Heard the end of a David Jones ad on the radio this afternoon that was talking about getting stuff for 4 years interest free as long as you pay a third up front. Sounded like an awesome deal, but I didn't catch how long its going for. Anyone know the details?

Watch out for the cbp

The who in the what now?

arent most of these things done through GE finance where you might as well pay it with a credit card?

The extra you pay at David Jones compared to the cheaper places would probably be more than the interest saved but that does depend on the product your buying.
I never have liked the interest free things as they usually encourage you to spend more than you usually would. Rather save the money and don't have debt to anyone.

The crippling balloon payment.

if u cant pay $1000+ off in 4 years your fuked and dont ever buy a house

The crippling balloon payment.

Well if its interest free for four years, that would imply that at the end of four years the amount you owed wouldn't be any greater than the value of the thing you initially bought, wouldn't it? Or am I missing something dodgy =\

I was just interested cos the ad mentioned it included apple products, and I immediately thought iPod. I've been pestering my parents to get me one for my birthday or christmas or something, but (understandably so) they dont really want to spend $400 on a birthday or christmas present. They're perfectly happy to pay the 1/3 deposit as a present though and get one for me on this 4 years interest free plan, and then in a couple of years time when I'm once again financial I can pay the rest off myself.

Sorry, i thought having a simpsons avatar would mean you knew a few simpsons jokes :/

Nah, sorry, I only pretend to be cool :(

Generally the deal is 1/3 deposit with regular monthly repayments over 48mths. But the purchase must be over $1000

last edited by HerbalLizard at 22:42:14 28/Jul/05

i saw this on a tv add tonight

Ah, bugger.

these deals are only good if you are good with money and will pay it off.

no offence khel, but for you i don't think its such a good idea

I'm not looking at putting thousands of dollars on it, we're talking an ipod here =\ But if its minimum of $1000 that wont work anyway.

i work for a certain finance company that may or may not finance ceratin retailer purchases, 48 month int free deals among other things *wink wink* note this before making any purchases on retailer finance

1. interest free does not = no repayments. monthly repayments are required (such a no brainer but comes up so often)

2. the interst rate at this certain finance company is pretty damn outrageous, a credit card with a bank is usually much less

3. don't ever use this certain finance company's card for cash advances


that is all.

1. interest free does not = no repayments. monthly repayments are required (such a no brainer but comes up so often)

2. the interst rate at this certain finance company is pretty damn outrageous, a credit card with a bank is usually much less

3. don't ever use this certain finance company's card for cash advances

actually if you can control your spending finance cards such as the ge card offered through harvey norman and other good retailers can be quite the treat. considering most people pay off purchases around the $2000 mark within 2 years, Well anyone who knows anything anyway. A nice 24 month interest free or even defferred payment plan is just the thing you need. Its the best loan you could possibly get.

on an interest free repayment plan you are only paying the min payment which is 3% and its not hard to manage that a month. also the usual min amount to spend on such promotions through companys like ge is $500. Very few promotions will have a $1000 min payment, this is due to what stores like to call "the happy customer" factor, where they occasionaly give nice customers lower amount purchases on said promotion to keep the customer happy for what ever reason, wether there a regular or someone who is just having a bitch. However have fun trying to get the store sign you up to it on such an amount. But alas it is against there terms of agreement with said finance company to refuse the purchase.. so just report the sales persons name to the finance company and try again with a younger rookie looking sales man.
Whilst the points you make are good, they are also typical of said finance companys usual ignorant in debt customer.

Ge makes the majority of its money from customers who are of course indebt, the other huge money spinner is from ther merchants sales, as each purchase made on promotion they get a certain percentage of.. And when ge pretty much monopolises the market in retailer personal finance thats alot of money.

However back when i worked in ge about 6months ago David Jones was not a retailer that ran through The Ge Card so im sure theses rules may vary slightly.

Also if you need help khel getting approved for this finance, let me know, i know the in's and out to any credit application thanks to the fine training provided by ge themselves and the continual stressful employment of 2 years in the job.

