Company credit

[VectraMan]

My company is thinking about buying it's own PC rather than borrowing mine (which I think is on it's last legs). Okay so they're pretty cheap these days, but I'm wondering if I apply for credit in the name of my company which has been trading for less than a year whether they'll just laugh at me, or will they check out me as a director and base it on that (and probably laugh at me anyway ).

[AtW]

The credit will surely cost 15-25% pa, why bother especially if the cost is very low, and thus your company should be able to afford it straight away? You can get a decent PC for less than £300 these days, and can include TFT monitor!

[MarillionFan]

"15-25% pa" Where do you get these figures. Did you pluck these out of the air!?! Sheesh

[oraclesmith]

When you say credit do you mean something like Dell Financial Services for small businesses, where you can have leasing, outright purchase etc ? They are running at about 9.7% at the moment according to their budget calculator. If you've been running your bank account properly for a year or so, I'm sure they will allow you a limited amount of credit.

Alternatively you may find that your bank will provide you a startup loan/overdraft facility at a reasonable rate - most startups have to buy IT equipment so they will be used to approaches of this nature. You may have to produce a proper business plan though.

[VectraMan]

When you say credit do you mean something like Dell Financial Services for small businesses, where you can have leasing, outright purchase etc ? They are running at about 9.7% at the moment according to their budget calculator.

Exactly what I mean, but I thought they were doing 0% deals?

Barely worth it I agree. A £300 PC is better than what I have, but when I start speccing up a decent development PC (2GB RAM etc.) it starts getting closer to £800 and that's an extra month of minimum wage salary for me.

I was kind of assuming 0%, in which case there's no downside. If it's going to be 15%-25% then I'd agree that would be stoopid.

[oraclesmith]

As far as I am aware, they offer home users 18.9% and small businesses are about 9.7%. If you are a large business spending more that £10k with them you can get about 2%. For 0%, get a new credit card with 9 or 12 months free credit and charge it to that, then get the business to reimburse you when it can through a directors loan account.

http://www.dell.com/html/emea/dfs/bu...s_plan_uk.html

Small business version.

[AtW]

If credit rate is low it means it is actually built into price: if the price looks competitive then it the quality of the stuff that they compromised, there can simply be no other way around it - the only exception is a loss leader that they use to acquire customers, but then you will be ripped off later to make up for that loss.

[VectraMan]

If credit rate is low it means it is actually built into price:

In which case you'd be stupid not to buy by credit as you're just paying for a benefit you're not getting.

Dell site says 0% until the end of September.

[MarillionFan]

Credit is for poor people. Jeeves give the man some diamonds.

[AtW]

In which case you'd be stupid not to buy by credit as you're just paying for a benefit you're not getting.

No - you buy from another supplier that does not build cost of credit into price.

Credit only makes sense when you can't possibly afford up front payment and you really need it, ie - house. To buy few hundred quid PC in credit is a waste of money because you ought to be able to afford it, and if you don't then you got much bigger problem at hand than just thinking about credit!