For many, financing furniture, home decor, home accessories, and other expensive products is the only way to buy what they need to fill their homes or fulfill shopping lists. Although lenders like the popular online retailer Fingerhut claim to make it easy to buy products online with a bad credit score, they come with a lot of strings attached, plus potential downsides.

Today, let’s take a hard look at Fingerhut, explore whether it’s worthwhile, and check out some of the best sites to consider as alternative online shopping platforms.

What Is Fingerhut?

Fingerhut is a blend of an online marketplace and buy now pay later merchant for home décor. It offers a unique blend catalog of tons of different products, ranging from electronics to furniture and more. It also offers a pair of credit accounts that allow shoppers to purchase those items on Fingerhut’s lines of credit.

Through this system, people don’t have to worry about poor credit scores, credit checks, or other barriers. However, this isn’t to say that Fingerhut is automatically a great shopping choice. For example, you can only use Fingerhut’s credit accounts to purchase things from the Fingerhut catalog. On top of that, most of the items offered on Fingerhut are significantly more expensive than they’re listed elsewhere.

Many of the items listed on Fingerhut are priced at 10% to 20% more than average. Then you have to pay shipping, plus deal with potentially high APRs and interest rates. Most quality items on Fingerhut come with a 29.99% APR. Therefore, you’ll end up paying much more for an item purchased on Fingerhut than you would if you bought it normally or anywhere else.

What Can You Buy on Fingerhut?

Although Fingerhut’s catalog is artificially limited, the marketplace does include a wide variety of products. You can find a wide range of products in the following categories and more:

  • Jewelry
  • Appliances
  • Home decor
  • Cookware
  • Cameras
  • Mattresses
  • Electronic gadgets
  • Foods like cakes, cookies chocolates, and other desserts/food items
  • Dinnerware
  • Mobile phones

Fingerhut allows you to use its credit at some other retailers that have select partnerships with the company. These include insurance companies, florists, and certain tech merchandise companies. But keep in mind that your total purchase options will still be limited because you can only ever use Fingerhut credit on the Fingerhut website to make a purchase.

Is Fingerhut Good for Credit?

Fingerhut does report your credit activity to the credit bureaus. But, there’s no telling whether buying something on Fingerhut and paying off your line of credit over time will improve your credit score.

Furthermore, you can’t take out another line of credit and use the credit on Fingerhut’s shop. Instead, you have to use one of two different Fingerhut credit accounts:

  • The Fingerhut Advantage Credit Account, which is backed by WebBank. This credit account is a closed-loop credit card store account. In a nutshell, it’s an unsecured credit account you can only use on the Fingerhut marketplace. Its main features include no annual fee, a standard 29.99% interest rate for purchases, and a $38 fee for late or return payments
  • The Fingerhut FreshStart Installment Loan, which is also issued by WebBank. This easy-to-be-approved-for loan requires you to make a one-time $50 or more purchase. Then you have to make a minimum $30 down payment for your order. You can’t use credit cards for this down payment. You’ll then pay off the balance for your purchase in monthly installments and either six or eight payments 

As you can see, the financing options available from Fingerhut are very limited. Given time, you may be able to upgrade to a Fingerhut Advantage Credit Account. But this is more of the same. On the plus side, you don’t see any penalties if you pay off your balance ahead of schedule.

Are There Drawbacks To Using Fingerhut?

Absolutely. Using Fingerhut comes with major drawbacks like:

  • Being limited to the merchandise on Fingerhut’s catalog or the sites of certain partnered retailers
  • Having to buy merchandise from Fingerhut using Fingerhut credit alone. This prevents you from being able to reliably build credit using the method of your choice, like a secured credit card
  • Having to buy merchandise or products at higher than average rates. When you shop at Fingerhut, make no mistake, you’ll pay more for the item in question than you would if you bought it anywhere else
  • Having to pay exorbitant interest rates. While Fingerhut’s credit accounts don’t come with annual fees, you’ll pay more on average because of the high APRs that come with each purchase

In many ways, Fingerhut targets people who have no or less than stellar credit in an attempt to get them to make unwise purchases. Say that you really need a new bed for a home you just moved into. It might be tempting to purchase a mattress or bed set from Fingerhut.

But if you do this, you’ll not only be limited in your options. You’ll also have to purchase the mattress and/or bed set at a higher price than you could elsewhere. This will hurt your finances in the long run and connect you to Fingerhut until you pay off your debt.

On top of that, taking out debt with Fingerhut could decrease your credit score anyway. Therefore, it’s usually not a good idea to shop on Fingerhut unless you have no other choice. 

Are There Other Companies Like Fingerhut?