Since im at, Ge make alot of there money from having the lowest paid call centers in australi *except for pizzahut, but they employee children so what do you expect* having a call center in india one in paramatta one melbourne *very small* and one in brisbane, they are able to screw there employee's over in 3 states. With every 2nd phone call being an abusive call from a retailer or customer the stress levels of an employee rise to a point where you want to snap someones neck. Then when the paycheck comes in.. you just about do. GE have also been known globally for having the most temp staff employed by any other company. They also make nuke detonators, nuke reactors *which is a sickening story in itself* and genetically modified food. Ge is run by a board of directors which the majority are US senators. GE shares are mostly owned by US senators. And the us senate recently passed an ok approval to ge installing 3 of its nuke reactor powerplants in the us, now these powerplants of a 99% chance of during a melt down releasing toxic gas into the atmosphere which will pretty much kill our planet. But hey what are the chances of a nuke reactor melting down.. I dunno.. lets ask russia, where there nuke reactor was made by... none other then GE.

And terrorism is a touchy subject these days.. The planes that hit the world trade center... had GE ENGINES... the light bulbs in the light bulb sockets of the world trade centers.. OMG GE light bulbs.. not to mention the many ge temp staff on sight when the planes hit that died. *i think there where 12 of them*. GE held an emergency confrence as soon as the planes hit, they mentioned there crappy light bulb story, and there crappy plane engine story.. but forgot all about the temps.

When the US decided to invade iraq, ge had 12 perm ge employees in the country and 12 temp employees. Ge paid for the perm employees to get out the country but left the 12 temp employee's to find away out themselves, they offered flights to them.. at there own exspense of course.

GE also own christmas island.. where refugee's are held by our government. Thanks to the island being 3billion dollars in debt ge are now looking into a way that the island can be made profitable..hmm refugee camp and money to be made.. I see where this is going, but alas the wheels are still in motion, but i wont be suprised if the next light bulb you buy has a fat stamp on it.. MADE AT CHRISTMAS ISLAND.

ps. its not that i dont like them, i just like to let people know who exactly there giving there money too when they go todo it.

what wage/hour were you on when you said you were getting screwed over?

$16.90 before tax, then i got jacked to $17.90, then evtually to $18.30

oh and they didnt f***ing pay me the correct wage when i got seconded to senior officer.

also, don't know how long ago you were there, but there aren't many temps. mostly permanent part-time. you did inbound?

its that general level now, hell i think its a pretty good wage for a completely unskilled job... beats flipping burgers.

how much do other call centres get paid?

yeah did inbound in new accounts for about 2 years, when i first started it was 70% temps 30%perm in the new account area, the temps kicked an up roar so they employed a s*** load of them to even the ratio out abit. took about 6 months before the ratio was back to 70% to 30%. then they would just repeat the process.

talk about a high turn over. I was also there for there rotating roster system, which im not sure is still in effect, bassically it cheated you into working 10 days straight.

most call centers start at the $20 an hour mark for low entry. Im at centerlink at $20 an hour, my father is at suncorp on $25 an hour and i have a mate in some insurance call center on $35 an hour.

call centers rank at number 2 on the most stress full jobs, ge has got to be the most stressful work place i have ever worked out.

seemed fantastic at first, untill i was put on the team leader line and took escalated call after escalated call, the bit i find funny is i now working for a department/agency of the government that everyone has had atleast one bad experience with yet i dont get abused any where as near enough as i did at ge.

nah, its permanent roster now, and its pretty good you can basically choose your days/hours. 17.18 starting wage with 8% rise/year if you meet your kpi's or something like that. they have a big thing about staff retention now so they are always doing crap to keep you interested like paying for free food and random promotions like giving staff members tickets in a raffle to double your pay for a month and crap lik that. inbound would be worse than collections though, or maybe not i dunno.

i reckon it's a top job, i get paid $17/hour for sitting on my ass and talking. i dont really get stressed even if the customer gets abusive so i dont really care bout that. like i said i have pretty much no marketable skills til i finish my degree so 17/hour is pretty sweet for me.

wish i could edit so i could just add this on...

serious? might look at getting another call centre job once i have some experience under the old belt.

oh and nowadays team leaders are permanent and get like 40k-50k or something like that

meh sif marketable skills, your as marketable as you make yourself, according my resume i manage a successful I.T company and Restaruant and i didnt even finish year 9.

GE is honestly the s***est work place, there roster may have change but lame raffles and free food has always been the same, oh and there GE Rewards/Points Program they brought in a year ago, f*** i laugh at that. Provided only one outlet for call center staff to earn points and even then good luck doing it.

