Afterprey

I have seen Afterpay pop up all over the place lately. You can buy your $100 eye cream, and then you have 8 weeks to make payments on it. You don’t even need a credit check to sign up! They make money at least two ways: 1. When you miss a payment, they get a $10 late fee. 2. They get a kick-back with every purchase.

I wrote this to a company from whom I buy product:

I have a complaint. It’s not about your company (your staff and your product are great.) I’m complaining about Afterpay. Recently I’ve seen it pop up all over the place. As a responsible shopper, when I see Afterpay on a company’s website I get turned off. Afterpay seems like a scam. It appears companies have raised the prices of their products with the caveat, “you can pay it over the next 8 weeks.” Don’t credit cards already do that? I also feel like you all are offering fewer offer codes due to Afterpay.

I used to go to your site, and there would be offers like, “buy a full sized product, get a free travel-sized product.” To me, that was very appealing and I had the perception that I was getting a deal. I’m seeing less of these types of offers. I feel like your company is encouraging people to, instead, go into debt over a skin product.

Their response:

We added Afterpay so that more people could comfortably purchase our products. We haven’t raised our prices and are continuing to offer promotions at the same rate that we did prior to adding Afterpay. It is merely a way for people that would rather spread out their payments over time as opposed to having to pay out for one large(ish) charge at once. Since Afterpay has “popped up” on so many other sites as you referenced, we too felt that it would be helpful to some customers. We actually had quite a few requests for it which helped us make the decision to add it.

We have not slowed down our promotions as a result of the Afterpay addition. Since that launch we have offered [redacted.]

For us it is all about how we can help get our products into as many hands that want it as possible and not a means to raise prices or offer less promotions. Unfortunately there are some people that simply would not be able to purchase products from any retailer if the retailer didn’t offer a way to spread out payments. While many do not have to use Afterpay there are others that do and we are happy to be able to provide this service to them.

My response (I didn’t send it): I spent much of my life earning a very low income. There’s always a Target product that you can make do with. If you cannot afford the $100 eye cream, you should probably buy a $6 eye cream. This is nothing against yours or any other company. It’s just the entire Afterpay concept seems very predatory.