affirm.md

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Why I'll never use Affirm again

tldr: I'll never use Affirm again because when there are issues with their payment system that could severely impact your credit score for years, their customer support is unequipped to help and their underlying support infrastructure is poorly designed.

On Jan 3 2022, I purchase a product from a merchant for $271. As part of the purchase, I signed up for a 0% APR installment plan via Affirm to pay the balance in four equal payments over six weeks. The merchant ended up not shipping the product for over two months, by which time I had fully paid off the loan from Affirm, and they were unresponsive to my requests for a shipping date. Because of this, on Mar 10 2022 I initiated a chargeback with my bank (Chase) on the last loan payment, which I paid on Feb 15 2022. As soon as I initiated the chargeback, the merchant became responsive and shipped the product. On Mar 11 2022, I received the tracking number for the purchase and I called Chase to cancel the chargeback.

Since March 10, Affirm has been contacting me via their automated systems claiming I have an overdue balance for the chargebacked loan installment. The automated email states:

"If you need help, reply to this email, call (855) 914-3141, or visit our Help Center."

On March 10, 11, and 16th I responded to the email providing documentation from my Chase credit card statement that I had been re-billed for the cancelled chargeback and also that Chase had fully processed and released the funds from the chargeback. Each time you reply to the email, a support case in Affirm's system is created and they state:

"If you're expecting a response to your email, you should hear from one of our customer care agents within 24 hours."

I never received a response to the four support cases I created in early March.

Because of this, on March 17 I called Affirm. After waiting on hold for nearly an hour, I was finally connected with a supervisor who found my open cases and consolidated them into a new case they created during the call. The supervisor assured me that I would get a response within 24 hours on the case.

I never did. However, I continued to receive late payment notices from Affirm for the loan installment I had already paid for.

On April 2nd, I once again called Affirm and was once again put on hold for nearly an hour before I was connected with a supervisor, Jordan P., who responded to my case the next day, granting me access to Affirm's case system for the first time.

Unfortunately, this case system is so poorly programmed that sending a message that's too long results in a giant red banner popping up at the top of the page that says "Insert failed. First exception on row 0; first error: STRING_TOO_LONG". The error message claims the character limit is 255 characters, however it's actually much shorter than that which makes communicating in the case thread very tedious.

On April 2nd, Kristen G. from Affirm kindly informed me that "I also looked at what our payment processor provided and it shows that the chargeback was still active as of today. My recommendation is to contact your bank in regards to this situation" and reminded me that "if your Agreement includes furnishing, we may report repayment activity to Experian and if your payment is 30 or more days overdue it may be reported as delinquent."

On April 4th, I contacted Chase and once again confirmed that the chargeback cancellation had been fully processed and released to Affirm's payment processor. I attached to my Affirm case my Feb and March credit card statements showing

1. The initial loan payment charge on 02/15/2022
2. The chargeback credit towards the 02/15/2022 charge on 03/10/2022
3. The re-bill of the chargeback credit charge on 03/11/2022 as well as statements from Chase stating the chargeback was fully processed.

After providing this information, Kristin G. responded:

"Thank you for providing us with the documentation of your bank statement. After looking for more information with our payment processor, once a chargeback is initiated, even if withdrawn the whole thing can take approximately 75 days for it to be finalized. As this chargeback was for your 2/15/2022 payment, we are still within that time frame."

Their response seemingly confirms that this is an issue with Affirm's payment processor, as Chase confirmed to me that there is no hold on the cancelled chargeback and they had fully released it, however in the meantime Affirm is happy to hold the "late payment" over my head and inform me that it may be reported to credit agencies as delinquent.

On April 6th, I asked several clarifying questions about Affirm's payment processor and my payment status that went unanswered. Later that day, I once again called Affirm and after waiting on the phone for nearly an hour, I was connected with a supervisor who promptly hung up on me.

I asked in the case thread for a supervisor to give me a call back. David D. responded in the thread "I have availability to call you tomorrow at 11:30 a.m. eastern standard time. Please let me know if you will be available. I look forward to discussing this matter further." I set aside my morning plans the next day to take the call. I never received a call from David D.

On April 8th, I once again called Affirm and was connected with a supervisor, coincidentally also named David. I asked to be connected with someone from Affirm's payment team to resolve this issue as, with all due respect, the customer support team does not seem equipped to resolve payment issues. David informed me that the customer support teams at Affirm can only escalate issues through cases and they do not have any access to any contact information for any of the teams at Affirm. David informed me that he doesn't even have the phone number or email address of his direct manager.

At this point, my case has been open for a month. Affirm is eager to remind me each week that my payment is overdue, yet they've been completely unresponsive to my attempts to resolve it. Their customer support representatives are well-intentioned and polite when they do respond, but ultimately they're unequipped to handle issues like this and their support infrastructure is broken; their online chat system simply does not work, the case communication system is poorly programmed, calling them requires a significant time commitment, and they aren't able to keep their promises when it comes to email/case/phone support.

My next steps are to file a complaint with the NY State Attorney General's office. I can only assume that if I've had this many issues with Affirm, that other people have had, too. I won't be surprised if Affirm does report a late payment to creditors and I ultimately have to dispute that with them as well. I'm fortunate to be in a financial position where damage to my credit score wouldn't be the end of the world, but I imagine that isn't the case for a lot of people who use payment services like Affirm, and that it's even more difficult for those people to get support when something does go wrong with the system that's out of their control.