Buying a car?

Here's the credit union I belong to. They tend to have very good rates on new and used auto loans:

https://www.penfed.org/

Thanks for the suggestion, but unfortunately I doubt they'll lend to a Canadian!

Eomer_sl said:

I'll also be contacting Xerxes, who does car financing for one of the major banks. Power move.

Click to expand...

Double bonus. Xerxes will be all jealous when she finds out your shopping for car loans for new girl. Your response is gonna be "haha, nah, she won't be jealous. She already knows we're dating." But yes, yes she will. She'll assume you're writing the checks. Plant the seed Eomer, let it grow.

They met at my Christmas party last year, no cat fights ensued. I think Xerxes is dating someone as well right now, judging from her FB. She gave me a couple suggestions of good local dealers to try, and names to drop when I'm there. Said that if her credit is non-existent she'll have a hard time getting much better than a 6-7% rate unless someone co-signs. I'd be fine with co-signing, dunno if the special lady friend would be. Because of the small loan amount and fairly short term, saving a few percent makes next to no difference in the payments, so it's not a big deal.

Eomer_sl said:

I'd be fine with co-signing, dunno if the special lady friend would be.

Click to expand...

Damn dude, you're in love.

I have a customer(I sell insurance) who just ordered a Tesla Model S. I don't know if this is 100% true or not, be he claimed that his bank was willing to give him a 15-year loan since it was a fully electric car.

WTF?

Who gives a 15 year loan on a car? That seems absolutely insane if it's true. I don't know what kind of interest rate he got, but I can't imagine that this is a good deal for the bank at all. That car isn't going to be worth anywhere near the purchase price in 7 or 8 years if he defaults on the loan, they'll have no way of making much of their lost money back by seizing the property.

Maybe it's a government credit union or some such and they are offering some kind of incentive for clean energy spending.

Khane_sl said:

Damn dude, you're in love.

Click to expand...

Yeah, no denying that. And I just feel terrible for her right now, life is taking a gigantic dump on her. Car is stolen two months ago, never shows up anywhere, insurance company is fucking her around, dad loans her a piece of shit 1998 Chevy Venture (AC doesn't work, power windows don't work, etc), the fucking fuel pump on that piece of shit dies on her on Monday while driving across a narrow, mile long bridge, I help her get it towed and lend her a spare company truck, and while out to dinner last night that truck gets broken in to and her iPad is stolen out of it (nothing else of value in the truck, other than a first aid kit and some roadside flares/triangles etc that they left behind).

On that note, are 2006 Nissan Titans known for having shitty door locks? Looks like someone just took a flat screwdriver to it and bent it a bit, now the key won't unlock it. Are all car door locks that easy to break?

I thought she parked it in a shitty alley with the keys inside?
Sounds like karma

Picasso_sl said:

I thought she parked it in a shitty alley with the keys inside?
Sounds like karma

Click to expand...

Yeah, the keys were in it. It wasn't a "shitty" alley necessarily, but it's still a back alley downtown. And yes, she did have a spare key in it, for retarded reasons that I still don't quite understand. But that still counts as stolen as far as insurance is concerned. I did want to give her shit last night about not fucking taking her iPad with her everywhere and leaving it in a vehicle, no matter where it's parked, but I would imagine she's learned that lesson without me telling her. At least it was definitely locked this time, as evidenced by the busted door lock.

Karma wise, I can't think of anything she's done that would justify this bullshit, and plenty that should have immunized her to it. She works with autistic children 20 hours a week for sweet fuck all wage wise. I'd make it about 15 minutes before I murdered one.

Yeah, insurance won't care if the key is in it. Hell, we paid a customer for a stolen car when they left their car running parked next to the curb in front of a Wal-Mart at 2am. Ran inside to buy something(car running, windows down), came back out and car was gone. Shocking.

I am surprised that is has been 2 months and they still haven't settled with her. Most insurance companies have rental car limits that end up being about 20-30 days worth of rental car, tops. Is there some issue that she can't produce a clean title and therefore they aren't willing to release a settlement check to her yet? That's the only thing I've seen that usually causes long holdups, if someone has their title held up with a title loan place or something weird with a transfer of title from when they bought it, or something like that.

No, she owns the car free and clear. Like I said, the insurance company (adjustor or whoever) is suspicious of her, and they have apparently had a private investigator looking in to it. The adjustor called me to confirm the time and date when it was stolen, and ask me a few other questions. And actually, this is her second adjustor, she requested a change after the first one repeatedly asked for the same information, didn't return phone calls, and so on. Really the whole thing stinks of incompetence at this point, they are wasting a shitload of their own time and money to investigate a claim that will result in a payout of maybe 2 grand, probably even less. It's fucking ridiculous. And she didn't have rental coverage in the case of theft, apparently. Hence the need to borrow the shitbox from her dad that died on Monday, and me needing to lend her a truck that was subsequently broken in to yesterday.

One thing I'm curious about, is her subsequent insurance premiums. Should she be asking for a refund on those back to the date the vehicle was stolen? Or back to 30 days after a police report was filed or something? It seems like fucking bullshit that she's paid a couple hundred bucks more in premiums for a vehicle that she no longer possesses, and it's in the insurance company's best interest to drag it out as long as possible to collect more premiums.

You should definitely receive a retroactive refund once the claim is settled. Hell, she could technically call up right now and request that cancel. There is no actual need for an insurance policy to stay active if you aren't using any of its services(rental car), after the date of the loss. The claim has to be honored as long as the policy was in force the day of the loss, you don't have to keep a policy in force a single day after that.

Yeah, that's what I figured. They actually called her yesterday afternoon and told her that they no longer suspected that she was trying to defraud them. The settlement they offered was actually pretty good, I think something like $4,200, and they said that since it will take a week to process and get her the check, they would either provide her with a rental for that period or give her another $250. From the sounds of it the adjustor was pretty sheepish, given how long they'd fucked around, and my girlfriend probably could have squeezed more out of them but was too happy and nice to try. She was expecting half that. That's for a 2005 Cavalier with 200,000 km. Mechanically sound, but beaten to shit otherwise. So she's pretty happy about that.

I did tell her last night that she should for sure ask for at least a month's premium back, as well, and to cancel the policy immediately. It's only maybe $100-150, but hey, every cent counts.

Does anyone have any strong feelings for the following cars:

Subaru Outback
Subaru Forester
Toyota RAV4
Honda CR-V

We are looking to trade in a Olds Bravada and get something new, potentially one of those cars.

Eomer_sl said:

She was expecting half that. That's for a 2005 Cavalier with 200,000 km. Mechanically sound, but beaten to shit otherwise. So she's pretty happy about that.

Click to expand...

That's one of the good parts of having a car stolen, they can't tell what kind of overall condition the car was in(unless they saw it recently for another claim or something). You can claim that your 8 year old vehicle is flawless, when in reality it probably has a few dents and dings that would bring down the value. But if there's no car to inspect, then they pretty much just have to go off of your word. Friend of mine had his car stolen a couple years ago, and it had a shitload of unrepaired hail damage on it. It was mechanically fine, but it probably had enough hail damage to be damn near totaled. Still got full value for his stolen car.

Rabkorik_sl said:

Does anyone have any strong feelings for the following cars:

Subaru Outback
Subaru Forester

We are looking to trade in a Olds Bravada and get something new, potentially one of those cars.

Click to expand...