{"id":25145,"date":"2016-07-22T10:54:03","date_gmt":"2016-07-22T17:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/?p=25145"},"modified":"2016-07-22T10:54:03","modified_gmt":"2016-07-22T17:54:03","slug":"amazon-subprime-the-latest-prime-perk-is-student-loans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/bens-bytes\/amazon-subprime-the-latest-prime-perk-is-student-loans\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon SubPrime? The latest Prime Perk is Student Loans"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"student-debt-amazon\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Actually opting into the PR nightmare of associating the retail giant\u00a0with the much-despised, private student loan industry, Amazon entered into a tentative partnership<\/a> with Wells Fargo to offer students an additional half percentage point off interest rates on private student loans.<\/p>\n

While paying less interest over time is certainly a good thing, private student loans lack a significant number of protections that federal student loans offer. In addition, interest rates are typically higher than\u00a0federal student loans, thus a half percentage point may not amount to much of anything.<\/p>\n

While Wells Fargo is allowing students a 6-month grace period after leaving colleges to start paying back loans (similar to federal loans), a higher interest rate means more interest is piling up while the student is in school.<\/p>\n

In addition, federal loans offer the option of loan forgiveness as well as income-based repayment over time, something that banks won’t consider with private student loans. Many private student loan lenders also alter the terms of the deal if a payment is missed, such as raising the interest rate; definitely not ideal for someone taking out $50,000+ in student loans.\u00a0 (Read about more differences here.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Presumably, Amazon and Wells Fargo have looked at data about Amazon Prime Student members and have some to conclusion that\u00a0this is a good bet in terms of repayment. Unfortunately, it’s probably not great for\u00a0Amazon Prime Student members.<\/p>\n

You can read more about the partnership here<\/a>. It doesn’t appear to be open to regular Amazon Prime members, only Amazon Prime Student members. Amazon offers a 6-month free trial to students<\/a>, then discounts the regular purchase price of Amazon Prime by 50 percent until the student graduates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Actually opting into the PR nightmare of associating the retail giant\u00a0with the much-despised, private student loan industry, Amazon entered into a tentative partnership with Wells Fargo to offer students an additional half percentage point off interest rates on private student loans. While paying less interest over time is certainly a good thing, private student loans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[537,685,1573,1572,1575,1571,1574],"class_list":["post-25145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bens-bytes","tag-amazon","tag-amazon-prime","tag-banks","tag-lending","tag-loan","tag-student-loans","tag-wells-fargo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25145"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25156,"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25145\/revisions\/25156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensbargains.com\/thecheckout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}