Yes. Some Fingerhut alternatives include:

  • Venue
  • Stoneberry
  • Gettington
  • The Shopping Channel
  • Home Shopping Network
  • Midnight Velvet
  • Ginny’s MDG
  • Zebit
  • FlexShopper

However, many of these websites have the same limitations and drawbacks as Fingerhut. Because of this, you might want to look at some alternative means of purchasing through financing. For example:

  • You can become an authorized user for someone else’s credit account, or get a loan or financing deal with someone as a cosigner. Authorized users may be able to use someone else’s credit to build or improve their own credit scores over time
  • Sign up for a service like Experian Boost, which allows you to build credit for your monthly recurring utility bills, like your phone or electricity bills
  • Open a secured credit card. Secured credit cards are great for building credit if you have no credit or lower than average credit. They generally have lenient credit requirements, but they require a security deposit for you to qualify

As with all types of debt or loans, think carefully about whether you truly need something before buying it on credit or through financing. If you need financing for furniture, there are plenty of other options aside from Fingerhut that are better for your needs.

Financing for Furniture: Why You Might Want To Try It

For many people, the best or most attractive furniture pieces are financially out of reach. That’s why financing for furniture is an attractive alternative. 

Done properly, and financed through the right company, financing furniture can be a wise idea and help you furnish your home on your budget.

Financing Makes It Easier To Furnish Your Home

In a nutshell, when you finance furniture, you pick out the furniture you want for your house or apartment. Then you can pick it up or have it delivered to your door. But you don’t have to pay for the furniture’s full asking price right away.

Instead, you may pay a down payment or start making regular monthly payments for the duration of the finance contract’s term. If you lease furniture from a company like Becca’s Home, you leae the furniture first then pay down the balance of the lease over time.

Depending on who you finance with, your financing contract may be more or less similar to a credit account/loan.

How Long Are Financing Terms for Furniture?

Generally, financed furniture loans and leases have terms ranging from six months to 18 months (or, rarely, even longer). For example, when you lease furniture from Becca’s Home, you’ll start off with a lease that lasts for 17 months by default. Depending on your preferences, this could be shorter if that works better for your budget and for the total price of your selected furniture pieces.

A shorter lease or loan term is usually better. That means you pay less in terms of interest or possible fees depending on who you finance with.

What’s the Interest Rate on Financed Furniture?

It depends on who you finance with. However, most leases and loans don’t have interest rates on financed furniture. If they do, interest rates are typically low, so you don’t pay much more for the furniture over the loan’s or lease’s term than the original asking price.

When you take out a lease with Becca’s Home, you don’t have to worry about an interest rate for your furniture purchases if you use our 90-day same as cash purchase option. Instead, you can focus on making affordable monthly payments or even pay off your furniture purchase early!

Becca’s Home vs. Fingerhut: Which Is Better?

Becca’s Home is, by far, a much better choice to purchase the perfect furniture for your entire house or just a single room. Why? There are several reasons.

Becca’s Home Makes Furniture Shopping Easy

For one, Becca’s Home makes it easy to shop for the furniture of your dreams. Not only do we offer themed collections for similar furniture pieces, but we also allow you to select furniture à la carte. That way, you can buy furniture for an entire room or home or just one or two pieces to complete the decor of your new abode. Our selection is completely listed on our site!

Need Help With Financing? We’ve Got You Covered

Take out a lease with Becca’s Home and you’ll be set with affordable weekly, semi-monthly, monthly, biweekly, or other payment schedules depending on your budget.

Even better, you can purchase your furniture products at any point. For example, you can use our 90-day same as cash purchase option to avoid paying any fees on the furniture pieces selected.

Alternatively, you can “early purchase” your furniture for less than the total remaining value of your 17-month lease total. If you come into some unexpected cash, you can put it to good use and buy your furniture outright without breaking the terms of your lease.

Not sure whether you’ll qualify? Don’t worry. With Becca’s Home, your credit score will not be affected by a hard credit check and you don’t even use credit.  

Financing furniture is quick and easy with Becca’s Home, and it’s much better for your credit and financial health than shopping at Fingerhut.

What’s the Bottom Line?

All in all, companies like Fingerhut may seem convenient and attractive, but they’re anything but. Fingerhut and similar companies are tough to trust, may cost you more in the long run, and can be bad for your credit health.

When you need financed furniture, turn to Becca’s Home instead. Contact us today to ask about our financing options, early purchase options, and more!

Sources:

What is High APR on a Credit Card? | Consolidated Credit

Secured Credit Card Definition | Investopedia

Credit Card Authorized User: What You Need to Know | Experian

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