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So I can kind of understand where the confusion comes from. I used this to buy my wife and I MacBooks last year. When I started the checkout flow I didn’t initially realize I was just applying for an Apple Card, rather than just being a loan with a fixed payment. I could see people that don’t understand how zero interest offers interact with revolving credit accounts might not have understood.

But the UI is pretty clear when you make a payment, if you drop the amount under the recommended payment how much interest it’s going to cost you.

I surprised with Apple switching from their loan plans to open credit accounts. The loan plans were setup like student loans where the debt could not be wiped out with bankruptcy where open credit can.

As far as I know, Goldman Sachs didn't have previous experience issuing credit cards either, so maybe it was also (partly) incompetence on their part.

> I'm struggling a little bit with the "misleading consumers into getting interest-free monthly payments" part. I never found the checkout flow particularly unclear or obtuse

I really wish everybody who makes claims like these would go to the local library and do volunteer tech support for the elderly, poorly educated and cognitively challenged for a day.

The bar for these things is not "would the average HN reader find this confusing" it is "would the average customer find this confusing". The average IQ is 100, more than half of the US population reads below the grade 6 level.

Agreed though "it needs to be below 6th grade reading level" would essentially invalidate every contract/license/agreement ever entered into..

Good! This idea that businesses should be free to fleece the stupid and under educated with obtuse contract phraseology and walls of text that have managed to include things like "the soul of your first born" because nobody can reasonably be expected read and understand the full thing is just asinine, naked failure of the government to protect people from predatory business practices.

Caveat Emptor should not mean "They can make the contract literally inscrutable and then you just have to go get fucked".

There's nothing wrong with reasonable consumer protections and required default warranties that CANNOT be discharged by a TOS. You shouldn't have to take a second job to understand whether you are signing away your soul when signing up for a damn credit card.

Legalese is about specificity. How does being less precise assist understanding with specificity?

I cannot, in a contract, just refer to a street address. For reasons of specificity, I must state where the survey marker corner is located -exactly- and then detail how many feet from that in a direction, etc. These long descriptions ensure that there are no misunderstandings later.

The verbiage of these contracts have grown more specific through use. People, or companies, wiggle out of things and new contract language is invented to prevent such wiggle-room in the future.

How would one go about accomplishing a 'dumbing down' of a contract, without losing the anti-wiggle specificity?

Also, I really like that word. Say it with me, please: 'specificity.' Neat.

> How would one go about accomplishing a 'dumbing down' of a contract

Perhaps go with the UCC default and not try to have the buyer opt out of every specific consumer right.

The longer the contract, the more one party is probably being screwed with great specificity.

That's usually not an issue if your contract and marketing claims are aligned.

Even if the customers didn't you read the contract, they still got the gist of it through the marketing copy and probably won't hit a point where they're really mad about you. Actual trials will also be easier to deal with as you're in good faith.

For all the press we get on "frivolous" lawsuits, no average Joe are winning actual stupid suits.

Here it's an issue because what the credit card is fundamentally made for (make you pay fees on additional services) and the marketing hook (no additional fee) are at odds and is only true for very specific conditions someone can easily fall out of.

Absolutely there are bad actors, and consumers getting taken advantage of.

However as you point out - credit cards essentially make money from the less financially savvy by design. It's not entirely a bad thing, in a sense.. some people just run out of money between paychecks and need some liquidity.

Credit access vs predatory debt are sometimes in the eye of the beholder and a very fine line.

It also reminds me of some of the "I've been paying my student debt for 10 years and the balance went up!" like.. yeah, but it means you paid less than the interest. Would you have been happier paying more for the last 10 years? Like what outcome were you expecting and what college education did you go into debt for that didn't prepare you to have reviewed your monthly statements even once in 10 years to realize this?

There have been several public-interest reports and scorecardings of the readability/unreadability of the language in various consumer/financial contracts (the grade-level required to understand it x the number of minutes/hours to read it).

Yes and ARMs got a simple one-pager treatment post-GFC thanks to the CFPB.

I'm just saying that "6th grade reading level" is extremely basic level of literacy that a lot of contracts probably couldn't be easily communicated to that level.

Agreed. Lots of people/bodies/academics have measured contract readability; I didn't say the US CFPB was the only arbiter.

Lina Khan seems to be one of the bigger contributors to curbing excesses, at least in the domains she's authorized to, and she may not keep her job in the next admin.

(As to ARMs, from the regulator point of view, much of the economic damage done is in the rear-view mirror; the next big thing is presumably student loans.)

    > more than half of the US population reads below the grade 6 level.

I find this hard to believe.