I guess your yet to have a yearly review when it comes to kpi, last year they brought in a lovely lady that went by the name of di', her job was to monitor everyone in new accounts and reduce the kpi's via phone manerism. The kpi's where adjusted 3 times during the year.. Twice towards the end.. to make it even harder to reach the yearly goal.. All for one reason. To give out less promotions and payouts to those who would normaly reach it.

I reduced my hours to part time to cope with all the bulls*** as i had alot of crap comming at me from out of work aswell. Then i got the huge f*** around, firstly the didnt want me going part time due to a shortage of staff, but new i would up and leave, so they stuck me on hours that where the majority of calls where limit increases, thus increasing my aht dramatically as i didnt have the shorter calls to keep it low. I was then bullied into going back to full time or losing my job.

current job has very very high kpi's and very very little call monitoring. oh the best bit is they have a bar in the lunch room which gets opened every few weeks that serves $2 drinks, now thats what i call a moral increaser. not to mention fort nightly raffles for weekends away at the gold coast and free alcohol. monday - friday 9-5 $40k starting salary, flex hours.. and the endless list of government jobs to role over into.

that does sound pretty sweet. i guess the attraction of ge is that heaps of staff are on permanent part time. 20k/year for 20 odd hours work a week is a pretty good deal as a uni student. i would imagine most higher paying call centres would be mostly full-time? if not i want in on some of that!

Interest free is an interesting term.

No one gives you money for nothing. And certainly not a public listed company (David Jones) the shareholders would go rank. Or a finance company (GE or whoever) these guys specialise in fleecing the unwary.

Either someone else is paying a fee to the credit company (ie. you could have bought it cheaper if you didn't go the interest free).

Or there is some nasty catches in there eg. they have a massive interest rate and if you fall behind and are late on a single payment then they bend you over and apply all the interest becuase you broke the terms of the loan (ie. they are gambling that more often not people will stuff up at some some point). Or they just have some flat administration fees.

I think it is mainly just a way to move stock Obes.

nah obes, interest free means interest free. its just a way of attracting more sales as most people generally dont have the disposable income to buy what they want, but would be able to pay it off over a period of time.

the interest rate is higher than credit cards, because the risk is higher. banks will give you a lower int rate, but are more picky with the customers they take on.

nothing dodgy goes on with the int rate, you don't get reamed if you miss payments, there is just a late fee, which is probably very similar to the banks.

dodgy stuff like that used to happen when AGC used to run the retailer finance, but since GE took over that sort of stuff has been stopped

Fpot no one moves stock for free.

A loan is a loan. The minimum ammount of money people want to make on a loan is the bank interest rate, becuase the money they are "giving" you could be getting atleast that much.

Turnover is important, but its still costing someone somewhere the "interest". If DJs are paying the interest, then you are actually paying the interest via the cost of the item.

Financial institutions and Big chain stores are not charitable organisations. Maybe they are writing off the interest as a marketing cost to gain market share and increase turnover, but somehow I think they'll still be making a dollar somewhere.

im pretty sure GE charges the retailers a flat fee for taking on the int free promos.

Here is the small print for the DJ's 4 years interest free.
1/3 deposit.
2.95 monthly account keeping fee.
$25 establushment fee on every item with 4 years interest free
minimum purchase $500
Not available with any other price reduction (not sure what that means)
The balance is to be repaid in 48 monthly repayment.
$25 fee to set up a defered payment (excluding xmas season defered payment)
If payments are not paid on time, interest charges and fees may apply


so taggs ... "If payments are not paid on time, interest charges and fees may apply"

So lets say you buy a $660 ipod... 220 up front +25 establishment + 48 * 2.95 + 440
You just paid 826.60 but it is spread out over 4 years (Someone smarter then me can calculate what that is as an interest rate, but I am going to guess its better then a normal credit card or loan). And thats assuming you never had to apply for a defered payment ($25 per defered) or was late on a payment (unknown cost).

I just worked it out to be around an 11 to 12% interest rate. And thats calculating it as a 660 principal... When really its a 440 so the rate would actually be higher then that I think. But then the more you buy and the bigger the item the cheaper it gets becuase the account keeping fee is flat.

