[mymllnthaccount]

This is kind of OP's fault, right? I don't think it was appropriate to initiate a charge back on a payment to affirm since they provided their service to OP, that is they already paid for whatever OP was buying. I have a feeling that timing between OP opening the chargeback and the shipping of the item was actually coincidental.

I'd think if you paid affirm and the merchant hadn't shipped the item, then your recourse would be to go to Affirm, not your credit card you used to pay affirm.

[aunty_helen]

What? How are you going to charge back against someone you didn't actually deal with financially?

Your arguement is that Affirm should be able to clip the ticket and hold no responsibility for their client fufilling their duties?

The charge back goes to who you paid for a service, if they need to pass it on, it's for them to do.

[411111111111111]

I cannot say anything wrt this specific case but it definitely depends. Where I'm from you'd basically make 2 contracts: one purchase agreement and then another one for the money, which is basically just a credit you've gotta pay back.

So here you'd have to contact the seller, as the other party merely gave you a credit with hopefully good terms

[syedkarim]

Where are you from?

[tionis]

What OP describes sounds like the German systems with the abstraction system I think it's called.

[0des]

Asking that is a precursor to violence where some of us are from as it's an understood "what colors do you fly" type of question.

[jallen_dot_dev]

Author never disputed the transaction with Affirm, he just went straight to chargeback after getting nowhere with the merchant.

[aunty_helen]

> and they were unresponsive to my requests for a shipping date

There wasn’t an issue with Affirm not paying the money onward, why go to them.

Once again, Affirm have agreed to give credit to this company, that relationship is theirs. If their client isn’t fulfilling their duties it’s Affirms problem too.

Credit cards work like this, you pay your 2-4% fee and you’re guaranteed what you expected to receive.

Hence why airlines changing peoples tickets out for credit during the pandemic was easily routed around via a cc charge back.

I literally had the Turkish government change the law on my ticket to say the airline didn’t have to fly me but could swap my ticket for credit and I still made it away with my money in the end.

[jallen_dot_dev]

> If their client isn’t fulfilling their duties it’s Affirms problem too.

Again, they didn't even know there was a problem because the author never brought it to their attention before the chargeback.

The author borrowed money from Affirm and agreed to pay it back. He's in breach of his contract with Affirm, over a dispute with the merchant (a different party).

[michaelmrose]

They make their money by acting as an integrated intermediary. They didn't borrow money separately and then use that money to buy an item. They borrowed as an integrated step in the purchase interface.

By acting as the intermediary they are the only party that received the posters money and ergo the only and appropriate party to claw the money back from. This is no different from buying a widget on amazon. Failing to receive the widget. Initiating a chargeback for the money.

Regardless of whether amazon was actually responsible for providing the widget they received your money and ergo they are responsible for giving it back.

Indeed its not really any different from a direct retail purchase where you buy a box and if you open the box and instead of nice new widget you find one that looks like it was mauled by a bear. Can you imagine going to the returns counter and being told despite paying us your money at our point of sale you need to fly to china and sue them if you want your money back. It's just not how the universe works.

They most likely actually CAN'T take money and deliver nothing and make it someone else's problem if they both want to do business in the US and keep doing business with credit card issuers here.

[jallen_dot_dev]

This isn't a good analogy. A retailer is responsible for giving you what you ordered (a nice new widget) because you are literally buying it from them. In this case, Affirm isn't fulfilling the purchase at all.

I think a better analogy would be you bought a house, but you find out later the seller lied about something (maybe they didn't install a new roof like they claimed), so you think the best course of action is to stop making mortgage payments to your bank.

> Regardless of whether amazon was actually responsible for providing the widget they received your money and ergo they are responsible for giving it back.

Yeah, after you request a refund from them. Try issuing a chargeback to Amazon next time you buy something from a 3rd party seller, I think you will have a bad time.

[pxx]

> airlines changing peoples tickets out for credit during the pandemic was easily routed around via a cc charge back

You still owe them the money. The airline can stop you from boarding a future flight. Chargebacks are not magic debt elimination tools.

https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/12/ryanair-ban...

[aunty_helen]

If that was the case, Turkish airlines had 4 more days to wait until we went to mediation with MasterCard. They could’ve proved their point and taken the money.

They didn’t, they backed out and handed the money back. 1600usd.

The concept that I still owe them money after they were unable to fulfill their duties is laughable, so much so, they wouldn’t even back themselves.

Edit, just to make it clear cc chargebacks aren’t some hit and run scheme

To get to the point I did. I had to

1 convince my bank I was right before they opened any dispute

2 defend myself against evidence the airline put forward saying they were right

3 wait 164 days for my money

And 1600usd vs never using Turkish airlines again… I’ll take the money.

