Blue Hippo Credit Costly
Consumer affairs.com is featuring an article about Blue Hippo Funding, a company that sells computers, televisions and other high-end technology to consumers with poor or non-existent credit. The company has a unique credit plan.
I checked out the Blue Hippo website where they advertise a computer system on easy credit terms. There are no credit checks. To qualify, you make a downpayment of $99.00 and then six weekly payments of $39.99. This means you will have paid $338.94 before your computer is shipped, in fact, the website states that it is not even ordered yet. Once you have paid the $338.94 “we can offer to finance the balance of your purchase price, order your computer and have it shipped…”. Still, you may think it sounds like a good deal. But nowhere on this page does it state how many payments you will make after they ship your computer.
Terms seem to change. I found several sites, including Wikipedia, stating that the initial pre-payment period was 13 weeks. Currently the BlueHippo site says 6 weeks. However, the term following the pre-payment is at least 49 weeks and in some cases it is said to be 52 weeks. In any case, the consumer ends up paying over five times the value of the item.
I checked with the Better Business Bureau. Not surprisingly, Blue Hippo has an unsatisfactory records with the BBB.
Bottom line: if you are thinking of doing business with Blue Hippo, check out a few of these informative sites first.
BlueHippo Ripoff Report at badbusinessbureau.com
