Horizon Gold Card Review

Who can use Horizon Gold?

The Horizon Gold Card is a card for anyone who wants to rebuild their credit score. This card gives you access to $500 of credit to help improve your credit score. However, this is not your normal credit card. You can only spend the $500 at the horizon outlet. For anyone that wants to use this as their main credit card to rebuild their credit score this is not for you. There are also many other secured credit cards that could potentially do the job better. 

Cardholders do receive some benefits with this card. You receive roadside protection or the privacy protection plan which can help report your information to major credit bureaus. To get these benefits you have to pay $24.95 monthly which is about the same amount of money you pay to get a credit card on one of the major card networks. There are many fees associated with this card, so you must do some research to know if this card is the one for you. Sometimes, there are better-secured credit cards that can improve your credit without significant drawbacks.

Benefits

There are some benefits that cardholders get with the Horizon Gold Card. The first being they do not look at your credit score when you apply. If you had bad credit, you can still apply for this card and work to build your credit up. This card also reports your information to major credit bureaus to ensure that you are constantly improving your credit score. For students or younger people, this can be crucial for moving to better credit cards with bigger rewards packages. 

As a cardholder, you also get a $500 credit line at 0% interest rate so you are not incurring any extra costs from the extended credit. However, you must be wary that this credit line can only be spent at the Horizon outlet store which limits your options greatly. This is absolutely not the card if you want a card you can use on your everyday purchases. You have to pay attention to the fees, and what you can actually spend the money on. 

As a card, since one of the main target audience are people with bad credit, Horizon Card Services does not attempt to verify your unemployment or check your credit standing when you apply for this card and further accounts for 0% interest charges (APRs) on purchases.

Further benefits include: 

• Privacy Protection Program - receiving a free annual credit report to help manage debts (however you can receive free ones from other portals like AnnualCreditReport.com)
• Prescription benefits - you can receive up to 40% off on your prescribed medication using the ‘My Universal Rx’ but this is only after you sign up for the card
• Roadside Protection - provides up to 3 service calls, towing request for 15 miles and operator costs up to $50 (but only one call in 30 day period)
• Legal assistance plan - you receive one 30 mins consultation with a lawyer for any area of interest

Fees

This card comes with an exorbitant amount of fees. First, you have to pay $24.95 a month for the Horizon Gold membership and then only will you have access to benefits such as roadside assistance and other discounts. This cost can amount to $300 a year and rival the price of actual secured credit cards from major networks, and this can be considered more than the price paid for a good, secured card. 

When you order from the horizon outlet there are also delivery fees that you need to pay that are not included in your credit line. There is a $3.50 signature verification and a $2.00 residential delivery fee. If you were to order from this store it would still cost you money that is not in your credit line. It is important to consider whether you need the horizon outlet store or you can use the same amount of money and put it towards a different secured card. 

The card also has a $5.00 one time card issuance fee with a $25.00 fee for each bounced check. There are many fees associated with this card that can cause the cost of this card to go significantly up. You must consider whether this money could be put towards a better card before going with this one. 

Further Horizons doesn’t cover expensive shipping costs and other range of merchandises including household products, clothing apparel, technology and financial services. Shipping costs are only covered by Visa or Mastercard supported credit cards (and Horizon is neither). The range of merchandise can mainly be purchased from the Horizons Outlet stores which offers many products but none of which can be considered competitive.

Further information can be found on https://www.horizoncardservices.com/.

Conclusion

The Horizon Gold Card is for anyone who needs to improve their credit score, but it should be noted it is not the best card on the market. There are many other cards with more benefits and freedom for the same price. It is important to consider if this card will actually be useful to you in the long run. The minimal benefits that come with this card do not outweigh the negatives.