[breck]

It makes me sad every time I see strong American businesses getting into the "financial engineering" business. It's not just GE. Every time I take a flight nowadays the attendants come around pitching some airline branded credit card; you buy a shirt at a clothing store and are asked to sign up for a credit card; buying diapers at Target--"do you want to sign up for the Target debit card"?

American banks and "financial engineers" are good at screwing over the 80% of the population, and transferring wealth to the 1%, and the fact that they are able to pull in great American companies into their schemes is embarrassing, disheartening, and in the case of GE Capital, foreboding.

For decades they were screwing me over and then when I joined the 1% it was suddenly, "hey, come open a bank account with us and we'll give you $5K!" Shameless.

[mikestew]

The onslaught is so constant, I sometimes just want to scream at a clerk, "JFC, what happened to just exchanging money for goods and calling it a day?!" Of course, it's not their fault, the person I want to scream at is well insulated from screaming customers in some corporate office somewhere. But $DEITY forbid the clerk not ask, because someone's numbers will be down. That part will filter right the fuck up to the correct person.

Ignore your twitching knee when I say this, but it's one of the things I like about Apple: "here's some money. Might I have one of those fine devices you have on display?"[0]

"Certainly my good sir! Let me fetch one from the back...here you are. Apple Care? No? A fine choice, sir! Have a nice day!"

No cajoling about some card. If you don't want the extended warranty, it's a simple "no" and done. No popups on their internet properties asking to join their mailing list. I give money, they give me stuff. I'm sure there's some dark pattern I've missed, but for the most part the experience seems to be free of such jackassery.

[0] Admittedly, this part needs work lately at their retail stores.

[mey]

Not sure how this will evolve but I will leave this with you

https://www.apple.com/apple-card/

[option]

Yes please, this is the only card I actually want mostly for security, privacy, zero fees and expense tracking reasons.

Disclaimer: I used to work at Apple in their online services division, and I know first hand that (at least during that time) they cared a lot about privacy (often against short to medium term financial gains)

[breck]

This does make me sad. The shift away from hardware and software to "services" and "financial products".

Despite the fact that I want the banks to be disrupted, I'd rather have a Stripe or Square or Coinbase etc do it, and have Apple focus on other things.

[nothatsfalse]

Oh God no! Not Square at least. They'll happily send your financial statements to random other people, then act like it's completely normal that they did that, and really weird that you're upset about it. Plus their customer service (for end users who buy products, not the merchants) is extremely adversarial. They have a really shitty chat bot that is the only way to contact them to get help when they screw something up. It's awful and very anti-consumer.

[mikestew]

Yeah, I signed up for that the day the beta invite hit my inbox. See above for reasons why. We'll see how it goes.

[listenallyall]

When you get the device home you'll need (edit: be asked) to sign up for an Apple ID and an iCloud account, I believe? They may not bother you at the point of sale but that's only because they know you'll be giving up your private info soon enough.

[nothatsfalse]

You believe incorrectly. If you want to use some other services for email, streaming, etc., you need neither an AppleID nor an iCloud account to use any of your Apple devices. They may ask you to enter or create one, but I haven't seen a case where there isn't a (small hard to see) way to opt-out.

[listenallyall]

They're still asking you for all that info. Saying no to a checkout clerk is easier and faster than finding the "hard to see" (your words) opt-out, which may only suppress the request for a week or month before popping up again.

[CamperBob2]

Your examples are an inherent part of the value proposition. With an Apple ID and an iCloud account you can do much more with your device than you otherwise could. Customers who buy into the Apple ecosystem need to be assigned an identity within that ecosystem, and most people understand that. If it bothers you, you can always decline, or buy some other phone or computer.

There is no room whatsoever to compare Apple IDs with being force-fed sales pitches for unrelated items while trapped in an aluminum tube at 30,000 feet.

If you wanted to tilt at this particular windmill, Microsoft account IDs would be a better horse to ride. They provide little or no value to most Windows users, but the company does everything it can to drag you into their ecosystem.

[listenallyall]

You're choosing to understate the value of these "unrelated items." Just yesterday I was upgraded to first-class on an international flight, in part because I once signed up for the "unrelated" credit card on that particular airline. Signing up for a Target card gives you 5% all Target purchases. Both those things do offer real, tangible value, whether you want to believe it or not.

[listenallyall]

All your examples are marketing ideas and promotions. Nothing at all to do with financial engineering. As much as you seem to enjoy complaining, surely your favorite companies engage in the practice -- hedging currency risk, locking in stable fuel prices, avoiding interest rate shocks.

[breck]

> - hedging currency risk, locking in stable fuel prices, avoiding interest rate shocks.

I like these things. I have a lot of friends who are very passionate about finance and do very hard and valuable work in domains like that. Some do truly extraordinary work that goes on completely behind the scenes and makes markets serve businesses better.

I guess what I don't like is when non-financial businesses get into the business of offering financial products. I would hope operationally they take advantage of smart financial engineering on the backend, but instead of spending valuable time in front of customers talking about credit cards, they should be talking about the thing they make (engines, air travel, clothing, retail, respectively).

(Note: perhaps there's a better term for what I'm complaining about than "financial engineering")

[rolltiide]

Airline branded credit cards are not the same as store branded credit cards and none of this has to do with financial engineering. None of the comments in this thread do.

[ilikehurdles]

You're probably right about that not being "financial engineering", as I wasnt familiar with the term prior to this article.

But other than airline rewards being generally valued more than store rewards, how are they different? I guess I can always tell the store worker "no thanks" before they start the annoying pitch, while the loud sales pitch on airlines is unskippable, blasted through everyone's audio system, and often happens when people are trying to sleep.

[rolltiide]

just more fungible and improve travel experience and status. the cards themselves are more prestigious too and also accepted everywhere. not too much of a difference after that.

consider noise cancelling headphones that aren't connected to the airplane media system