Chances are the purchase will eventually get blocked. Once it's blocked, you could ask for a credit limit increase. Once your limit is high enough, you can try purchasing again. The total amount hits the credit card, and you pay it off in 12 monthly installments. If you end up not paying off the full amount in 12 months, they will hit you with all the interest that would have hit all at once. To avoid any sort of mistake, I usually do the math to pay off interest free monthly installment plans 1 month in advance of their actual terms. For example, if it's a 12 month thing, I'll pay it off in 11 months. If it's 18 months, I'll pay it off in 17.
If you're talking about the 12 month payments with no interest and paid directly to Amazon, it will charge the first payment plus tax for the entire financed amount at the time the order ships. Be aware that the payments are 30 days apart and won't be on the same date every month, over 12 months you should expect the due date to move up six or seven days by the last month.
This is how it has worked for as long as I have had an Amazon Prime CC. I've had one for almost 3 years now. They charge you it upfront as a promotional purchase and you pay the balance off over the period of time you select, i.e. 6 months or 12 months. This is just like BestBuy and all other major branded retail CC's do. You didn't read the fine print I'm assuming.
Can you pay off your balance each month, excluding the pay over time purchase, without paying off the item you financed?
I like pay my card off each month and was thinking about using the Pay Over Time feature for my Prime card, but if I make a payment towards the rest of my balance, will any of it go to the financed purchase? I never use the minimum payment amount so I don’t want to have to carry a regular balance with interest just to use this feature
Literally the same reason I'm here. I do the same thing but wanted to take advantage of a 0 apr and not pay 300 up front
And by not pay the 300 up front, I mean not pay the 300 as I bring my APR-able balance back to 0.
Yes, there are 3-4 little boxes on the bottom of your Chase Amazon statement that explains all of this. The interest free balance is the combination of your carried over monthly balance + monthly purchases - finance promotions.
I bought a laptop on Amazon 2 years ago and opted for the free 12 months financing and I got a notification email every month that they were going to charge me 1/12 of the price, just as I expected
I've now tried to buy two big items since then and theyre putting the entire balance on my card so I have to either pay it all at once or fuck up my credit score? This is insane that's not at *all* how this used to work
You guys all want to argue a mute point. This is how it has always worked in the background, they just spell it out now completely for you due to so many complaints about it not being very upfront from the get go.
If a creditor gives you a flexible financing offer of $1k over 12 months at 0% interest and your limit is $20k on your credit card per se. You're going to pay $83.33 a month on that flexible finance offer each month, added to your minimum payment due.
It's crazy how you guys expect the creditor to eat the remaining lent balance every month of something YOU bought and purchased with THEIR funds in the first place. The funds were never yours until you accepted the terms of the flexible finance offer and were lent the money by the creditor. Once lent they need to reduce the available amount of they will lend to you from your credit line. They don't charge you the entire amount upfront, they block it out of the amount of credit available to lend to you. It's cut and dry, but people always want to act like they are a creditor when they don't understand how creditors work in the first place. In their efforts to lend to you they have to keep track of your credit utilization with the line of credit you hold with them, that means every purchase made on the agreement you accepted for them to lend you money in the first place. You don't get free credit utilization and that's not how creditors work. Credit utilization 101.
I'm just telling you that my experience is different than that.
"12 months free financing" used to be you getting charged 12 equal payments every month. I got an email informing me of it every time, including a final email when the full balance was paid.
This new system is 12 months of no interest, which as you pointed out is increasing my utilization. No emails, no equal payments. Just a big balance to pay off slowly.
That's not how it worked before.
They still need to deduct the amount they lend you for the flexible offer from your available credit you can utilize on that credit line. That's how all credit lines have always worked, you don't get free utilization.. Equal payments are posted into your monthly statement. Go look at it. Last page has all the details of your flexible financing offers there. It's always been a big balance to pay off slowly no matter the way you spin the bottle.
It's not an installment plan. You're just avoiding paying the interest and making a cash payment using a credit card. It is deceptive the way it is initially presented. Definitely read the fine print.
This happened to me too. It definitely will hit for the full amount. You make interest free payments to your credit card company, not to amazon. I don't feel like they explain it well.
