freeskibum8210-30% APR depending on your credit.
jskis isnt making money on it.. the credit card company is and they are preying on poor high school students and college kids who will forget about the payment every month and end up at 29.95% interest and bad credit when they get out of school.. all for what? a pair of $400 at $700 + interest and late payments that we all know will happen.
my advice, save your money and look to ski shops for end of season deals until you can afford brand new skis in the fall.
There is no late fees or increase in APR if you miss a payment (I bought a mattress through affirm the summer and forgot my payment for a whole cycle - had no issues or no fees).
The total you see when you buy is the total you will pay.
The interest in fixed and not compounding either, so not like missing a credit card payment.
Is financing ideal? No. But for some people, it is easier to afford smaller payments.
You are right that Affirm acts as a payment processor. The amount of money going to Jskis (or Moment, or ON3P, or any of the other brands using this) is actually less than the rates most of us use for our standard payment process - but it gives people who don't have a credit card or are not able to buy skis all at once the chance to buy a pair they want.
It is their personal responsibility to manage their finances. I know that, personally, I would rather have my (hypothetical) kid use affirm that open a credit card to buy skis. Less of a slippery slope, no late fees on late payments, no interest increase on late payments, it is just one purchase with a set budget to worry about, vs having to manager a credit card, which while it shouldn't be, is often very hard to manage for young people (as my credit card bills can attest).
So yeah, I don't think affirm is quite the bogeyman in the situation. It is a tool. Use it right and it makes a lot of sense. When we discussed bringing it in, I asked everyone at ON3P if they would use it would not, and to a person everyone said they would. The policies are simple and the payments are fixed, so you know exactly what you are going to pay, how much the additional interest will be, and when those payments are due.
30% is pretty high, so I personally wouldn't agree to that, but from the customers we've seen using it, and my experience personally using it, most of the rates have been around 10%-15%.
If you truly can't afford it or can't manage money, both Affirm and a credit card are terrible things in your hands, but the people who are going to get taken advantage by Affirm as the same that would get taken advantage of by a credit card companies.
Hope that helps shed some light on the way it works.
**This post was edited on Dec 9th 2015 at 2:10:00pm
