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Goldman and Apple 'illegally sidestepped' obligations to credit-card customers
- mensetmanusman 2y ago“ The regulator also said Apple and Goldman misled many consumers into believing they would automatically get interest-free monthly payments when buying Apple devices. Instead, those same customers were charged interest.” Interesting! Will they notify those charged interest?
- warkdarrior 2y agoThey'll probably get 3 months of Apple Arcade free.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoOr a $100 off coupon for spending over $500?
- dylan604 2y agoThat's quite generous. I'd assume that of the $19.8 million going back to customers would see at least 60% used as legal fees before seeing distribution resulting in a similar payout to most class action suits
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y agoOn a select items that they mark up 20%.
- loeg 2y ago> Will they notify those charged interest? Yes? Where do you think this money is going? > Goldman will pay $64.8 million. Of that total, $19.8 million will go back to consumers.
- ezfe 2y agoI'm curious what the issue is, since most Apple Devices DO have interest free payments for 12 months
- tedunangst 2y agoBut you have to click the payments option (and pay the billed amounts). If you put the full balance on your card, you can't ignore it for 12 months and then pay.
- dmonitor 2y agoSo it's only no interest as long as you make payments on time. I guess this is technically misleading advertising? It might also be that it only applied during specific circumstances (buying directly from Apple) instead of as a blanket offer. I've bought a few devices through this deal and personally am a happy customer, so I hope this doesn't kill it.
- mrastro 2y agoIsn't that every credit card? You pay your full balance on time it's essentially a delayed debit card because no interest is paid.
- kbolino 2y agoThere's actually a term for this: charge card. Some American Express cards still work this way (i.e., you must always pay in full on time).
- Kirby64 2y agoNo. The financing Apple is offering is typically 12 months split into 12 separate payments. That is 0% financing and not a 'charge card' style. You're still getting 11 months of delayed payments, unlike a charge card where everything is due once a month from the previous month of the card.
- hirvi74 2y agoI've used the service plenty of times now, and was never charged interest. I wonder what situations lead this to happen? I know one has to select the payment option when purchasing through Apple and not all items are eligible. Maybe people just assumed the payment plans would be automatically and didn't require selecting the option during checkout?
- _mlbt 2y agoI believe if you fail to make the entire monthly payment by the end of the month you will be charged interest.
- themadturk 2y agoAlso, you do need to explicitly specify you want to use the interest-free installment option when making the purchase. It's not automatic, even when buy an Apple product at an Apple Store.
- Corrado 2y agoYes. I found this out after purchasing a new laptop for my wife. One call to the Apple store that I bought the device at fixed it though. It really was (mostly) painless.
- themadturk 2y agoOh, now that's interesting news. I never would have thought of that! The one time I did it wrong was on a small enough item I was able to pay it quickly via savings.
- ClassyJacket 2y agoI mean... isn't that how most interest-free cards work?
- icelancer 2y agoYeah, I don't think I was ever charged interest on Apple products either, but I wasn't paying that close of attention. I'll have to go back and check to see if I can get a sweet class action payout.
- xyst 2y agoProbably payment on GS backend was processed late even if customer initiated payment on the due date. So customer was charged interest. I was an early adopter of the AC during my Apple glazing days. Everybody has the same due date (end of month) and GS systems just could not handle the volume. I remember an auto payment taking a week to withdraw from my bank account and applied to account. I wasn’t charged interest and didn’t have an installment at the time though. I believe installments were introduced a year later after AC was generally available.
- rootusrootus 2y ago> an auto payment taking a week to withdraw from my bank account As an aside, for anyone using an Apple Card today, a handy way around this is to not make payments via ACH. Use your debit card with Apple Pay to pull money instantly into Apple Cash, then use that to instantly pay your credit card bill. An extra step, sure, but it's instant.
- NavinF 2y agoRelated: Most banks let you pay credit cards over the phone using a debit card. This is usually intended for debt collection though, so you may have to have to call the debt collection phone number to do it. Of course the main use case for tech people is maxing debit card rewards until they close your account :)
- minhaz23 2y agoChurning? Can u tell me more abt that please in the process of doing a few but dont want to mess up. Any tips?