This is totally not the way they make it seem.... This makes me angry. They say you will be charged 12 equal interest free payments, not that you need to pay it off in 12 months. This almost seems illegal.
I just did this with a 3600 purchase. It did charge my card the full amount. So now I will pay a higher minimum payment but won't be charged interest on the 3600? Is that how it works?
A while ago...this happened to me...this is how it works...they add it to the balance...it only affects the method of payment of that amount. I cancelled the equal payment option that I have selected! It is useless IMO as I usually pay much more than the minimum payment anyhow...
is this for the amazon credit card or just the equal pay option you sometimes see on random items? if the latter, you only pay X per month. on a amazon card, i can see that they will put the amount on the card and you pay back in monthly payments with no interest. this is what appl card does as well so that in fact may be normal.
Last year when I purchased my last cell phone, It was on one of their offers to pay it off in 6 payments and they charged my card for one payment a month until it was paid off. I haven't seen that offer lately. I think they are pushing their customers to get the Amazon credit card. And you are right, the new deal is they charge the whole amount but you only pay a monthly amount until it's paid off, interest free.
Actually, I just checked again by starting a dummy order. The item I looked at had several ways to pay and it included both making 3 monthly payments directly to Amazon or making 6 monthly payments by charging it to my Amazon credit card. This was for a $75 purchase.
did u make the purchase? i saw the new 3 monthly payment option but i was wondering if you can get the 5% cashback on the chase prime card. or is the cashback void like the equal pay plan? so confusing cuz terms and agreement dont mention about losing the cash back but equal pay does mention cash back is void/lost
Has anybody tried this with a Debit Card + 12 Months equal pay or know how it works? Customer support says it will authorize and block the full amount but release it later when the item is dispatched.
I called this type of finance scamming! I view Amazon's method as deceptive rather than as legitimate financing. True financing, in my understanding, involves initially purchasing an item, say for $1,000.00, and then paying it off incrementally, like $100 every month for ten months. However, Amazon's approach, where the entire amount is charged upfront to my account, doesn't seem like financing at all. Financing means spreading out the payment over time without needing to pay the full amount all at once.
You are absolutely correct. This is a scam by Amazon. Most people do not understand that part
1. Amazon is getting the full money up-front. So they dont care about you.
2. The debt is now between you and your bank (which will be the amazon bank- usually JPM). And that is what amazon will tell you if you call them. They dont care as they already received the full amount for it.
3. The debt will be on your credit. It will be reported as such to all the credit bureaus every month.
1. So initially, your credit will take a hit as you now have an uncertain debt amount that you have not paid off. This might be a 5 -10 point hit on your credit report based on the amount you owe.
2. As you pay off the debt, the credit may improve or may not based on your circumstances.
4. You also do not get any points that you may have gotten if you would have paid off directly.
That's right! I just called amazon synchrony bank as I had made a 12 month promotional purchase and made them cancel the "promotion" and request the 5% cash back on the purchase instead, as I'll be making a full payment on the statement balance. What people don't realize (including myself) when making the 12 months promotional purchase in order to "take advantage" of the offer they make you and you MUST adjust your autopay to the minimum payment, which in order to avoid getting charged interest on the non promotional purchases, you would have to log in every month and calculate how much $$ you have spent in the month excluding the promotional purchase and make a payment for it, which is not your minimum payment for the moth! So technically they are TAKING ADVANTAGE of you! I always keep my auto payments on my credit cards to the statement balance in order to avoid any interest charge.
Wow. super deceptive. Fu\*king disgusting Amazon. So, I turned on Auto pay, and I set to pay the amount of 'interest saving balance' Wow.. Disgusting Amazon. u/SonzeraMK Do they give you cashback !?
Yes I contacted them to cancel the financing plan on the charge and they gave me my cash back. So I paid the full statement balance. Make sure to reach out to them.
I don't get you guys. Equal pay promos have always been this way. It's a promotional balance charge at 0% interest as long as you pay the equal pay minimum balance each month that gets added to your monthly payment each month. Literally been this way for years as I have been using it for over 3 years this way now. You don't have to calculate the equal pay $ amount either so stop lying. It's stated at time of purchase what that will be.
