Does financing an Apple Purchase via Barclaycard count as an installment loan?

[Anonymous]

Hello, everybody.

I'm brand spanking new to Mexico, to the point where most of the abbreviations are basically mumbo jumbo (no offense intended, I'm illustrating goodness).

I'm looking to buy an Apple laptop, and was wondering whether attempting to finance it through Barclaycard would count as an installment loan...and whether it'd make sense for me to get an installment loan, from a credit score point of view.

Long story short (and I'll put this in the signature sooner or later), my fico scores are as follows:

EQ 600 (down from 606)

TU 634 (from 651)

EX 618 (from 618)

The drop's occurred because I activated a Kohl's card...the fico simulator said it'd have no impact. Oh well.

I'm in the 600s because I defaulted on a payment to Best buy and it was taken over by a CA. Took care of that in 2011.

So:

Is financing through Barclaycard for a laptop an installment loan?

How will it impact my credit?

I apologize if this is misposted, but I figured I might as well jump right into the forums.

Any insights would be much appreciated.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

[Anonymous]

I financed some chandeliers from RH with 12 months same as cash & they're reporting as a normal purchase.

[takeshi74]

The info is on the Apple site.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/finance/instant_credit

It's a credit card.

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@Anonymous wrote:

The drop's occurred because I activated a Kohl's card...the fico simulator said it'd have no impact. 

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Activation is irrelevant.  The drop occured because you opened the new account.  Whether or not you activate the card does not change whether or not the HP and new account report.

Do not rely on simulators.

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@Anonymous wrote:

I'm in the 600s because I defaulted on a payment to Best buy and it was taken over by a CA. Took care of that in 2011.

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If it's impacting your score you haven't really taken care of it.  You may have settled it but you want it off your reports.  Hit the Rebuilding subforum and see what you can do about it and any other derogs before you apply for anything.  We always recommend addressing derogs first because they tend to have a significant impact and can hold one's scores down as long as they're reporting.