Coincidentally, I had lunch with a credible friend the other day who said it was illegal to buy a car with a credit card in California. He said that he was buying a car and wanted to put it on his credit card for the frequent flier miles, but wasn’t allowed to for some legal reason. He said (I think) that it was because California has some strict lemon laws, but I didn’t really follow this.
Anyone else know about this?
All true. As a bank representative, I can state we rarely go after the merchants for violations.
As for the OP, I’ve seen cardholders buy cars. I deal with those charges since for obvious reasons, they flag the bank’s security system. If the merchant accepts the charge and the account has enough available credit, it can happen.
I have a friend who did just this, to get the cashback award. He got a loan from the bank, so he had the money in his checking account. Then he put the car on his card and paid it all off the next month. In effect, he got the credit card company to pay for about 1% of his car that way.
Out of curiousity, my local Wal-Mart demands ID on all CC purchases. If I were to call you up (or perhaps VISA, MC, and AMEX, as that might be more appropriate) and raise as much cain as I could, would anything actually happen, or would the complaint just get brushed off? If the complaint was about a small, owner-operated convenience store, would it get handled differently?
RE: driver’s license?
I just finished putting together the manual for a major CC company (for the upteenth time). On EVERY PAGE, it says to ask for a driver’s license, except in D.C. This is the desk copy at countless convenience store/gas stations in the US.
If the clerk does not ask and verify the sig, it’s a violation and chargeback (if there’s a problem with the transaction).
My 2cents.
Several years ago, Elton John went to the Range Rover dealership in the “ritzy” Atlanta neighborhood of Buckhead. He wanted to put a $50,000+ SUV on his card and the saleman apparently laughed in his face. His manager - who actually recognized that it was in fact Elton John - brushed him aside and gleefully put the charge through on Elton’s Amex Platinum. The salesman that laughed at Elton was fired.
True story. You can probably find it if you search the archives at the Atlanta Journal online (www.ajc.com), but I don’t have ttime to.
Interesting posts as I have been wondering about this for some time as I contemplate getting a new car. If I am going to make a large purchase e.g. a recent dental bill was $14,000, I call the credit card company and tell them so they can flag the account and not delay accepting the charge when it is made. Also, I get all those zero interest cards; right now I have one that is interest free through December (12 months). I usually use them to buy my heating oil for the season. This is usually the only balance I carry because I am a cash-only person otherwise as I am retired and figure if I don’t have the moola, don’t spend it. 1200 gallons of oil is the exception as I would have to pay that monthly anyway. Totally off the subject re Bill H.: Califonia always has all those weird laws (I was born there and moved out of that Stalinist state as soon as I could). Years after I moved I got a bank CD there when I was visiting my mother and the next year CA sent me a letter and wanted to know if I should be filing a tax return there as I had income in the state. A second time I got another letter, only this time I had used my mother’s address on my FEDERAL tax return when I was out of the country and they wanted to know if I was living there and should be filing a CA tax return. Leave no source of money unturned is their motto.
Stockton:
That’s interesting. I was going based on the following website:
http://www.gofso.com/Premium/LE/06_le_ic/fg/fg-merchants.html#A
The interesting quote from said page being:
“Further, if you refuse to present identification, such as a driver’s license, the merchant may not refuse to make a credit card sale under Visa, MasterCard, and Amex rules.”
I guess either they’re running on outdated information, or… something else.
I wonder if it is okay to transfer a fairly large car loan to a credit card in order to take advantage of one of those very low interest rates, no transfer fees, no increase in APR for the life of the balance deals?
stockton: If I get bored at work tomorrow, I may call Amex, VISA and MC on my lunch break and see about their policy.
stockton and Jonathan Woodall, AFAIK the merchant agreement still states no asking for identification unless requested by a issuer. (the credit card bank) However, with the huge amount of fraud nowdays, that may be changing. In my experience dealing with fraud, asking for id would not catch that much fraud. There’s far more fraud in identity theft variations and counterfeit cards (in which case the perp would have id matching the card) than there is in stolen cards.
Jonathan, you can complain to your issuer. Honestly, the only times I’ve heard of merchants losing Visa/Mastercard rights was in cases of merchant fraud.
I have made 2 purchases in the last 2 months that I have had an additional 4% charged to my credit card for using it to make the purchase. One was medical one was dental. The office is charged like 4% by the CC company to use the card. That is why they charge you the 4%.
I transferred an auto loan to a credit card one time because of its low interest rate.
My buddy bought a car in california earlier this year on his credit card with no problems.
I did exactly that once too. I bought a car from Don Jacobs many years ago. None of the auto manufactures had 0% financing at the time (intrest rates were kind of high back then) and we didn’t have enough equity in our house. I put $4000 in cash down. They gladly took a credit card for the remaining 8k. I bounced around on 0% cards and paid the car off in 32 months without a lick of intrest or service charge.
Could you get two cards? Then pay off one with the other & do this back & forth for a few months. Then you could get enough frequent flier miles to fly to the moon?
Stinkpalm, if you’re friends with your doctor and dentist, suggest they SWITCH credit card processing companies, hopefully considering regular brick and mortar banks. A 4% skim off of the top is LUDICROUS. When I looked into accepting credit cards for my business, I was quoted skims of between 1.3% and 2% for VISA, MC and Discover and between 2% and 3% for AMEX.
No. This is called “kiting” and is a good way to get both accounts closed by the issuing banks. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is never a good idea.
FWIW, I tried to buy a new Mustang on my Amex, and the car dealer simply did not seem to get it. I had the cash to cover it, and was going to pay the card off within a day or two (I wanted the frequent flyer miles…), and the dealer kept trying to tell me how instead of doing that, doing their 4.9% financing was the “better deal”. :dubious:
In the end, when I talked to a person with a brain, they simply said they would do it, but had to charge 10% to cover their “credit card fees”. Well, I actually called American Express, and was told:
Oh well.
A friend of mine had a credit card with a pretty nice rebate 1-2% deal, back when they did these things in the late 90’s. He negotiated a really good deal on a new automobile and at the contract signing whipped out his credit card to pay for the whole thing. The dealer went ballistic, but pretty much had to accept the card. My friend did pretty darn well that day.