Posted 6th Mar 2021
I've used Amazon's 'pay in 5 monthly instalments' payment option many times in the past, never missing a payment. Previous items I've used it for include PC motherboards, processors, speakers, headphones and an office chair. Nowadays it seems to only be available for Amazon-owned brands - so the Echo, Fire, Kindle and Blink range...and not much else. Anyone know why? Amazon customer services couldn't really say why.
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sorted byJust to add. All I have is my banks visa debit card attached to my account. I have prime as well. So that probably goes into the mix. But I suspect it is a algorithm like you've alluded too.
It’s all based on eligibility, past payment history and they do also have a limit as to how many items per category you can have it on, I think for anything non-Amazon made/owned it is 1 per category.
Example, when I bought my iPhone 12 Pro via monthly payments, no other phone was available, same when I’ve bought Apple watches in the past.
Specific terms are here - amazon.co.uk/gp/…050
Happened to me, so I contacted Amazon about it....turns out if you've had any issue in the past with a payment that option gets removed.
In my case I used to use a pre-paid MasterCard and the balance was few pence short...my fault.
Amazon will restore the option if you contact them..
Interesting. I've never had payment issues but have paid off some monthly plans early. I wonder if the latter has set a flag on my account. Customer services insist there is nothing they can do and that "We are unable to share the reasons behind eligibility requirements or changes to it with customers for legal reasons"... (edited)
Hiding behind data protection
I wouldn't think so - I've paid off most of mine early, and still get offered them.
So confusing. Have you moved address or returned many items?
Nope, same address for more than a decade on Amazon now. No recent payment methods changes either. As for returns I wouldn't say unusually high amount. In the last year there was over 200 orders and of those maybe 5 returns if I had to guess. So who knows.
Hah, so can I. Checked just now after getting notifcaiton of post. (edited)
Just curious how long they took to show up again? I usually just let the payments run their course for the few Amazon devices I’ve had in the past and never really paid attention to how long it took for the option to show again. This time it was an iPad but paid it off a couple of months early a few days ago and the option hasn’t shown up again yet.
I don’t have my eye on anything right now just a handy feature to have.
Everything I've observed since first looking in to this leads me to believe there is a limit to how many instalment plans a customer can take each fiscal year, and that allowance gets reset at some point annually. For me and the last commenter I replied to, this reset seemed to occur around the same time (see date of my last comment). Amazon are extremely tight lipped about the whole thing so I could be totally wrong.
Anecdotally it seems like offers on Apple products are there one day and gone the next.
This is on a 35 quid hotwheels set.