Good Morning everyone. The title says it all. Buy Here Pay Here Dealers are popping up everywhere and they are very lucrative to the consumers eye. Small down payments sometimes none at all, no hassles with traditional banks running credit checks and the ability to drive away that day with a car of your choice. This all sounds great to a person who has sub-prime credit and cant go the traditional avenue of banking. Well take it from me while it seems like a great idea and maybe you have little or no choice to visit one of these dealers, but here is a little inside info for you. I am an auto repossessor. Yes the Repo Man I'm the guy that comes in the middle of the night and takes your valuable possession while your not looking. I have been doing this for the past 11 years and in the past 4 years seen the highest repo rate ever. Economic times takes a toll on everyone.
Now don't get me wrong I have taken vehicles from people living in million dollar homes driving brand new Mercedes BMW and Lexus, heck last week I took possession of a gentleman's Maserati, he was 5 months behind and had been hiding for all that time but he made a fatal error leaving his car out one night at a friends house. Anyway thats not the point of my post . My adventures are not relevant here, My point is the economy is hard on everyone and people are being forced to pursue these what I call Predatory Vultures. These dealers will do whatever they can to get you in a car. The offers you receive from them seem to good to be true, because frankly they are. Sure not having a month payment sounds great, and low monthly payments can be enticing but at what interest rate? Some are higher than credit cards. The lure of these delaers is almost to good for most people to passs up. What people may not know is how quickly all that can go down hill super fast.
My company deals with a lot of these buy here vultures because well lets face it the default rate currently is more than 30% (based on three dealers I currently service). Thats great for me right? No not really. I'm not the evil jerk who takes your car because I get great satisfction from it, it's my job and to be perfectly honest if it wasn't for people like me nobody would be able to finance a vehicle regardless of your credit standings. Banks and lenders need to know there is someway they will get their collateral back if the buyer defaults. If there were no repo men banks are not going to lend money to people. Come on think about it. What people may not know is a lot if not all buy here pay here dealers place GPS devices on every car sold. This is for me and other repo men to find your car no matter where it is in real time.
You see these dealers give you the car you want fully aware of your financial history. They say NO CREDIT CHECK or YOUR JOB IS YOUR CREDIT. Well trust me when I tell you they know your credit and know about everything without pulling an actual report. This is done through a program offered by one of the 3B's (legally I cannot name who it is for privacy regulations) and its called a TLO. A TLO is basically the same system that the CRA's use to perform soft pulls and not affect your credit report. This TLO will tell us your entire history. Your credit cards, your mortage, if there is any judgements past or present and any defaults you have had in the past. This even tells us if you have ever been convicted of a felony before. For anyone that doesnt believe me you can Google TLO and it will tell you what it is. In order to run this service companies and all its employees must be State and Federally Bonded going through several credit and background checks before being issued a license to use this.
So the dealer when you come in will have a copy of your license and makes a copy of it. This is done for you to take the car for a test drive. Thats when your TLO is ran, and all your information is gathered by the time you come back. Literally it takes 30 seconds to pull up everything about the person. So when you come back the dealer already knows what kind of risk you are what you can and cant afford and knows the probabliity of you defaulting on your car payment. I know this because I have witnessed it several times. I have seen someone who the dealer knows dang well cant afford the payment but doesnt care because the deposit the customer gives is a done deal, thats profit already. When that customer came in they were given the car at an interest rate that could make a hippo choke and paid their $500 deposit. The cusotmer walked out the door with a car that they couldnt afford and drove away.
Now this is not only the fault of the dealer, I mean lets face it they didnt force you to come and buy a car that day, the consumer had to know the payment was something they couldnt afford. Like I said in the beginning the Vulture Dealers offer some mighty nice incentives for people who are struggling to make ends meet. People in dispair do whatever needs to be done to take care of their families and themselves. But I can tell you one thing for sure, the sales person who sold you that car does not care its all about the bottom line and making the sale. You have to care about yourself enough and be resposnible enough to make not the best decsion but the RIGHT decision concerning your needs. I will say it again IF IT LOOKS TO GOOD TO BE TRUE THAN IT PROBABLY IS
Now I cant speak for everyone and their situations, and sure some people have come back and paid off their car loan completely and never ran into this problem. I am only talking from my experiences when I say thats a very very few that do this without missing a payment. Most of these dealers will allow one payment to be late, you will get a phone call or a letter, what people don't know is when a dealer is a buy here pay here service they are doing in house financing by themselves and are not bound by the same structures traditional banks are. There are a few dealers who stipulate right in the sales contract that your vehicle can be repossessed if you miss one single payment. Is this legal. In most states yes, because as I said they are in house financing and second you signed the sales agreement acknowledging it, Please always read all the fine print before you sign,
I repo for a dealer that actually owns the repo company, so I am familiar with almost every vehicle that leaves the dealership. I see these vehicles every day while I am driving around so I know the driving patterns and where they get gas where they shop who they visit, all that. So you te customer should be aware that dealers know everywhere you go and dont just rely on the GPS in your car. By the way removal of the GPS device will result in an automatic default of your agreement and your vehicle will be repossessed immediately without warning. Also note that just because you remove one doesnt mean there isn't more on that vehicle.
I am not writing this to receive any thank you's from people who are thinking about this or by me posting warnings and how to beat the system. I posted this because people need to be more aware of whats going on in these dealers and how one late payment and a repossession can do to you both financially and to your credit report. Heres another bit of info you might not know. Any dealer who sells less than 1000 vehicles a year does not and cannot offer you reporting to a credit agency, so it wont help your report or scores, on the flip side of that the same dealers cannot and do not report missed payments or repossessions to the credit agency's either. I hope this sheds a little more light on the reality of Buy Here Pay Here dealers and Loans and how the repossession industry makes a ton of business and money from them.
By the way the person i mentioned in paragraph 5 did in fact default three months later and I had to repossess his vehicle. The dealer made $500 from the deposit got two months of payments for the vehicle and then got the vehicle back and resold it a couple weeks later. That my friends is how the Buy Here Pay Here game is truly played.
Thank You all for reading this post I hope it was informative. All your comments and responses are welcome. Please don't belittle me for being a repo man its just my job I find no satisfaction by taking peoples cars. And NO its not like you see on TV we are not LIZARD LICK. Have a Blessed Day to You ALL
That's a crappy job. *puts sunglasses on face*