- xyst 2y agoThis isn’t needed anymore. Credit is applied to account if autopay is setup. I guess it’s only reversed if ach fails due to insufficient funds. Personally I have a bank account that I use solely for the purpose of auto pay/ach. It’s only funded with enough money to pay creditors.
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- larrysalibra 2y agoThe press release from CFPB the article is about: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-orders-apple-and-goldman-sachs-to-pay-over-89-million-for-apple-card-failures/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-order...
- bangaroo 2y agoI'm struggling a little bit with the "misleading consumers into getting interest-free monthly payments" part. I never found the checkout flow particularly unclear or obtuse. It kind of sounds like consumers assumed that making a purchase with the apple card automatically enrolled you in the payment plan, versus having to go through a different checkout flow. I do kind of recall that when I used that feature once, it might have been implemented through Apple Pay? That would be supported by the fact that it was only available through Safari if the purchase was made online. I'm probably an outlier in being likely to experience that as I've just used Safari for a while, and so I'm getting their first-class experience. I am no stranger to how utterly awful Apple's products are outside its own ecosystem (like any Apple software designed to run on Windows.) All of these issues would be infuriating if I encountered them, but it's interesting how the breakdown of failures seems to be 50/50 "Apple doing a terrible job designing a clear and consistent UI or process" and "being bit by their attempts at locking people into their ecosystem, independent of the card" and the Goldman Sachs portion seems just outright malicious. Incompetence and malice combined are a really powerful force.
- skipkey 2y agoSo I can kind of understand where the confusion comes from. I used this to buy my wife and I MacBooks last year. When I started the checkout flow I didn’t initially realize I was just applying for an Apple Card, rather than just being a loan with a fixed payment. I could see people that don’t understand how zero interest offers interact with revolving credit accounts might not have understood. But the UI is pretty clear when you make a payment, if you drop the amount under the recommended payment how much interest it’s going to cost you.
- dylan604 2y agoI surprised with Apple switching from their loan plans to open credit accounts. The loan plans were setup like student loans where the debt could not be wiped out with bankruptcy where open credit can.
- Ensorceled 2y ago> I'm struggling a little bit with the "misleading consumers into getting interest-free monthly payments" part. I never found the checkout flow particularly unclear or obtuse I really wish everybody who makes claims like these would go to the local library and do volunteer tech support for the elderly, poorly educated and cognitively challenged for a day. The bar for these things is not "would the average HN reader find this confusing" it is "would the average customer find this confusing". The average IQ is 100, more than half of the US population reads below the grade 6 level.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoSource: CFPB Orders Apple and Goldman Sachs to Pay Over $89 Million for Apple Card Failures https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-orders-apple-and-goldman-sachs-to-pay-over-89-million-for-apple-card-failures/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-order... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41926162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41926162)
- optimalsolver 2y agoCost of doing business.
- downrightmike 2y agoEspecially for the first time either is doing a card
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoYou can say this about literally any punishment.
- rty32 2y agoNot Apple's fines in Europe. And Tim Cook is vocal about that. To me that says EU is doing the right thing.
- rootusrootus 2y agoA very tiny one at that. $25M to Apple is a little over two hours of revenue, if my math is roughly correct.
- gruez 2y agoComparisons like this are absurd. Why should fines associated with a small segment of apple's business be compared to their global revenue? Is the implication that all offenses should be fined based on global revenue, such that if they broke some law in Liechtenstein that the government there should be able to demand 5% (or whatever) of apple's worldwide revenue?
- paul7986 2y agoMy recent experience with Apple has been anti-user .. juice their bottom line.... - iCloud storage notifications saying have to upgrade to $9.99 plan to continue to store my photos, videos and even worse if I wanted to continue getting my iCloud emails. What(?), as my Google Photos is still sucking/backing up all the same media (goes back to 2016) for free. LAME Apple especially threat of not getting my iCloud emails!!!! - Apple Intelligence is so LAME compared to chatGPT app that runs on my iPhone. ChatGPT's iPhone app, it's assistant is almost sentient while Siri is still HORRID as it still at times doesnt understand you, you cant have a conversation with it or have it recall previous conversation/info you previously discussed as you can with GPT on iPhone. Again very LAME Apple! If Microsoft and Open AI made a ChatGPT AI phone I'd drop Apple quickly especially after my first point above ...threatening me that i wont receive my emails if I didnt give them more money!
