BlueHippo

Ouch!

I guess if you don't mind paying 64% interest on your purchases, I guess it's a good deal.

I looked up an iMac: Apple store (retail without discounts) $1200. Blue Hippo Price: (52x37.99 or $1975).

What a racket!

Here's how it works:
(from their site: http://www.bluehippo.com/ourProgram.asp )

You make 6 weeks of payments (lay-away) before they send you the whachamacallit. Then you can either continue making 46 more weekly payments before you get it or you can finance the difference (even at 0% interest finanancing, you're paying 64% interest because of how they've jacked the sales price up. My guess is that the credit is not at 0%.

You'd be better off putting those payments in the bank and then going shopping in 7 months. Down side: you'd have to wait longer before you get your computer (or whatever). Up side: it's completely paid for when you buy it. No more payments.

 

If the reports at Ripoffreports can be believed, it would be wiser to just use an abacus. Here is a listing of the complaints I have seen over there about Blue Hippo:

1. They don't ship the computer until you have made somewhere between two and six payments, if they ship it at all.

2. The computers are priced at double what they are worth.

3. There is no support

4. The demand automatic debit of the payments and it is impossible to turn these debits off, even after the computer has been paid for.

Keep in mind I have no first-hand experience with Blue Hippo, but based on what I have read at Ripoffreports I wouldn't want to.

 

There are also at least two other possible downsides as well. By the time you actually get the computer someone else will have offered the same thing for less money and technology moves so fast these days that in the length of time it takes for yo to actually get the computer it may very well be almost obsolete or newer accessories might have become available and popular.

It has always been that way. Then they might be using old technology in the first place. An example of that is that I went to a computer store early this week and noticed a USB dongle at about half normal price. I had been looking for one like that for a while so I bought it and had a problem getting it installed. I called the factory support line and found out that they quit making that model 5 years ago. No wonder it was so cheap! So I took it back and got my money back.

Then I went to CompUSA yesterday evening and ran into an old friend I haven't seen in a couple of years and he was looking for the same thing. He ended up buying a NETGEAR dongle that I had been looking at as well. So we went out to his pickup and installed it on his laptop. It worked great but the screens are so hard to read that it makes the item almost worthless.

That saved me $75.00. The point is that BlueHippo just might be using old and outdated parts or you might not like what you get in the end and not be able to do anything about it.

I say don't have anything to do with Blue Hippos. Save up your bucks and buy your own parts and put it together the way you want it. It's easy to do.

 

Financially, you will be paying a very high price for whatever computer you purchase through BlueHippo. Simply do the math.

If you need a computer that badly, save the "payments" you would make with BlueHippo (down payment + 6-7 weeks of payments), and look around for a decent used computer, there are enough out there.

Assess what your actual NEEDS are for the equipment, NOT WANTS! Then purchase accordingly. "Offers" like BlueHippo's just infuriate me, they take complete advantage of those who are down, again, just do the math for what you end up paying, and for what....

 

Let's look at this computer business realistically. You can buy a great case and power supply for about $75.00 or less. You can buy a 100 gig or better hard drive for about $100. Then you need a mother board which you can get for somewhere between $30 and $100 depending on what you want the board to do. A gig of memory will cost about $100 as well. Now you need a monitor which you can get really cheap. Maybe for as little as $5.00 or you can get fancy and spend a couple of hundred or more. Then you will need a CD read/write player which you can get for about $30. And you have a good operating system. So you take the parts home and put them together which don't take a genius to do. Kids can do it and so can you. So if you add it all up you can have a computer system up and running for maybe as little as maybe $550 to $600. Maybe less. And they want how much? Give yourself a break! Go to CompUSA or maybe ComputerClub or other good retail store that sells component parts and forget the Hippos.