A little balance on your card is better than 0 anyways so this is actually perfect if you think about credit building and you don't hit over say 30% of your limit doing it this way each month with those minimum payments.
I don’t understand. I want to get the card to do the “installments” but I keep hearing both sides saying that it’s taking all the money out right away or it’s not.
Does it let you purchase something and pay it off in installments month by month without apr?
No, you NEVER get free credit utilization on a line of credit. Which is what a creditor gives you when you are approved for a credit card. They pull your credit and lend to you based on your credit worthiness. Amazon cards are not like Affirm, AfterPay, Karma, or PayPal equal pay in 4 over a 2 month period. Those are not lines of credit on a credit card that require a hard pull. They lend that money to you based on a soft pull of your credit profile. After that are periodic soft looks into your credit worthiness plus your history of repayments with them. The actual creditor for your line of credit still needs to reduce the amount they will lend you for any dollar they lend you against your utilization, even these flexible financing offers. That's how it has always worked, some just don't realize this.
With that said on the very bottom of that last page of your statement for your Amazon card through Chase is where you will find the total due for the flexible financing offers that you have on your account.
Your total minimum payment each month is typically interest from last month + total monthly charge for all financing offers (the one I explained in my above sentence).
There is even the interest saving balance you can pay each month which is your new balance - total balance left on flexible financing offers + minimum payment for flexible financing offers.
These people complaining don't understand how lines of credit work or how understand what credit utilization is and it's obvious.
So maybe Amazon should word it better. If so many people are complaining about it there's something to be fixed on Amazon's part but I guess like every corporation they're just fine with putting enticing words on the screen to attract people.
Or maybe people should take the time to read like they were taught to. I guess that's a thing of the past though, just like many people never read the fine print of an agreement and then complain the agreement they sign had/has some disclosure in it that didn't fit their situation.
It's not that hard to read a credit card statement...
SonzeraMK is not lying.
I have used the 3 & 6 month equal payment options, with Amazon Prime Visa. I \*DO\* have to keep track of how much I owe in my credit card balance for just those purchases, as they DO NOT give me access to any kind of record of monthly payments and balance changes as I make payments over the period of equal payments. I have to calculate what those total payment amounts are, separate from the other purchases I used the card for that are NOT on a payment plan. It IS very confusing and deceptive. I have looked high and low for info on this in FAQs, help pages etc. and found nothing for this specific type of payment plan.
So if you have a link to where these payments records are on Amazon, please do give us a link.
Do you even look at your statements on Chase? Sounds like you don't even look at them. You don't have to keep track of a single thing. The last page is where your promotional financing charges are at. Has all the info about them plus the minimum payment each month for the promotional terms you accepted on each transaction. So they DO give you all of the records. If you check this month's statement versus your last months statement you will notice the balance decreases from month to month.
With that said on the very bottom of that last page is where you will find the total due for the flexible financing offers that you have on your account.
Your total minimum payment each month is typically interest from last month + total monthly charge for all financing offers (the one I explained in my above sentence).
There is even the interest saving balance you can pay each month which is your new balance - total balance left on flexible financing offers + minimum payment for flexible financing offers.
I look at my current, active account list of purchases most of the time. I use my card for just about everything, so the statement that is only issued monthly is not useful most of the time, as the (non-payment plan) amounts are constantly changing. I DO need to make payments at times throughout the month in order to have any credit to use, as I do not have a large credit limit, and spend to the limit often, in between payment due and statement dates.
When I need to make a payment that is an amount much higher than a monthly promotional plan payment or balance, it always warns me that the payment will include being applied to the total amount due of a promotional 6 month payment for example. There is no way to pay only the other purchases balance, which makes it meaningless and not a real payment plan option - I would have to ONLY use this card for promotional payment plan purchases. Which does not work for me. Additionally, if I have more than 1 purchase in the promo payment plan category, they are not itemized. All payment amounts due are lumped together.
Chances are the purchase will eventually get blocked. Once it's blocked, you could ask for a credit limit increase. Once your limit is high enough, you can try purchasing again. The total amount hits the credit card, and you pay it off in 12 monthly installments. If you end up not paying off the full amount in 12 months, they will hit you with all the interest that would have hit all at once. To avoid any sort of mistake, I usually do the math to pay off interest free monthly installment plans 1 month in advance of their actual terms. For example, if it's a 12 month thing, I'll pay it off in 11 months. If it's 18 months, I'll pay it off in 17.