- shaunkoh 2y agoUh, Gmail also has usage limits for each tier. I know before I’ve painstakingly removed emails with large attachments just so I can keep receiving my email.
- gtvwill 2y ago15gb on the free tier...empty your emails folks. This madness of keeping every email is insane. I had a user with 60000 unopened emails on one account just 2 weeks ago. It's like some folks refuse to do basic data/comms house keeping.
- paul7986 2y agoI have junk gmail address that gets filtered into my real gmail account (Zunk label instead of Junk) which keeps my real gmail account clean (few to handful of emails a day of things that are meaningful). Ive always have given out my junk gmail address to anyone i dont know personally or do business with.
- CamperBob2 2y agoBush league. https://i.imgur.com/ic0RJXO.png https://i.imgur.com/ic0RJXO.png (Or, what happens when you get an early GMail invite and erroneously think, "Awesome, I have a four-character email address. How cool is that?")
- impish9208 2y agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41926162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41926162
- metadat 2y agoEdit: no discussion == no dupe, it isn't useful to link threads with no/few comments. Them's the breaks. I don't love it either, but submission spam doesn't move the needle for our community regardless of timestamps, especially when one randomly didn't gain traction first. If you have a better solution, feel free to email hn@ycombinator.com, maybe the staff will take it up! Don't sweat the small stuff. This story made it to the front page, isn't that cool? Someone was on to something.
- gnabgib 2y agoBest check again, that post was 1h 29m 57s prior.
- xp84 2y agoThe article says they're banned from launching any more credit cards unless they can 'demonstrate they are going to follow the law' (whatever that means). This is really funny, because Goldman has been very public about how much they hate the Apple Card deal, and they have been and still are looking to unwind the deal or sell the portfolio, so something tells me this experiment in retail consumer finance is not something they're looking to replicate any time soon.
- downrightmike 2y agoGoldman thought they were going to be able to fleece Apple's customers, but they can't. Good job Apple!
- talldayo 2y agoSaying "good job Apple" in the context of payment processing deals is like cheering on a slightly more buff gladiator bashing in the face of his opponent. Both of them intend to fleece the users, they just disagree over who gets priority access. I'm not saying you can't have a favorite gladiator, I'm saying you can't pretend this isn't pugilism.
- _mlbt 2y agoMy Apple Card gives me an entire month to pay off the balance, and I am actively encouraged to keep paying it off throughout the month. The cash back rewards are simple and quickly paid out. There are no late fees. The UI for the software side of it is exceptional. It is by far my favorite credit card.
- jwells89 2y agoIt's also nice that the cash back is actually cash which can be automatically directed into the accompanying savings account, where it accrues 4.10% APY interest. None of the usual funny business with points with shifting valuations, restrictions on how they can be spent, etc.
- xp84 2y agoThe stupidest thing about the Apple Card is how broken their customer service systems are due to a combo of Goldman never issuing a card before, and the tight integration with Apple for account management. Primary example of this is there is no way to update your email address with the bank. It's your Apple ID and can't change. How do I know this? I changed my Apple ID several years ago, but my credit card comms still come to the old address, and no matter how many times I contact either bank or Apple support, they have no power to fix this. The bank has zero access to edit my information at all, and Apple just sends me in idiotic circles like logging out and into my devices, deleting all other contact emails from my Apple account, etc.
- runjake 2y ago> there is no way to update your email address with the bank. It's your Apple ID and can't change. These articles worked for me? Update your Apple Card account information (including email address): https://support.apple.com/en-us/102512 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102512 Change your Apple Account primary email address: https://support.apple.com/en-us/109353 https://support.apple.com/en-us/109353
- xp84 2y agoThat's just the thing: I changed my Apple Account primary email following the instructions in your second link (which is where your first link links to for "email"). I even purged the old email completely so that it's not even an 'alternate' email anymore (which I shouldn't have had to do, and which made things difficult for me in other areas, but was Apple's only idea). Only Apple Card didn't get the memo and there's no way to poke them to make them update.
