Citi question

[Woolfman]

This weekend i was roped by the wife to go "look" at furniture at ashley furniture . She of course found a set she had to have and since they had 36months no interest. We applied got 4k CL and spent 3400. 

My question is this is Citifinacial . Is that going to hurt more than just a normal account? I was thinking i read something somewhere that was talking about consumer credit line or something and its frowned upon . 

and on a side note . I have to got to get back on the wagon of resisting to apply . in the last few weeks i have been BAD!! 

I have apllied for USAA (denied too many inqs),

Nationwide(denied uknown reason still),

UMB guide dog card ( 2k 9.9 rate per the csr but the website says 11 something is the lowest?)

and yesterday i got a preapproval in the mail from Citi for a MC . I resisted last night but caved this morning  approved 12.5k 

Message Edited by Woolfman on 12-15-2009 08:23 AM

[Jazzzy]

I think you will get dinged for "Citifinancial" being a consumer finance company.

[DI]

Citifinancial are loan sharks. 

[Woolfman]

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@DI wrote:
Citifinancial are loan sharks. 

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They might have different things that make them seem like that to you . But Ive never seen a loan shark give you their money for nothing . So they are just dandy in my thoughts . 36 months no interest. Sure the default rate is 24.99% but alot of store credit cards are just the same. 

[doood71]

I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but you probably could have negotiated a better price had you paid cash or with another card.  Citifinancial charges most dealers a hefty "discount rate" as they call it to offer interest free financing.  I know they charge us 17.25% to offer this particular deal, but we're in the HVAC business, not sure what they charge a larger company like Ashley.

Just my thoughts.

[Woolfman]

no disrespect taken . But we did haggle and  said we could just pay for it , we did not want go into our cash reserves. If we would have just paid cash/credit they would have took 10% off the total as that was the other offer they had going . But in the aspect of interest on any other card it would have cost us more over time in interest than the 10% we would have saved.

[Creditaddict]

I would really not worry about any points you may loose due to a Furniture account, I would be surprised if you even noticed.  I have a mattress account and it has not cost me points, if anything you may loose some points until it's not looking so maxed out but not for the type

[Anonymous]

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@Creditaddict wrote:
I would really not worry about any points you may loose due to a Furniture account, I would be surprised if you even noticed.  I have a mattress account and it has not cost me points, if anything you may loose some points until it's not looking so maxed out but not for the type

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I think the key here is that it sounds as though this is being reported as a consumer finance account, rather than a regular store account.  Back in my stupider days, I had personal, unsecured loans from Washington Mutual, which is now CitiFinancial.  Whenever I used to pull my reports, one of the negative factors that came up was "Presence of a consumer finance account".... and something to the effect that these are typically personal bailout loans with bad terms, usually for people who were rejected for personal loans from banks due to bad credit or DTI or the like.  I am not saying this situation is the same, just a personal experience with the term "consumer finance" and Citifinancial.

[Creditaddict]

I get that, but you are always going to have some negative factor, but are you really loosing any points?  I don't think a computer application process is going to say omg a furniture personal finance account, they are in trouble, Denied!  and in the end I wouldn't care even if I did loose a couple points because guess what my cash makes more than paying cash for my mattress vs financing for free.  You only see bad terms if you miss a payment or don't pay off in the 0% period and all those reasons are not the finance companies fault, they are yours.

[haulingthescoreup]

Even if it's Citifinancial, if it reports as revolving (instead of installment), it will NOT score as a consumer finance account. (This per Barry, the myFICO admin.)

Of course, the trick is knowing if it will report as revolving. A lot of these "furniture store accounts" have started doing so, perhaps because they became aware of the problems caused to buyers' credit.

I know back in the early days of our marriage, we financed some furniture, and it was set up as an installment loan. No clue what it did to our scores --this was long before lowly consumers were allowed to know, and it's long since gone from our reports.