iPhone Upgrade Program financed by Citizens Bank

[Anonymous]

It's actually two options available both only in store both are a hard pull through Citizens One Bank. It is an installment plan secured by allowing the monthly payment to auto-charge to your credit card (which you can change what's on file through Citizens One). The plan for the Upgrade Program includes the phone and AppleCare+ @ 0% in the monthly cost, upgrade and 12 installments that ends that plan and AppleCare and starts a new one or you can choose another method of upgrading. Or you can opt for the pure Apple Installment Program, that's just the iPhone no AppleCare+, no annual upgrade. Both options are hard pulls. I didn't qualify lol had to fall back on my good ole AT&T Next upgrade since AT&T no longer does 2 year contracts anywhere but AT&T directly.

From my research and extensive questions to Apple on the Apple specific programs, there's a benefit to go with it, you remove that extra cost you pay your carrier for using their internal upgrade or finance plan. That extra $15 to $40 that's tacked on your bill that makes up the rest of the cost for the phone that you didn't pay upfront.

Another point to make if you're someone that usually gets AppleCare, under your wireless carrier it's a separate upfront cost to get it, under the iPhone Upgrade Program since it's bundled in the cost, you won't have to worry about paying the larger amount upfront and you're only paying for it until you do the 1 year upgrade. So AppleCare at half the cost, if you'd be an annual upgrader.

You do have to pay the first month's installment and taxes when you take the plan in store for me it was $126.65 (although they declined me). With your carrier financing like in my case AT&T Next Program, I had to only pay taxes upfront $81 but still had to turn around and pay the $129 plus taxes to add AppleCare. That was for the 128GB iPhone 6s Plus.  I would have made out better on the front end under the iPhone Upgrade Program.

[Anonymous]

Did it report as an installment loan?

Might be an interesting way to get an installment loan into credit history, 0% interest! New phone! And for those of us with no installment loans might eventually benefit our scores.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Thanks for the info guys....looks like I'll reserve and just use AT&T next....they didn't do any type of credit check last year when I got the 6+.  Closing on a house in November and can't take the hard pull right now. :-/

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AT&T Next is just as good! The 12 month one is literally the same thing, just without Applecare+ and AT&T do mobile insurance for $6 a month anyway...

Kind of wishing I had just paid for the whole thing up front now though.

Part of me likes thinking it would be better to just pay for these things all at once to keep monthly expenses down.

But then another part of me thinks, it will still be the same amount; just over a longer period of time.

[Anonymous]

It is an installment loan..didn't get it...too soon to see how Citizens One reports it but they do call it that in the T&C

[Revelate]

Figured there were going to be a slew of denials over nitpicky things; phones historically have had a non-trivial amount of fraud associated with them given the resale value on secondary / grey / black market, so I'm not surprised Citizens was awfully stingy on it... also a phone is not really a very securable asset, so it also was likely going to be on the same level as unsecured personal lending and that's the toughest loan to obtain in the credit market, unless you're willing to settle for non-trivial interest rates.

I'd still sort an installment loan secured wise from a bank rather than what's likely going to show up as a consumer finance account.

[ddemari]

before launch day on the  25th, I spent a lot of time trying to find out any useful insights or inside info on the citizens plan. I couldn’t find anything but comments on credit worth customers applying. Now that we are a few days in, I am reading loads of reports of frustrated people who were declined by Citizens. Reports of customers with good scores low 700’s to customers with high scores 780+ being denied.

When I was at the apple store, submitting my application again due to the fact I could have easily made a mistake typing in all my info on a tiny phone cramped around people. The apple person walkie talkied and asked if the guy from Citizens One was still there. She never got a reply and we moved on.

Revelate I liked how you phrased your comment on this type of loan being a hard type obtain. Your right.

And all these people flooding Citizens websites could have caused a lot of problems. But, you would think apple teaming up with that bank of all their options, would have tried a little harder to make this more obtainable for the mass amount of people who would have fulfilled their requirements than defaulted.

[ddemari]

I also read some stories of people with lower scores but less credit activity behavior like; inquiries, seeking and getting new credit, having lots of credit, etc. being approved. 

someone said citizens was dening people based on high inq's, system overloads. some people who paid for the phone outright were having their credit cards declined because apple was running the payments through as cash advance. I can say from the chase end of things, purchases went through as a credit transaction. 

[Revelate]

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@ddemari wrote:

I also read some stories of people with lower scores but less credit activity behavior like; inquiries, seeking and getting new credit, having lots of credit, etc. being approved. 

someone said citizens was dening people based on high inq's, system overloads. some people who paid for the phone outright were having their credit cards declined because apple was running the payments through as cash advance. I can say from the chase end of things, purchases went through as a credit transaction. 

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Weird, I would've been more than angry at that one.  Glad I was able to just get one through Sprint and call it a day, landed standard wireless style on the Ink too as a result .

[Anonymous]

Confused as to why people were getting denied with scores in the 700s? I have like 7-9 inquiries on each report, not even 2 years of history and only 8 months AAoA.

[Anonymous]

Think about it from the lenders point of view. It is a zero percent loan. There is no interest rate premium to compensate for people defaulting. Apple likely subsidizing a bit so that Citizen can make money but I doubt it is more than a couple percent.

That means they will be very strict with the underwriting because they can't make money if any significant number of borrowers default.