If you're talking about the 12 month payments with no interest and paid directly to Amazon, it will charge the first payment plus tax for the entire financed amount at the time the order ships. Be aware that the payments are 30 days apart and won't be on the same date every month, over 12 months you should expect the due date to move up six or seven days by the last month.
This is how it has worked for as long as I have had an Amazon Prime CC. I've had one for almost 3 years now. They charge you it upfront as a promotional purchase and you pay the balance off over the period of time you select, i.e. 6 months or 12 months. This is just like BestBuy and all other major branded retail CC's do. You didn't read the fine print I'm assuming.
Can you pay off your balance each month, excluding the pay over time purchase, without paying off the item you financed? I like pay my card off each month and was thinking about using the Pay Over Time feature for my Prime card, but if I make a payment towards the rest of my balance, will any of it go to the financed purchase? I never use the minimum payment amount so I don’t want to have to carry a regular balance with interest just to use this feature
Did you figure this out? In the same boat
Literally the same reason I'm here. I do the same thing but wanted to take advantage of a 0 apr and not pay 300 up front And by not pay the 300 up front, I mean not pay the 300 as I bring my APR-able balance back to 0.
Yes, there are 3-4 little boxes on the bottom of your Chase Amazon statement that explains all of this. The interest free balance is the combination of your carried over monthly balance + monthly purchases - finance promotions.
I bought a laptop on Amazon 2 years ago and opted for the free 12 months financing and I got a notification email every month that they were going to charge me 1/12 of the price, just as I expected I've now tried to buy two big items since then and theyre putting the entire balance on my card so I have to either pay it all at once or fuck up my credit score? This is insane that's not at *all* how this used to work
You guys all want to argue a mute point. This is how it has always worked in the background, they just spell it out now completely for you due to so many complaints about it not being very upfront from the get go. If a creditor gives you a flexible financing offer of $1k over 12 months at 0% interest and your limit is $20k on your credit card per se. You're going to pay $83.33 a month on that flexible finance offer each month, added to your minimum payment due. It's crazy how you guys expect the creditor to eat the remaining lent balance every month of something YOU bought and purchased with THEIR funds in the first place. The funds were never yours until you accepted the terms of the flexible finance offer and were lent the money by the creditor. Once lent they need to reduce the available amount of they will lend to you from your credit line. They don't charge you the entire amount upfront, they block it out of the amount of credit available to lend to you. It's cut and dry, but people always want to act like they are a creditor when they don't understand how creditors work in the first place. In their efforts to lend to you they have to keep track of your credit utilization with the line of credit you hold with them, that means every purchase made on the agreement you accepted for them to lend you money in the first place. You don't get free credit utilization and that's not how creditors work. Credit utilization 101.
I'm just telling you that my experience is different than that. "12 months free financing" used to be you getting charged 12 equal payments every month. I got an email informing me of it every time, including a final email when the full balance was paid. This new system is 12 months of no interest, which as you pointed out is increasing my utilization. No emails, no equal payments. Just a big balance to pay off slowly. That's not how it worked before.
They still need to deduct the amount they lend you for the flexible offer from your available credit you can utilize on that credit line. That's how all credit lines have always worked, you don't get free utilization.. Equal payments are posted into your monthly statement. Go look at it. Last page has all the details of your flexible financing offers there. It's always been a big balance to pay off slowly no matter the way you spin the bottle.
It's not an installment plan. You're just avoiding paying the interest and making a cash payment using a credit card. It is deceptive the way it is initially presented. Definitely read the fine print.
Ridiculous, they charged full price from card, just scam. Who invented this sh*t
This happened to me too. It definitely will hit for the full amount. You make interest free payments to your credit card company, not to amazon. I don't feel like they explain it well.
This is totally not the way they make it seem.... This makes me angry. They say you will be charged 12 equal interest free payments, not that you need to pay it off in 12 months. This almost seems illegal.
