REAL easy, REALLY easy! One of the easiest things I ever did was refinance my auto loan with DCU. I bought my Chevy Silverado at the beginning of January 2016 and refinanced towards the end of January 2016 before I paid my first payment and my credit score was around 675-690. I'll explain my experience refinancing in detail. And just so you know, DCU hard pulls for membership and hard pulls again if you apply for an auto loan. Expect two hard pulls if you join DCU to refinance you're vehicle. And I believe you just need a score of 675 to get approved for the 3.24% interest loan (or 2.74% with direct deposit into your DCU checking account)
Cheapest way to join DCU is $10 donation to Reach Out to Schools. You can select that on the DCU website as you're appyling for membership when it asks you for eligibility to become a member. No need to go to the reach out for schools website and sign up seperately there. When I appleid for membership it told me I was prequalified for a auto loan up to $20,000 and asked if I wanted to apply for it right now. I decided to not apply right at that moment. Didn't mention I was prequalified for any credit cards or anything else. Checking is free, no monthly maintenance fees, no minimum balance required and you get a free visa debit card. Also DCU participates in shard branching as well (For example I live in Minnesota and can go to a credit union in Minnesota that participates in shared branching and can make deposits/withdrawls as if I were at a local DCU branch, can also use their ATMs to deposit cash and checks if they have automated deposits on their ATMs) I can also instantly deposit cash or checks into my account by using USBank atms that accept automated deposits (I live in MInnesota, USBank atms are in abundance here)
My membership was instantly approved, what I did is I waited a week later then I filled out a loan for an auto loan on their website in the middle of the night (I'm a night owl work 8:30pm-7:30 am and am always awake in the middle of the night) Right away in the morning they called me, told me based on my credit report and score they could approve me for my requested amount at 3.24% interest(I requested $8600 because my current balance on my auto loan with my now previous lender was between $8500 and 8600) I accepted, and she told me she could do 48 months at $xxx per month, and I told her I currently had a 36 month loan and would prefer to do 36 months, and that was not a problem. Then she verified the info I filled out online such as the VIN number, etc. and asked a few questions like what the mileage on my vehicle is, any customizations done to it, etc. Then she transferred me to the person who processed my loan, I gave them the name of my current lender, their address and the phone number and account number and asked if I had requested a payoff amount from them. I did not, and she told me she could call them for me (Awesome!) I waited on hold for like a minute or two, she came back and told me she had successfully gotten my payoff amount. She told me she would immediately email an electronic document I just had to electornically sign (took like 20 seconds after I hung up) and they said as soon as I sign it they would send my current lender a check to pay my loan off. In less then 2 weeks my old loan was paid off and I got a letter in the mail from them saying my loan has been paid off and that they were transferring my title to the financial instiution that paid my loan off. So happy DCU was able to pay it off before I had to make my first payment with my original lender!
And she asked if I wanted to sign up for direct deposit and I could get my rate reduced to 2.74% (.5% interest discount for direct deposit) I told them since I just signed up for DCU membership like a week ago I hadn't done so yet but will that week, she said she will give me the 2.74% rate and said I got 90 days (or 60, can't remember for sure) to sign up for direct deposit or my rate will simply just go back up to 3.24%. Also told me I was preapproved for a credit card with a $1000 credit limit which I denied (not sure if that would of been an additional hardpull, I didn't ask, also don't know what kind of interest rate I would of got on it)
One other thing I want to mention, I have heard that DCU only finances and refinances vehicles less then 10 years old, and wants the loan paid off by the time it's 12 years old (It's just what I've heard, not sure how true it is) But I have a 2006 Chevy Silverado (10 years old) with over 184,000 miles at the time I applied for the refinance, and she first offered me a 48 month loan (that would make my truck 14 years old when the loan is paid off assuming I don't pay it off early) I told her I had 36 months at my current lender and would prefer to keep it at 36 months and that was not a problem. Not sure how ironclad their rules on the age of the vehicles that they finance or refinance, but based on my experience they're quite flexible.
Anyways, hope this helps. Extremely simple process. If I knew it was this simple I would of applied for an auto loan from DCU from the start rather then get financing through the dealer, but I'm 23 and it was my first time buying a vehicle that wasn't a cheap beater I paid in full with cash and just went through the dealer because I thought getting my own auto loan would be complicated, confusing, and time consuming. Ended up getting approved at almost 13% interest from the dealer, and never again will I use dealer financing.
The thing that really rubbed me the wrong way was the finance guy at the dealer never disclosed what my interest rate was, just the monthly payment he approved me at. When I was signing the papers and saw what the rate was, he made it seem like 13% interest was an amazing rate for a credit score in the high 600s and acted like he performed a miracle and had to pull numerous strings to get me approved for that rate and made it seem like I would never in a million years be able to find a lower rate then that.
Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Filed-September 2020 Discharged-December 2020
