Deferred Payment Charges Deferred

While January is energy conservation month here at Daily Home Renovation Tips, it’s now Friday so we’ll leave that topic until Tuesday of next week.

In prior posts, we talked about our replacement exterior front door, the one we ordered through one of the local big box stores in the fall. And, if you recall, we placed the order for this door when the big box store was having a ‘done pay for 12 months when you pay for your purchase on our credit card’ type of deal.

So, the facts in our case were the following:

• Date Order Placed – Sept 28, 2007
• Initial Date for Door Delivery to Retailer’s Store – Mid-November
• Revisited Date for Door Delivery – End November
• Actual Date of Door Delivery to Retailer’s Store – approximately December 7th
• Scheduled Date of Door installation – January 8, 2008.

So, by the time the door is to be installed, more than 3 months will have passed form the original order date. That then makes the deferred payment deal of 12 months no-pay-no-interest to a 9 month deal. Everything else being equal, we will still have to pay the cost of the door by Sept 28, 2008 to avoid 28.8 % finance interest.

Did you know that you can, on occasion, have the store (if you complain in a reasonable manner a sufficient number of times) adjust the start of the deferred payment plan? We didn’t. We thought that it was locked in stone.

Well, here’s today’s tip. If you encounter a situation yourselves similar to ours (the actual type of material does not matter), you can ask for the deferred payment start date to be delayed until the materials are delivered to, or installed for, you.

So, in our case, the new start date for the deferred payment plan is now January 8, 2008 meaning that we do not have to pay for the new door until  January 8, 2009.

And, ours is not an isolated case. Oh no. When we went to the big box store and brought with us our monthly statement of our account with them, as well as the order form, the person at the Service desk filled out a rather messy form. It looked as if it had been photocopied many times, as if it was the photocopy of the copy of the copy of the copy….. of the original printed form.

When I inquired about this, the response was somewhat surprising, at least to us. The service associate said that it is such a common occurrence that they ran out of the printed form and had to start to make copies of the last blank forum!

So, don’t be afraid to ask for this deferral of the deferral plan if your materials are significantly delayed. You never know what you can receive if you ask, respectfully (i.e. not in a rant), yet firmly and have facts to support your case.

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