Then again my maths might suck badly.

well for starters the item has to be over $1k...

interest charges will apply to the late fee, not the sales promotion. late fees are $27. thats not too serious, high late fee but i wouldn't say its too much higher than the banks.

but yeah technically you could call that difference between the sale price and the account balance interest. i wouldn't, i'd just say its the flat fees for the credit service. interest would be charged on top of those fees on a normal purchase on either the GE creditline or on a normal credit card.

if your point is that the credit is a rip-off, well thats up to the customer. the difference between the end balance and the sale price is the cost of providing credit. providing credit is a service and has to be paid for like any other good or service. if people are willing to buy credit, GE, among others will be willing to sell it. hell i personally believe all credit cards aren't worth because i don't like the idea of spending money that isn't mine. but that doesn't mean other people can't do whatever the hell they want.

For starters you are wrong, the item has to be over $500... that or DJs is lying

I am not saying its a rip off. It could very well suit some people, particularly if you are good with your money (can make all the payments) and are buying something big. It to me appears not such a good deal for a small item for someone who may have to defer a payment or may even miss a few.

I am just pointing out that you need to do your sums. That there is a cost involved, some direct some indirect and don't be suckered in by the word "free". Its a service and they charge for it as they should (and as a share holder I hope they aren't doing it for free).

And I am not calling the flat fee an interest rate, I just gave a single example of what it is roughly costing and roughly what sort interest rate that converts to if it was a loan (very roughly becuase there is some fees with setting up loans, and some extra gov't charges on credit cards).

And like I said the bigger the cost of the item then the better this deal gets (becuase the fees are flat).

Thats my 2c worth, I am not a finacial advisor or even very good with numbers. But even with my limited grasp of it all I can see that there is a cost involved here.

oh ok, fair enough about the 500 bit, i was just going off what someone said earlier cbf looking it up myself.

well yeah, some people might be suckered in by the word 'free' but if people read 'int free' as 'free' then they are pretty retarded, especially if they sign contracts they don't read. but it does happen, i have to explain it to customers annoyingly often. people are stupid.

yeah no-one was ever arguing that there wasn't a cost involved, i mean if there was no cost, (i.e. no benefit to GE) involved why would GE, or any other credit company provide the service in the first place. i think thats what you were saying before anyway so we're pretty much in agreeance.

Hrmm, I spose its a bit more useful with the $500 limit, but still not really what I was hoping it was. I was hoping it included one of those "no repayments for 12 months" type of deals, cos the idea behind it was to get an ipod now so I can use it at uni, but pay for the majority of it at the end of next year once I have a job. Granted on a $500 or $600 ipod, the monthly payments are pretty small, but I just know I'd f*** up and forget one month and get reamed with fees and interest.

cbf looking it up myself

Then why even try to dispute the point ?

I mean surely it was obvious from my previous posts that I had gone to the trouble of reading the conditions ?

And khel I thought you might have been thinking along those lines.
ps. khel you should read the fine print of those deals then sit down and quickly do the sums.

merchants get charged a fee from the credit provided, this fee is called a merchance service fee, and its usually about 1.5%-5% of what ever the actual purchase price is. The merchant also negotiates/pays teh credit provider to run the promotion as it generates more sales.

say you buy something for 1k and then get charged $25 for application fee. the application fee will be interest free aswell, however make a late payment and you will start having to pay interest on the late payment itself which is roughly about $25, now the interest that you pay on the late fee can also occur interest and this is where people get caught. as the more and more you owe outside of the interst free purchases gets higher the further in debt you get.

However if you are not a f***ing dill head you can easily manage to make your payments on time.

Well I went into David Jones in Queens Plaza to check it out, while I was in the city on Friday, and they offer it through the use of their David Jones card. Basically they sign you up for a David Jones card, and you buy the thing you want on that, and then that amount is interest free for 4 years. The $3 a month account keeping fee is the monthly fee for having the card. I didn't get if the $25 establishment fee was one you had to pay to establish the card, or if you have to pay it for every 4 year interest free purchase you make.

Anyway, that actually works out not so bad, because my mother already has a David Jones card and has had it for like 15 years so its got a pretty good rating/limit/whatever. She already pays the monthly fee, so thats covered, all I'd have to do is give her $8 a month to put towards her monthly payment. And while I'll admit, I'm shocking at managing my finances, I'm sure even I can find $2 a week to put aside. If the establishment fee is for the card, and not for the purchase, then that wont have to be paid either. It was all looking good until I actually asked them about iPods and they said they were completely sold out and still trying to get more from Apple.

Gonna check out DJ's at garden city next time I'm there to see if they have any. Still no word about whether this 4 year interest free thing is a limited offer or a permanent fixture though, I forgot to ask while I was in there on friday.