I was over at a friend’s house the other day and saw that she’d gotten a Fingerhut catalog.
It had come to her home in the name of a previous resident. But seeing it brought back memories of how, for me, Fingerhut served as a ticket into young-adult independence.
Fingerhut was, and still is, a credit catalog. Yes, the thing with credit catalogs is that you get merchandise - some of it bearing obscure labels and sometimes questionable quality - for higher prices than you’d pay for it outright, for interest at nearly a quarter on the dollar, and for shipping charges that are as inflated as the prices. But you get to have new clothes, a nice bauble or electronic item for low payments each month. Just about every elderly woman I knew received catalogs from what they called “Fangahut.” Go to their homes and there one or more copies would be, perched on the coffee table with Old Pueblo Traders, Blair and other catalogs that catered to the 50-pluscrowd.
The Fingerhut catalog seemed to be one of those little pieces of Americana. For years, I wondered how the company got its name. These days, you can find out such things instantly via a keyword search on the Internet: Fingerhut - which means thimble (“finger hat”) and was used as an occupational name for a tailor - was the surname of brothers William and Manny, who got their start in 1948 selling car seat covers. The company became a mail-order catalog in 1952, offering an expanded collection of merchandise. Since its inception, it has been owned by a handful of parent companies and is considered one of the biggest of its kind.
If my memory serves me, the first thing I ordered from Fingerhut was an unimpressive set of towels. As I continued to order things, and paid them off, the catalog offerings got bigger, fancier, more expensive. I found out the company not only had cheap household linens, they had furniture. Cookware. Electronics. I ordered accordingly.
The Fingerhut folks were nice … but firm if you didn’t pay. One collection call came after a major ice storm that left my folks and me stuck, without electricity, for about a week and a half in our isolated home in Woodson. We couldn’t go anywhere or watch/ listen to anything. But by golly, the Fingerhut collections lady was able to phone all the way from Minnesota wanting to know when I would pay, and refusing to take any vague answers.
But the relationship with Fingerhut continued, with the sailing smooth for the most part.
I’ll always be grateful to the company for offering insurance on its bigger-ticket items, and being grateful to myself for having sense enough to buy insurance on some pricey Minolta camera equipment that ended up stolen by whoever it was doing his free shopping in my folks’ home a couple of times in a six-month span back in the mid-1980s.
The last thing I ordered was a no-name computer in the mid-1990s. The thing worked so badly, I wanted to sail it out of my third-floor apartment window. I did end up sailing it into the dumpster.
Nowadays, Fingerhut goods can be perused online. You can get some pretty high-dollar, fancy-schmancy cameras, TVs and other electronic items bearing such well-known names as Nikon, Cannon, Magnavox, Toshiba and (gasp) Apple, and such vastly obscure, ominous-sounding labels as Coby (whose, oh dear, name comes from deleting the “w” and second “o” in Cowboy, according to an online source) and GPX (whose name is, I guess, better than the “Dick Proctor Imports” moniker it started out with). Judging from buyers’ reviews, the quality of the household linens is still a mixed bag; judging from the Internet complaint boards, Fingerhut itself remains one. Depending on whom you talk to, it can help rebuild your credit or screw it up by mistake.
Like other credit accounts, Fingerhut makes it easy enough for you to get in over your head. “The key to buying products from this company is it is affordable if you buy just one or two items and pay on them,” writes “psyhicmike” on creditkarma.com. “They heavily over-market their catalogs to get you to buy more than one item at a time and max out your limit fast.” My added advice: Stick to the brands you’ve actually heard of, especially if you order a computer.
And if you’re a youngster now and this old world is around for a few more decades, expect to have your own misty watercolor memories of “Fangahut” … that is, if it’s not still perched comfortably on your coffee table. Give yourself some credit by sending an e-mail: hwilliams@arkansasonline.com
Style, Pages 45 on 07/07/2013