[DangitBobby]

Sounds to me like Ryanair is on rocky footing with the law here. They refuse service, they issue a refund. Simple as that. They owe those people money. Unfortunate the courts didn't resolve it.

[treis]

OP used a card to pay a loan and the amount was correctly credited to their account. They're getting what they used the credit card to pay for.

I think the loophole here is Affirm not being regulated like a CC. Then they'd be required to arbitrate the dispute between OP and the merchant.

[mymllnthaccount]

Just to add to this, it sounds like OP didn't contact Affirm until after they already started the charge back. I definitely don't think it is appropriate to do a charge back before contacting the vendor that got the payment, which is Affirm.

[aembleton]

My credit card won't even let me initiate a chargeback until I've contacted the retailer.

[harles]

OP contacted the retailer according to the story. Affirm is not a retailer.

[jonny_eh]

They are the party receiving the chargeback though. It's just usually the retailer that you pay directly.

[aiisjustanif]

Cards that are higher up in benefits and fees in the US will.

[harles]

Yikes, I can’t believe all the comments blaming OP. It was clearly the retailer in breach of Affirm’s terms, not OP. Charge backs also have a limited window to claim - I can’t see anything that was done wrong here by OP. Yes, OP could’ve attempted to resolve with affirm up front, but why should that be necessary?

[kube-system]

> It was clearly the retailer in breach of Affirm’s terms

Yes, and that's why the payment to the retailer should have been the one in dispute, not the loan payment to Affirm. This is how it always works when you finance through a third party... it works the same way for a car loan, a mortgage, a credit card, etc.

[michaelmrose]

How do you dispute a charge that took place between Affirm and the delinquent merchant? Affirm has your money. Affirms partner hasn't delivered on your merchandise. Affirm by being the one in possession of your money for which you have received nothing is the one in breach of your agreement and has no power to enforce terms for an agreement it has violated.

[dwild]

How do you charge back usually? You contact your credit card provider right? You don't just avoid paying your credit card... you contact the ones that credited you the money. In this case this is Affirm the creditor (I know you got 2 credits here, but that's a choice).

You got 2 contracts here, one to pay back a loan, an another with the merchant, and sadly, when you don't pay back a credit, it get on your credit report...

So the one to contact, is Affirm, just like the one to contact in case of issue with a payment you made, is your credit card provider, and not your bank.

[michaelmrose]

Ok so this is what an affirm transaction looks like. You go to bobsite it says you can have a widget by paying now or if you click this radio button and select affirm there will be a only slightly different flow where you without leaving bobs site you agree to pay for it over time with the same payment card you have on file with bobsite for regular purchases. Click Complete purchase done.

Your money flows from you -> affirm -> merchant in a singular transaction that is actuated by several automatically scheduled payments at the appointed dates.

No transaction flowed between you -> merchant to charge back. Given that actually litigating a dispute in multiple states would be thousands of dollars your only actual options are let them keep all your money even if they are in effect defrauding you OR issue a chargeback to the party that collected your money and let THEM handle retrieving any money transferred from them to the merchant who ultimately didn't fulfill their duty.

You will note that due to the high cost of retrieving your money the merchant has absolutely no reason not to just keep your money and ignore your phone calls. They after all already have the money they were going to make off you. It cannot afford to not pick up the phone for Affirm because it intends to via its continuing relationship to continue making money.

Fundamentally every transaction you undertake is intermediated usually through a multitude of levels whoever actually takes your money be it affirm or walmart has no right to be paid if the goods aren't delivered and acquires in addition to your money the obligation of making the customer whole first and then seeking redress up the food chain.

This is only untrue when there are two distinct different not directly related transactions. Get a generic credit card and use it to buy a TV for example. It would make little sense for chase to expect to be paid $500,000 for a house it turned out the seller had no right to sell or $50,000 for a car that was never delivered due to mischance. In both cases even though you had agreed to borrow that money the transaction would be unwound and not merely by you. This unwinding in case of a failure by merchant to deliver product financed is an expected part of such an interaction in part because such transactions almost always concern a great deal of money.

A situation whereby a singular purchase actuated by a button click is treated as 2 distinct transactions with virtually no recourse for any sort of misbehavior violates decades of consumer expectations and the ground rules under which we all presently do business. It is surprising and harmful.

[kube-system]

> whoever actually takes your money be it affirm or walmart has no right to be paid if the goods aren't delivered

This is 100% not true for third party creditors, at least in the US. They do have a right to be paid, regardless of the services you purchased with that credit.

The only reason that you can dispute your credit card transactions is because congress passed a law specifically requiring this process: https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/statutes/fair-credi...