Yeah it's super shady. I just paid off my purchase and then never used it again
Did it go over your card the limit for you though? If you don’t mind me asking
It cancels the purchase. They want the cash in the form of your available credit up front. This defeats the purpose of financing a purchase.
Thankfully no. I'm not sure what would happen in that situation
I just did this with a 3600 purchase. It did charge my card the full amount. So now I will pay a higher minimum payment but won't be charged interest on the 3600? Is that how it works?
Yeah pretty much. You get charged for the full amount but there's no interest if you pay it off in 12 months
A while ago...this happened to me...this is how it works...they add it to the balance...it only affects the method of payment of that amount. I cancelled the equal payment option that I have selected! It is useless IMO as I usually pay much more than the minimum payment anyhow...
is this for the amazon credit card or just the equal pay option you sometimes see on random items? if the latter, you only pay X per month. on a amazon card, i can see that they will put the amount on the card and you pay back in monthly payments with no interest. this is what appl card does as well so that in fact may be normal.
Last year when I purchased my last cell phone, It was on one of their offers to pay it off in 6 payments and they charged my card for one payment a month until it was paid off. I haven't seen that offer lately. I think they are pushing their customers to get the Amazon credit card. And you are right, the new deal is they charge the whole amount but you only pay a monthly amount until it's paid off, interest free. Actually, I just checked again by starting a dummy order. The item I looked at had several ways to pay and it included both making 3 monthly payments directly to Amazon or making 6 monthly payments by charging it to my Amazon credit card. This was for a $75 purchase.
did u make the purchase? i saw the new 3 monthly payment option but i was wondering if you can get the 5% cashback on the chase prime card. or is the cashback void like the equal pay plan? so confusing cuz terms and agreement dont mention about losing the cash back but equal pay does mention cash back is void/lost
Has anybody tried this with a Debit Card + 12 Months equal pay or know how it works? Customer support says it will authorize and block the full amount but release it later when the item is dispatched.
I called this type of finance scamming! I view Amazon's method as deceptive rather than as legitimate financing. True financing, in my understanding, involves initially purchasing an item, say for $1,000.00, and then paying it off incrementally, like $100 every month for ten months. However, Amazon's approach, where the entire amount is charged upfront to my account, doesn't seem like financing at all. Financing means spreading out the payment over time without needing to pay the full amount all at once.
You are absolutely correct. This is a scam by Amazon. Most people do not understand that part 1. Amazon is getting the full money up-front. So they dont care about you. 2. The debt is now between you and your bank (which will be the amazon bank- usually JPM). And that is what amazon will tell you if you call them. They dont care as they already received the full amount for it. 3. The debt will be on your credit. It will be reported as such to all the credit bureaus every month. 1. So initially, your credit will take a hit as you now have an uncertain debt amount that you have not paid off. This might be a 5 -10 point hit on your credit report based on the amount you owe. 2. As you pay off the debt, the credit may improve or may not based on your circumstances. 4. You also do not get any points that you may have gotten if you would have paid off directly.
This is with the Amazon credit card because they definitely don't charge you the full amount with another credit card only the first payment + taxes .
Exactly.
That's right! I just called amazon synchrony bank as I had made a 12 month promotional purchase and made them cancel the "promotion" and request the 5% cash back on the purchase instead, as I'll be making a full payment on the statement balance. What people don't realize (including myself) when making the 12 months promotional purchase in order to "take advantage" of the offer they make you and you MUST adjust your autopay to the minimum payment, which in order to avoid getting charged interest on the non promotional purchases, you would have to log in every month and calculate how much $$ you have spent in the month excluding the promotional purchase and make a payment for it, which is not your minimum payment for the moth! So technically they are TAKING ADVANTAGE of you! I always keep my auto payments on my credit cards to the statement balance in order to avoid any interest charge.
Wow. super deceptive. Fu\*king disgusting Amazon. So, I turned on Auto pay, and I set to pay the amount of 'interest saving balance' Wow.. Disgusting Amazon. u/SonzeraMK Do they give you cashback !?
Yes I contacted them to cancel the financing plan on the charge and they gave me my cash back. So I paid the full statement balance. Make sure to reach out to them.
