credit rating agency. At any given time it's probably not a big deal assuming 1) you don't need to replace your car or sign a lease or get a personal loan around that time and 2) you know that you can dispute negative marks on your credit…
Disputing a negative hit to your credit score does not mean it gets removed. You need to have excellent documentation, which the author does but not everyone is so meticulous throughout a months-long dispute. Also, credit scores are used now for some job applications. You can’t get some jobs without a good credit score. If you refuse to sign a waiver allowing the potential employer access to your credit score, you fo…
I believe it usually does get removed immediately, but temporarily, until the credit reporting agency (CRA) has come to a decision on the case.
I've heard of folks closing on mortgages soon and out of nowhere, a past dispute winds up on their credit report as a negative item, putting the mortgage closing at risk. So they immediately dispute it to resolve the issue in the short-term.
I've never understood the appeal of using a product like Affirm, especially if you already have a credit card. Credit cards already give you a 30-day grace period before purchases start accruing interest. Using Affirm to extend that to 42 days seems inconsequential. It seems like their target customer are people bad with credit, which would make them predatory.
I can understand the value prop to the consumer - but I have a harder time understanding why it's an actual business, and why existing credit card companies or other lenders can't eat their lunch with the flip of a switch.
You've also seen credit card companies change their offerings to compete with the BNPL model. One of my credit cards has a "plan it" feature for large purchases, which allows you pay it of in a shorter period of time for a lower interest rate and without incurring interest charges on your month-to-month purchases.
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Spread out 0% Apr over 5 months instead of 2? Agreed about them being predatory. They literally lose money for every person that uses their service in the recommended/correct way, and only make money when someone flubs a payment.
That’s not how the business model works (or how they’d want it to work anyway). Affirm makes money on transactions in the “correct” way via very high merchant fees. Merchants will pay affirm a large fee for conversion benefits (e.g better a customer pay $700 even if I lose $50 to affirm fees than for them to pay $0 because they got spooked by the price). Affirm gets the fee. They suffer risks from inflation and nonpa…
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I can understand the value prop to the consumer - but I have a harder time understanding why it's an actual business, and why existing credit card companies or other lenders can't eat their lunch with the flip of a switch.
Affirm doesn't list their B2B pricing on their website, but credit cards typically charge up to 5% of the total purchase price in processing fees. It wouldn't be hard for a challenging upstart to make a solid business that just charges less. That's probably not the primary revenue driver for most BNPL companies though. You've also seen credit card companies change their offerings to compete with the BNPL model. One o…
Source? I thought it’s 2 to 3%.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can understand the value prop to the consumer - but I have a harder time understanding why it's an actual business, and why existing credit card companies or other lenders can't eat their lunch with the flip of a switch.
Hi! Affirms scores (evaluates the risk) of each transaction in real time, which allows then to have reasonably low bad rates. Very few lenders can do it.
I've never understood the appeal of using a product like Affirm, especially if you already have a credit card. Credit cards already give you a 30-day grace period before purchases start accruing interest. Using Affirm to extend that to 42 days seems inconsequential. It seems like their target customer are people bad with credit, which would make them predatory.
I believe affirm provides 0% APR for a year sometimes?
Does Affirm actually report to the credit bureaus? It's my understanding that they do not, but perhaps I am misinformed.
Can someone explain to me, i live in a country that doesn't have credit scores, limits loans rates to something sane, why you would use a predatory payment lender that will balloon? Seems like a very high risk gamble especially if you have the money and even higher gamble if you do not have the ability to pay a loan.