What a Deal!

So I got this loan solicitation from a company I'll refer to by the pseudonym ECL (so as not to embarrass anyone who might happen to work for them) that offered (on the outside of the envelope) the super-exciting deal of "no payments until 2008!"¹

Which I thought, um, okay, right. But maybe there was more to it, I thought, so out of morbid curiosity I opened it up. And yes, "no payments until 2008!" (because of my "Preferred Customer status") is exactly what they mean. January 1, 2008. Which, according to the fine-print footnote, "applies only to loans booked on or after November 17, 2007".

So the offer boils down to deferring payments by about half a billing cycle; they don't even appear to defer interest for that half of a billing cycle; and you start making payments at exactly the time when, if you're a typical American, all the other credit-card debt you ran up during the holidays comes due.

I passed.


¹Exclamation point in original.