This and similar carveouts notwithstanding, any loan you take out, you are required repay, regardless of the experience with the seller.

You are correct that it is inconvenient when you obtain loans with poor conflict resolution processes. However, this does not negate your legal responsibility to pay those creditors. This is why laws like the FCBA were passed.

> It would make little sense for chase to expect to be paid $500,000 for a house it turned out the seller had no right to sell or $50,000 for a car that was never delivered due to mischance. In both cases even though you had agreed to borrow that money the transaction would be unwound and not merely by you. This unwinding in case of a failure by merchant to deliver product financed is an expected part of such an interaction in part because such transactions almost always concern a great deal of money.

This might surprise you, but in the US, you are still legally required to pay your loans in both of those circumstances. This is the entire purpose of products like title insurance. The bottom line is that the bank is not culpable for other people's misdeeds.

In a circumstance where you spend $500,000 on a house that could not legally be sold to you, you would have to take the seller to court to recover that money so that you could pay back the loan. Or, more commonly, you'd contact your title insurance company for recovery, because your bank likely required that you bought title insurance for this exact reason.

There is no level of inconvenience that makes a bank legally liable for something that someone else did wrong.

[avianlyric]

> Charge backs also have a limited window to claim

That window generally starts counting down once the original transaction has completed in it’s entirety, which means you’ve received the goods (until you get the goods or services only one half of the transaction has completed).

If the merchant doesn’t deliver, then there is no limit on the chargeback period, assuming you’ve made a reasonable attempt to chase the merchant and got nowhere.

[jackconsidine]

Respectively disagree, but regardless the customer service flow is unacceptable and most of the point of the post IMO.

[bena]

I used Affirm for a Casper mattress back in the day. Much the same scenario, it said "make X payments in Y months" and I was like "Ok".

I think that's Affirm's wheelhouse, providing smaller merchants of largish ticket items an easy way to do financing. So OP may not have had an option outside of Affirm to do the financing.

I'm not sure how much Affirm would care about the issue as they're pretty much a 3rd party to the entire situation. But, yeah, I think the order of operations here would be: call merchant, call Affirm, then call credit card.

[benatkin]

Plenty of people think Casper is pure junk. I understand taking a gamble, though...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Mattress/comments/ejx6za/my_casper_...

I guess it would have been smart for OP to think of that purchase as an attempt to get that item from that merchant, and just to eat the $ rather than spend a lot of time and get their credit dinged. It isn't totally different from getting a physical mattress that may or may not work, especially since they eventually did ship the item. Actually, if the mattress caused back pain and I had to go through the trouble of disposing it, that would be worse than getting nothing.

[bena]

What?

We don't know if he bought a mattress or not. I did. Years ago. And the fact that people online don't like Casper is neither here nor there. It's fine. It's a mattress. It's better than a spring mattress.

I merely brought it up because I used Affirm to purchase it because that was the option given to me by Casper for their "pay in X in Y months" option.

[crisopolis]

I agree it does read like the OP triggered the entire issue with payments using a chargeback originating from Chase, regardless of the support/platform issues with Affirm.

I don't believe charging back the loan provider had any outcome to getting their product/service.

Affirm was the wrong target.

[pooper]

I have done a charge back against PayPal and I stand by it.

Basically, the vendor said it shipped me the product but never did. However, it gave PayPal a tracking number which was for something delivered to my town. I waited several months for the vendor to make things right.

I asked PayPal and the person said there is nothing it can do. I did a charge back and the bank gave me my money back.

So no, screw the vendors and screw the payment processors. I don't owe them anything. It is their responsibility to do things right or get a charge back.

[jonny_eh]

> I asked PayPal and the person said there is nothing it can do

That's PayPal's fault then. If they don't make things right, you're justified to hold them to account.

[colinmhayes]

Who should OP have targeted? The seller wasn't responding and OP had no way to force them to other than charging back against affirm.

[ensignavenger]

OP could have initiated the chargeback through Affirm. I have used this process with Affirm before with much better luck. That being said, this does not excuse Affirms alleged poor customer service in this situation.

[colinmhayes]

Affirm doesn't respond to emails and it's incredibly difficult to get anyone on the phone. So no, I don't think he could've charged back through affirm.

[ensignavenger]

As I said, I have been through this exact situation with Affirm, and I did get my money back, so I know it is possible. I know others (the merchant I bought from went bankrupt) who did not get their money back- both who used Affirm and who used other mechanisms.

So I'm not saying whether or not OP would have gotten their money back had they went directly to Affirm- just that they should have given Affirm the chance. And none of this excuses Affirms allegedly bad customer service in this situation.