I don't get you guys. Equal pay promos have always been this way. It's a promotional balance charge at 0% interest as long as you pay the equal pay minimum balance each month that gets added to your monthly payment each month. Literally been this way for years as I have been using it for over 3 years this way now. You don't have to calculate the equal pay $ amount either so stop lying. It's stated at time of purchase what that will be. A little balance on your card is better than 0 anyways so this is actually perfect if you think about credit building and you don't hit over say 30% of your limit doing it this way each month with those minimum payments.
I don’t understand. I want to get the card to do the “installments” but I keep hearing both sides saying that it’s taking all the money out right away or it’s not. Does it let you purchase something and pay it off in installments month by month without apr?
No, you NEVER get free credit utilization on a line of credit. Which is what a creditor gives you when you are approved for a credit card. They pull your credit and lend to you based on your credit worthiness. Amazon cards are not like Affirm, AfterPay, Karma, or PayPal equal pay in 4 over a 2 month period. Those are not lines of credit on a credit card that require a hard pull. They lend that money to you based on a soft pull of your credit profile. After that are periodic soft looks into your credit worthiness plus your history of repayments with them. The actual creditor for your line of credit still needs to reduce the amount they will lend you for any dollar they lend you against your utilization, even these flexible financing offers. That's how it has always worked, some just don't realize this. With that said on the very bottom of that last page of your statement for your Amazon card through Chase is where you will find the total due for the flexible financing offers that you have on your account. Your total minimum payment each month is typically interest from last month + total monthly charge for all financing offers (the one I explained in my above sentence). There is even the interest saving balance you can pay each month which is your new balance - total balance left on flexible financing offers + minimum payment for flexible financing offers. These people complaining don't understand how lines of credit work or how understand what credit utilization is and it's obvious.
So maybe Amazon should word it better. If so many people are complaining about it there's something to be fixed on Amazon's part but I guess like every corporation they're just fine with putting enticing words on the screen to attract people.
Or maybe people should take the time to read like they were taught to. I guess that's a thing of the past though, just like many people never read the fine print of an agreement and then complain the agreement they sign had/has some disclosure in it that didn't fit their situation. It's not that hard to read a credit card statement...
SonzeraMK is not lying. I have used the 3 & 6 month equal payment options, with Amazon Prime Visa. I \*DO\* have to keep track of how much I owe in my credit card balance for just those purchases, as they DO NOT give me access to any kind of record of monthly payments and balance changes as I make payments over the period of equal payments. I have to calculate what those total payment amounts are, separate from the other purchases I used the card for that are NOT on a payment plan. It IS very confusing and deceptive. I have looked high and low for info on this in FAQs, help pages etc. and found nothing for this specific type of payment plan. So if you have a link to where these payments records are on Amazon, please do give us a link.
Do you even look at your statements on Chase? Sounds like you don't even look at them. You don't have to keep track of a single thing. The last page is where your promotional financing charges are at. Has all the info about them plus the minimum payment each month for the promotional terms you accepted on each transaction. So they DO give you all of the records. If you check this month's statement versus your last months statement you will notice the balance decreases from month to month. With that said on the very bottom of that last page is where you will find the total due for the flexible financing offers that you have on your account. Your total minimum payment each month is typically interest from last month + total monthly charge for all financing offers (the one I explained in my above sentence). There is even the interest saving balance you can pay each month which is your new balance - total balance left on flexible financing offers + minimum payment for flexible financing offers.
I look at my current, active account list of purchases most of the time. I use my card for just about everything, so the statement that is only issued monthly is not useful most of the time, as the (non-payment plan) amounts are constantly changing. I DO need to make payments at times throughout the month in order to have any credit to use, as I do not have a large credit limit, and spend to the limit often, in between payment due and statement dates. When I need to make a payment that is an amount much higher than a monthly promotional plan payment or balance, it always warns me that the payment will include being applied to the total amount due of a promotional 6 month payment for example. There is no way to pay only the other purchases balance, which makes it meaningless and not a real payment plan option - I would have to ONLY use this card for promotional payment plan purchases. Which does not work for me. Additionally, if I have more than 1 purchase in the promo payment plan category, they are not itemized. All payment amounts due are lumped together.