Ever since the pandemic I have shopped less overall and mostly online. The YouTube algorithm decided to send me information about shopping and apparently there is a lot I don’t know.
First, I had heard of buy now pay later in terms of ads for big ticket items like mattresses with no interest for a year or so. I always considered them bad deals (although when he was young my father bought a suit like that to establish his credit history). And of course there is always layaway where they hold the item until you have completed the payments.Apparently now, though, there are a ton of apps (Klarna, Afterpay, Affirm) that split charges into four biweekly payments or have free interest for 30 days and people are using them for routine purchases.
That is what I use my credit card for. Charge things and pay it off every thirty days. The difference is that if you are late on payments or can’t pay these new apps can have interest fees up to 35%. I just had no idea these were so popular. Now I see them every time I make a purchase.
On the other side of the spectrum I learned about the prespend at luxury brands but especially at Hermes. Now I think paying more than $100-200 at most for a purse is crazy and I don’t care about designer labels. Apparently if you want a high end Hermes purse like a Birken or a Kelly, you have to do a prespend. You have to go into one of their stores and establish a relationship with a sales associate. You then need to buy Hermes merchandise up to a certain amount (1-3x the cost of the desired bag). This merchandise cannot be other purses or accessories such as wallets. They prefer things like fine jewelry, watches, scarves,clothing or housewares. You then drop hints about the specific purses you are interested in, or can put them on a wishlist. If the sales associate deems you worthy you may be invited to buy one of these “quota bags”. You may not get the style or color you desire and you still pay full price. And yet there are people allowing themselves to be treated like this for the privilege of possibly buying an overpriced purse. Some of the threads discussing prespend ratios and and what are the best prespend items to buy are insane. Keep in mind that these “quota bags” retail for $10,000 to $100,000 each. Rich people are crazy and pretty gullible to fall for this crap.
Also I learned that if you hit one wrong button you can delete an entire thread. Sorry for the duplicate.