Horizon Gold Credit Card Review

Valerie Fulton – Contributing Writer Last Updated: April 1, 2020

at Horizon Gold’s secure website

The Horizon Gold Credit Card is a starter card for people looking to tap into an unsecured line of credit. This catalog card comes with a $500 line of unsecured credit, allowing you to purchase items from the issuer’s catalog, the Horizon Outlet. The catalog sells women’s and men’s clothing, kids’ clothing, toys and home goods. The prices are generally comparable with Walmart, so if cardholders take advantage of Doorbusters sales, they can get good deals on select merchandise even once the delivery and signature verification fees are factored in.

Horizon Gold Credit Card has some additional perks in the form of roadside assistance, prescription drug discounts and legal assistance. It is easy to get approved for the credit card, even if you have bad or limited credit — in fact, there’s no employment or credit check. The application is simple to fill out, and you’ll be approved online as soon as you complete it.

What we like about the Horizon Gold Credit Card

No employment or credit check needed.
Horizon Gold Credit Card reports to at least one credit bureau every 30 days, so using the card will help you to build credit.
There is a 0% APR rate on purchases made with the card.
The card offers some perks, such as limited roadside assistance (three times annual, for a maximum amount of $50 each time), a 30-minute free legal consultation and prescription drug discounts.

Things to consider

Horizon Gold Credit Card is a type of private-label card, meaning that you can only use it to make purchases from the Horizon Gold catalog.
The $24.95 membership fee, auto-debited from your bank account each month, adds up to a steep $299.40 annual fee a year.
There are additional residential delivery and “signature verification” fees — for a total of $4.50 — each time you have catalog merchandise delivered to your home.
Although the card offers prescription drug discounts of up to 40% through My Universal RX, you won’t find out if your medications are discounted or if your local pharmacy participates until you become a cardmember.
Catalog merchandise is fairly priced but limited in stock.

Catalog card details

Catalog cards are a type of private-label card that allow the cardholder only to purchase items from one retail outfit. In particular, the Horizon Gold Credit Card will allow you to purchase anything at the Horizon Outlet. Most catalog cards do not always report to the three main credit bureaus, so if you want to build credit using this type of card, you need to read the terms carefully. Luckily, the Horizon Gold Credit Card does report to at least one major credit bureau once every 30 days.

A catalog card should not be confused with co-branded insignia credit cards, which have an arrangement with a retailer but allow you to make purchases wherever the insignia is accepted. In fact, catalog cards are not really credit cards. A better way to think of them is a line of store credit with some additional benefits.

Both private-label and catalog cards are easier to qualify for than co-branded or premium credit cards, but they can leave you limited in your purchase options or stuck with recurring membership fees. A better option for people with bad credit, or for those looking to build their credit, is a secured credit card.

Horizon Gold Credit Card fees

Horizon Gold Credit Card charges a $24.95 membership fee that is deducted automatically from your bank account each month. If you can’t make this payment for whatever reason, you will be demoted to the basic starter benefits plan, which charges a $6.95 membership fee and a $6 maintenance fee each month. The benefits with the basic membership are essentially the same; you just don’t get roadside assistance.

Other fees include a $2.00 delivery fee each time you order from the catalog and a $2.50 “signature verification” fee once the merchandise arrives at your door. There is also a $15 card validation fee, a $20 late payment fee and a $25 NSF check fee.

How does it compare to other catalog or secured cards?

Horizon Gold Credit Card gives cardholders an unsecured $500 line of credit, which is more generous than most cards for people with bad credit. Although it has a smaller initial line of credit, the Fingerhut Credit Account issued by WebBank has virtually no fees. If you can afford a security deposit, Discover it® Secured is probably the best deal overall, though, because you can use it wherever Discover is accepted and earn cash back on purchases. Take a look at how these three cards compare with each other below.

Card	Annual Fee	Intro Bonus	Credit Needed	Key features
Horizon Gold Credit Card	$24.95 benefits plan membership will be auto-debited monthly	None	Poor	Unsecured $500 line of credit
Fingerhut Credit Account issued by WebBank	N/A	None	Poor	Reports to credit bureaus
Discover it® Secured	See Terms	Discover automatically matches all the cash back you’ve earned at the end of your first year.	No Credit History	2% cash back at gas stations and restaurants on up to $1,000 in combined purchases every quarter, automatically. Plus, earn unlimited 1% cash back on all other purchases.

Too long, didn’t read?

Horizon Gold Credit Card is an ideal card for dedicated bargain shoppers who have bad credit and rely on online purchases. It’s easy to be approved, and the merchandise offered through Horizon Outlet is reasonably priced. Due to its steep monthly membership fee, though, this catalog card should only be considered if you’ve failed to qualify for other comparable cards. Even then, it’s only a good deal for those who specifically want to shop at the Horizon Outlet.

Please Note: Information about the Discover it® Secured has been collected independently by TheSimpleDollar.com. The issuer did not provide the details, nor is it responsible for their accuracy.

Editorial Note: Compensation does not influence our recommendations. However, we may earn a commission on sales from the companies featured in this post. To view our disclosures, click here. Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by our advertisers. Reasonable efforts are made to present accurate info, however all information is presented without warranty. Consult our advertiser’s page for terms & conditions.

Methodology

SimpleScore

The SimpleScore is a proprietary scoring metric we use to objectively compare products and services at The Simple Dollar.

For every review, our editorial team:

Identifies five measurable aspects to compare across each brand
Determines the rating criteria for each aspect score
Averages the five aspect scores to produce a single SimpleScore

Here’s a breakdown of the five aspect scores and their rating criteria for our review of the best credit monitoring services of 2020.

Why do some brands have different SimpleScores on different pages?

To ensure the SimpleScore is as helpful and accurate as possible, we developed unique criteria for every category we compare at The Simple Dollar. Since most brands offer a variety of financial solutions, their products and services will score differently depending on what we’re scoring on a given page.

However, it’s also possible for brands to have different SimpleScores across multiple pages on The Simple Dollar. For instance, if we compare Experian’s ID theft monitoring services using SimpleScore, it scores a 4 out of 5. However, if we apply our SimpleScore methodology for credit monitoring services, Experian scores a 4.4 out of 5. Each unique criteria results in separate SimpleScores for multiple brands based on what we’re comparing.

Questions about our methodology?

Email Hayley Armstrong at hayley@thesimpledollar.com.

Basic plan price

We award brands who have lower monthly costs for credit monitoring services with higher scores in our methodology.

Premium plan price

We award brands who have lower monthly costs for credit monitoring services with higher scores in our methodology.

Perks

Who doesn’t like a nice perk? We awarded brands with higher scores if they offered perks to customers, such as free trials, family plans, discounts for annual billing and more than two pricing tiers.

Customer support

The SimpleScore system rewards brands that have multiple channels of support so customers can contact representatives in a variety of way.

Mobile app rating

We compared brands based on their mobile app ratings as an average of Google Play and iOS App Store ratings.

Valerie Fulton is a freelance writer who specializes in personal finance, real estate, higher education, home improvement and business copy.
Her work has been published at Veros Real Estate Solutions, Bluehost, Sears, UPS, Movoto, Peak Communications and the University of Tennessee. Every summer, she travels from Austin, Texas to the coast of Maine with her two standard poodles in order to manage the vacation property she bought for a steal several years ago.

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