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Payoff iPhone Early

Citizens one does not allow you to payoff your loan early online or make any payment adjustments for that matter. What the deal?? Please don't answer with, "you can call their customer service number". That should not be necessary...

iPhone XS

Posted on Sep 24, 2019 6:49 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 25, 2019 7:57 AM

All I have been saying is that no USA bank will stop anyone from paying off a zero percent consumer loan at whatever rate they wish to pay it off. You can pay the thing off over the full term, a shorter term by higher payments, or all at once, at any time within the term limits. No bank will stop you from doing that - so there is always a way to do it, via a web account with the Bank, a phone call, a walk-in appointment, whatever. It’s actually in their interest to get their money back sooner than later since the default debit payment schedule already ensures payment within the zero percent terms, so they are not making money on most of these loans in the first place.


So when people post here asking can they pay their Apple upgrade program loan or their Apple finance loan off early, I always tell them yes, because there is always a way to do it. And the terms of your loan should include how to do it, although no one seems to read or even keep those terms documents you receive when you finance.


For interest bearing loans, a Bank can impose early pay-off fees to offset the lost interest revenue, although again, they rarely would stop you or refuse your early payment or pay off as that is why they built in the prepayment fee in the loan terms (so they still come out ahead).

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 25, 2019 7:57 AM in response to dclangston

All I have been saying is that no USA bank will stop anyone from paying off a zero percent consumer loan at whatever rate they wish to pay it off. You can pay the thing off over the full term, a shorter term by higher payments, or all at once, at any time within the term limits. No bank will stop you from doing that - so there is always a way to do it, via a web account with the Bank, a phone call, a walk-in appointment, whatever. It’s actually in their interest to get their money back sooner than later since the default debit payment schedule already ensures payment within the zero percent terms, so they are not making money on most of these loans in the first place.


So when people post here asking can they pay their Apple upgrade program loan or their Apple finance loan off early, I always tell them yes, because there is always a way to do it. And the terms of your loan should include how to do it, although no one seems to read or even keep those terms documents you receive when you finance.


For interest bearing loans, a Bank can impose early pay-off fees to offset the lost interest revenue, although again, they rarely would stop you or refuse your early payment or pay off as that is why they built in the prepayment fee in the loan terms (so they still come out ahead).

Sep 25, 2019 7:23 AM in response to Michael Black

Michael, I saw that you replied a few times to the same question asked a couple years ago. Respectfully, you are absolutely wrong. There is no way to pay more than your normal monthly payment online. You are right that it makes sense that you should be able to, but you cannot. I just called and spent 20 minutes on the phone paying off the balance and I asked why we cannot do it online at the end of the call and the Rep responded that it’s because they must verbally go over the customer agreement. (Sorry for the run-on sentence)


If you go go onto their website to prove me wrong, you will see the option to “make a payment”. When you click on this (on every browser I tried) it gives you the option to change your payment account, nothing else. I wonder if the “make a payment” link is just on the website to let Apple think that they’ve given their customers an option to pay online. When in actuality, they haven’t.


Please check for yourself, Michael. And then you’ll be able to answer this question more accurately in the future.


Kind Regards,

David

Sep 25, 2019 3:01 PM in response to dclangston

Oh ok. That’s what I’m doing for my iPhone 11 Pro Max but preorder didn’t give me the option to pay it all off so I have to wait until the online system allows me to in Oct 4th (I’m dealing with carrier financing though and technically could get customer service to allow me to pay it off over the phone. I prefer doing it online to avoid any accidental crediting the account versus the device. Had it happen in the past and it was a pain to straighten out). Know you mentioned not to say call Cs but it may be what you have to do. That’s not an Apple issue so much as a financing issue and it’s likely they can make their own rules. Only thing I’ve seen be consistent is that you can’t change your financing (like out a down payment after the fact or change the amount you pay each month to try and speed up payoff)

Sep 24, 2019 8:16 PM in response to dclangston

Yes you can. You can choose to pay as much as you wish to. It’s a zero percent consumer loan. Citizens One gets the exact same amount of money if payed off over the term limits or at any given time before that, so they could not care less if you pay off early or not. Go online to your account with them - https://www.citizensone.com/Auto-Finance/customer-service/pay-my-loan.aspx and pay as much as you like.

Sep 25, 2019 2:50 PM in response to dclangston

If you’re wanting to just pay more than your normal device payment but not pay the entire balance off immediately then I’m not sure anyone lets you do it unfortunately. Even carrier financing limits you to either making your monthly payment, paying the full balance, or paying the trade-in eligibility amount (half of the retail price). You would have to make a down payment at the time of purchase if you were trying to make the monthly payments less. Not sure of the rules of the specific one you mentioned but they all seem to be following the same policy.

Payoff iPhone Early

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