- geniium 2y agoAnd that’s why people should not trust Apple Intelligence : the partnership with open ai and toward data security is a real risk.
- threeseed 2y agoNone of your data is sent to OpenAI other than the text you type. So no different to using their website.
- exabrial 2y agoOh, you mean that you actually _have to have_ * actual * support thats not handled by some dimwit AI? tsk tsk. Almost feel bad.
- crowcroft 2y agoAwkward time for Apple. - Moves into finance have been a failure, cancelling their BNPL as well. - Vision Pro basically dead at this point. - A large number of senior execs getting reshuffled/moving on from the company. - Apple Intelligence, still no where to be seen. This is most likely a Goldman Sachs issue, but still, who at Apple decided to partner with the bank that hasn't got any track record in consumer banking? The only advantage GS would have had over competitors is that they would have offered Apple very generous terms because they wanted to leverage Apple to get into a new market. Choosing GS was not very customer centric.
- icelancer 2y agoApple Intelligence is on the eligible devices in beta, I've had it for a little bit now. It's nothing exciting but I've been using it.
- crowcroft 2y agoThis is fair, it's not vaporware at least.
- Schiendelman 2y agoKeep in mind what you're using isn't much of what they're launching. 18.1 only has a couple of features, the three releases after that have the bulk of what they demonstrated.
- CPLX 2y agoThere’s actually some nuance to this. One of Apple’s big requirements was to have quite lax acceptance criteria. They didn’t want lots of their customers being denied for cards and creating a negative brand association. Apparently GS was up for that. Possibly because they didn’t actually know what they are doing. My understanding is the loss rate was way too high for them to be profitable. It was well covered at the time, here’s the first example to come up in a quick search: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/12/goldmans-gs-apple-card-business-has-a-surprising-subprime-problem.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/12/goldmans-gs-apple-card-busin...
- jordanmorgan10 2y agoI’ve spent over a…lot of money…on the Apple Card. It’s my wife and I’s primary card ever since it came out. Never paid any interest, and made lots of Daily Cash. More than anything I just find the wallet app so much more pleasant than other banking apps.
- sss111 2y agoChecks out. I never carry a balance on my Apple Card and always make sure to pay it off every month. Yet, I’ve noticed discrepancies between the transactions shown in the Apple Wallet UI and my PDF statements. The two times I’ve called customer service, they just put me on hold and say they’ll look into it. This has never happened with any of my AMEX cards, so I can only conclude that either the whole division is incompetent or there’s something more troubling going on
- uvas_pasas_per 2y agoI cancelled my Apple/Goldman card after they were totally useless on a transaction dispute. Frontier Airlines gave me a "refund", and printed me a "receipt" for it, and then later refused to give me the refund. When I showed the "receipt" to Goldman/Apple support they would chew on it for 4 weeks and then come back with. "Judgement for merchant. Reason: no evidence." I'd say: what was that "receipt" they printed, just a lie? And they would say "sorry" and reopen the investigation, repeat the same result. Lame. And I will try to avoid Frontier for the rest of my life.
- tmpz22 2y agoIsn’t that what Goldman wants? IIRC they’re losing money on the card so they’d prefer to bleed off customers - just like the forced attrition so many tech companies are currently doing.
- iamleppert 2y agoCan they go after Apple next for aggressively locking your entire account and library of past purchases because they couldn't bill you $10 for an iCloud subscription?
- iluvcommunism 2y agoI don’t want to diminish others experiences, because I’m sure they’re just as important as mine. All I can say is anecdotally I haven’t had any issues with disputes…in fact the dispute experience for me has been better than other cards. The app makes it quite simple.
- xutopia 2y agoSlap on the wrist fines won't go a long way to help customers.
- Bettygreyhound 2y ago[dead]