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Smart Shopper Buy Here, Pay Here
328 messages, Last post on Jul 19, 2009 at 7:42 PM
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Replying to: qbrozen (Oct 12, 2006 5:39 am) It's evident that the financial means of most of the posters here, does not allow for a discussion of BHPH lots from a consumers point of view.
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Replying to: qbrozen (Oct 12, 2006 5:39 am)
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Replying to: bls2753 (Dec 15, 2006 1:38 am) |
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Replying to: bobst (Dec 15, 2006 7:12 am)
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Replying to: qbrozen (Dec 15, 2006 7:22 am)
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Replying to: bobst (Dec 15, 2006 6:26 pm) |
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Replying to: occupant1 (Nov 25, 2006 6:49 pm) Also - is the BHPH lot reporting your credit so that you can repair your credit? Hopefully you are making all your payments on time and if the dealer is making reports that will help repair your credit. |
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I've had pretty good luck with the few times I've done business with BH PH places. I'm not counting when I've walked in and bought an older car for cash. I dealt with one in Marietta, GA called Georgia Motors. They were a bit over-priced if you had to finace, but not insanely so. I called in advance once when I was having some money issues and got them to wait about a week and a half on a payment. They were very pleasant and very open on any issues the cars had. After all a $2000 dollar car WILL have problems. I know this, I'm a good mechanic, just tell me what to expect out of it and I'm okay with that. I'd cheerfully do business with them again if circumstances dictated and we hadn't moved to Louisville. As a basic rule of thumb: If the finance price is more than double what the car is worth...you may not wanna deal with that particular lot. There are a couple around here that are just horrible...
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Replying to: confused1096 (Mar 09, 2007 5:53 pm) Biggest thing a BHPH guy is looking for is a car that will out run the note, and they never let you get one paid for. When you come in to make your third to last $50 weekly payment they trade you into something else. I have learned one thing on this web site, allot of people look at things from only there point of view and not from others. What I mean is, Just because you can pay cash does not mean every one can. Just because you can afford to keep a $3000 emergency fund in the bank in case of repairs does not mean every one can. Just because you did not need GAP insurance does not mean every body doesn't Just because you qualify for a better rate then 19% does not mean every body does Etc, Etc, I am not saying any one person in particular, that just seems to be the general theme some times. |
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So since most of these places don't care if you pay for the car, as long as they got their down payment and they got the car back, I'm thinking they're acting as rental agents for beaters! I figure it this way. You pick out a nice low mileage '99 Taurus, it's $700 down, $75 a week, 78 weeks, total price $4995+ttl+interest, comes to $6400 altogether. You'd be making payments on that car, and say the transmission gives out after a few months. Now you have choices. One, you can fix the car out of your own pocket ($2000), continue making payments and end up spending $8400 for a $2000 car over the course of the remaining 12 months of payments. Two, you can have the dealership fix the car (probably with a junkyard transmission) and tack the $2000 onto your payments and you end up spending more like $8700 for the car with the added interest. Three, you can tell them to stick it, you're only out $1675 thus far, and you take a few hundred and go to another lot and get another car. They don't check your credit, so who cares, right? That car lot had a lot less than $1675 in the Taurus anyway. If the down payment was $700, that's probably about what they had in it. They can scrap the car and still be way ahead, or drop in another transmission from one of the dozen Tauruses they have sitting out back with various broken parts, and sell it to someone else. Or sell it as a mechanic's special for cash. Or fix it right and sell it with a higher down payment. They've made their money from the down payment, so every payment you make is profit to them. So those of us (my dear wife) who simply MUST have a newer model car, but don't have any credit worth speaking of, we just head to a BHPH, pick out something she likes, and if it lasts to the end of the note, terrific. If it craps out, no problem, we go find her something else. If we can't make the payments, it gets repossessed, and we save up for another down payment. If the note tries to switch us to another car, we consider it, as if it were another car purchase, which it kinda is. The key to BHPH *IS* finding a car that will last to the end of the note. My new motto is that "GM cars run bad longer than most cars run at all!" So Aleros and Malibus and Impalas and Grand Ams and Luminas are what we look for. The second key to BHPH is to get the lowest down payment and weekly payment possible, without getting overcharged for the car itself. Examples: 1996 Lumina, $500dn, $50/wk, asking price $4995 1997 Lumina, $700dn, $65/wk, asking price $3995 1998 Lumina, $1200dn, $75/wk, asking price $3995 1999 Lumina, $1000dn, $75/wk, asking price $5995 2001 Lumins, $1000dn, $75/wk, asking price $8995 If you can handle the down payment, that '98 is the best deal of those four. The '99 is overpriced compared to the '98, and unless the condition of the car is light years better, the '98 is probably fine. The '96 has cheap payments, BUT look at the asking price, a grand more than the '97. That 2001 looks the same as the '99...UNTIL you look at the asking price. And yes, all five of these are cars we looked at before settling on the '97 and '98 models last year. |
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