You Don't HAVE to be a Victim When Purchasing a Car
Your car dealer must be related to my car dealer because the same scenario happened to me. Here's what I did to eliminate the possibility of a ripoff.
I called my credit union, Digital Federal Credit Union (DCU). I spoke to the consumer loans department and asked for their process to obtain a loan. Then I went to their website to be certain that the information that I received over the phone was the same as indicated on the website. It was. Next, I visited their forum and looked at all of the 1 and 2 star comments to see where others had gone wrong and c/p those comments into a word document. I learned from their mistakes and incorporated steps to insure success. I called the consumer loans department back and explained that I am old-fashioned and needed a pdf copy of the loan application instead of applying digitally.
DCU emailed me a copy of the application. I used the typewriter function in Adobe Acrobat and typed directly into the pdf. You can fill it out by hand if you choose. Along with the app, I turned in the following documentation as suggested by the forum: 1) the Retail Agreement for a Motor Vehicle which I obtained from the dealership that contained the Year, Make, Model and VIN # of the car that I was purchasing; 2) Earnings Statement or copy of a pay stub; 3) copy of my current Financial Responsibility ID card for car insurance, 4) my driver's license-front and back and a Fax Cover Sheet that listed each document in the package.
Then I made sure that each page in the package had the following information hand written on the top of each page:
Auto Loan Application, Current Date
My Name, Member #
My Telephone #, Page # (Page 1 of 6)
One hour after faxing the loan package, I called to verify receipt. I had already been approved for a 65 month loan at 1.99%.
The credit union required NO WARRANTY. Tax, title and all other fees were included on the purchase order or Retail Agreement for a Motor Vehicle do they were rolled into the loan. I asked the credit union to email me a copy of the check which I promptly printed and provided a copy to the dealer. They were stunned.
I walked out with the car that same day as they let me "test drive" the car until the check arrived. Five days later, we closed on the car and I am ONE HAPPILY EMPOWERED NEW CAR OWNER.
I really hope that this helps you take back control. Call your bank or credit union and win on your own terms.
