New Media Development

I know I am recently of the reconverted Mac people but one thing really bothered me in the whole purchasing process. Understand that my first Mac was purchased under the old Apple Loan program while I was in college. It’s basically a school loan, used specifically for computer components, and paid off after 5 years with a low interest rate. Simple and straight forward.

I finally get over the hump of buying a Mac and go into the online refurbish store to get a deal. I find my computer, throw it in the cart, add software I need for the cross OS issues, and proceeded to the checkout. I get to my choices and they seem straight forward. Lease through School (Nope), Lease through Company (considered but said no), Buy outright (Nope), Bill Me Later (Nice thought but no), Juniper Credit (Yes?).

I get to the Juniper page which starts to explain the terms and issues but doesn’t lock me down to any specifics. Rate could be between 13-23% and it looks more like a credit card than a 5 year loan which is what I wanted. Then I get to the page where they lock in the terms, tells me about the 90-days same-as-cash deal, and then tells me I have 15 minutes to complete my transaction or forfeit my 90-days same-as-cash until I physically receive my card in 2-3 weeks. At this point I was totally frustrated, confused and feel like I have to make an uniformed decision now!

I almost abandoned the transaction but was reassured this will function like a loan if I pay off on time and withing the 90 days which was my intent anyways. It may have been a mistake but I pulled the trigger and bought what I needed. Ideally, I would have liked more time to read the terms that were specific to me. Or I would have liked to have gone back to the old Apple Loan program that made more sense.

It was just confusing to me if I was getting a loan or a credit card. My thought is it is a credit card with fees and APR waved for the first purchase making it act like a loan. Then if you use it like a credit card you get hit with the other stuff. I guess I will find out soon enough unless someone can shed some light on this?

Follow-up: I have now received by first bill to find out what the actual deal is. It is a credit card with a crazy APR but any Apple purchases are 90 Days-as-cash. i.e. They do not charge the interest on these purchases for the first 90 days. If you pay those purchases off before the 90 days are up then it is like paying cash. If you keep them on the card after 90 days, they start charging the crazy APR.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 8:27 am and is filed under Observations on Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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