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My home PC has bitten the dust. It is kaput. Stuffed. Broken. The LCD is done and dusted. The screen is black and pixelated. If I move the cursor up and down, the screen becomes normal…for a while, then it goes black again. Time for a new one.
However, finances are a bit tight at the moment. A couple of green slips, comprehensive car insurances, car registrations, school fees, soccer fees, council rates, plus Christmas just around the corner – it never ends. I need a practical resolution that won’t cost the Earth. What are my options?
- Get the screen fixed. Not an unreasonable solution and one that can cost between $110 and $300 depending on the make and model. However, my HP has hit the five-year mark in terms of age, so it’s time for a trade-in anyway.
- Buy a device outright. Looking at the features I need – decent RAM and storage, above average graphics card and processor, a reasonable-sized screen – I wouldn’t get much change out of $1500-$2000. But, as mentioned, things are a bit tight at the moment so plonking down the whole RRP is not going to happen.
- Buy one on tick. The most practical solution considering my current financial situation. Not something I am apt to do as I resent having to pay exorbitant interest rates and fees.
There is a fourth solution. Buying it interest free; similar to buying it on hire purchase, but without the interest rates. Not that long ago I was surfing the net on my dying laptop when I was bombarded by ads from Harvey Norman. “50 months’ interest free” they said. There must be a catch I thought. There was, but nothing insurmountable – the purchase had to be over $1490. Not a problem. My price point was just over that amount, so I thought this was a great solution. Even with my mentally challenged ability to do maths I figure out that $1500 divided 50 equals $30 a month. $7.50 a week. Easy. Happy days. Fantastic. Sure, it’ll obsolete by the time I pay it off but who cares. I get a new laptop.
So off I trot to the Harvey Norman website and start looking at new laptops with their whiz bang features. I’m set. There is a plethora of lovely, sleek machines that more than meet my needs. Until I look at the fine print. Ah, yes, the fine print. That dry piece of written sludge that can cure a sloth of insomnia. But there it is. In the ominously titled “terms and conditions for all payment options“. A $25 establishment fee. Hhmm, I can live with that. A tad annoying, but nonetheless still nothing too bad. Then I scroll down a bit and I go from slightly annoyed to fairly angry – “An account service fee of $4.95 per month applies.” Huh? I do the maths quickly $4.95 over 50 months equals $272.50 (including the $25 establishment fee). That’s almost one sixth of the cost of the laptop – an ‘interest’ rate of almost 16.5 per cent.
Am I being pedantic. Maybe, but so are they. Why hide this over-the-top fee as a fee instead of interest? Be up front. Call it interest. Because at the end of the day, the user is left with a sour taste in their mouth. Because at the end of the day, like any online scam it’s not really ‘interest’ free at all. Most consumers want to know the bottom line – whether you call it a fee, interest or a poll tax – money is money. Any reasonable person who reads an advertisement from a reputable retailer like Harvey Norman and sees the option of buying a laptop interest-free for $1500 expects to pay that – $1500. That is how much they are going to be out of pocket in 50 months’ time. Not $1772.50.
While it’s not Harvey Norman’s gig (you have to obtain a GO MasterCard from an outfit called Latitude Financial, who used to be GE Finance, to qualify) it is their name on the product. And before you think “go to the Good Guys’, well they have a similar deal with the same company.
Harvey Norman would be best served to do their own deals without the add-on fees. The consumer electronics market is a cut-throat business. Wouldn’t it be better to sell a lot of products with genuinely no interest or fees attached? Isn’t it all about turnover? You get 10,000 or 50,000 people paying you $30 a month, that’s a nice little earner, right? I assume that Latitude Finance gets the bulk of the monthly fee and they wear none of the consumer backlash. Why give them anything?
I now have to start looking at a Plan D.