Car companies have been pulling this crap for a while now. They advertise 0% APR or some crap, and then have a a monthly finance charge. In other words, they won’t charge any interest, but they will charge a $25 monthly fee per $1000 borrowed. I’m not retarded. A monthly fee based on the amount that I borrow is interest no matter what you say. A $25 monthly fee per $1000 is a ~2.5% APR. Fucking liars.
I didn’t know that’s how those places worked. So they are kind enough to give you a 0% loan, but then they charge a 30% finance fee? Wow.
Maybe gonzomax will find this thread and let us all know what’s really going on here.
And maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt.
FTR, $25 a month per $1,000 is not 2.5% APR, it’s somewhat higher…
30%
I’ve never heard of this. What car companies, treis?
Here’s a direct quote from Mitsubishi
So if you borrowed 1000$ from them today at 0% interest, you would pay them $16.67 sixty times. That is a total of $1000.20 after 60 payments.
Contrast this with their 2009 Eclipse offer:
You borrow 1,000 for 5 years at 3.9%. Sixty payments of 18.83$ is $1129.80. You are paying them 129.80 to borrow their thousand dollars for five years.
They break the number down into ‘per thousand financed’ so that it’s easier to figure out what your payment would be. Frex, a brand new Mitsubishi Eclipse, 2008, that is currently at a 26,000$ MSRP would be:
26 X 16.67/month = 433.32 monthly payment.
No way would a car company get away with charging a 25$ finance charge on $1000 for a month. That would be an interest rate so high as to be usury.
I’ve seen ads by local finance companies and used car lots that seem to be offering something similar. Perhaps the OP meant to say resellers of automobiles rather than auto manufacturers or their authorized dealers?
I’ve never seen one that says ‘finance charge’. I have seen dozens (at every interest rate) that says what your payment is, per thousand, for how many months.
You can see a mathematical breakdown of that above. The ‘monthly payment’ number is not a finance charge. It may, if the interest rate is above 0%, include the finance charges, but it is not a finance charge in and of itself.
Can I get a cite for this?
I just find it really hard to believe that they’re charging $25 a month per thousand dollars, as that would be a finance charge of $750 a month over the roughly $500 a month you’d owe towards the car. I really find it hard to believe that someone would pay over $1250 a month for a $30K car that is advertised at 0.0% financing.
$25 a month period, I can see. $25 per thousand over the life of the loan, sure. $25 a month per thousand, not buying it without further evidence.
Using treis’s own numbers, 25$ would be the total monthly payment on a 0% APR loan taken out for 40 months.
No, using treis’ own numbers, there would be a $25 fee per month, per thousand dollars borrowed, or $750 dollars per month in fees. Again, I want a cite if I’m to believe that.
And what I’m saying is that treis is mistaken. What he/she is calling a ‘finance charge’ is what is typically put into car ads as ‘payment of’ per thousand financed.
I would have a hard time believing that any car manufacturer would call that a finance charge.
I’ll double check on Wednesday, but, IIRC, the signboard I’m thinking of says
No interest!!
$25 mth finace charge ONLY
EZ qualify
It is a local “finace” and payday loan company sharing a building with a used car lot that initially attracted my attention because of the misspelling. I have spent far too much time contemplating the price of plastic letters, the defintion of “mth” and why “qualify” & “interest” are spelled correctly, but “finance” is not.
But the amount that advertisers put into their car ads as “payment of” per thousand financed is $16.67 on a 0.0% loan, not $25, so I’m still curious where this $25 per thousand is coming from. I think I’ll just wait for treis to clarify.
That’s a 60 month loan. treis never said how long the term of the loan was, but it stands to reason that the duration of the loan changes the number of payments, which changes the amount of each payment.
See, this I can buy. It’s misleading, since it does indeed simply switch out interest for the finance charge, but it’s certainly not usurious, and translates to a pretty good interest rate (even though it’s not the advertised 0.0% rate).
What I don’t get about that is that treis said car companies, and payday loan and used car shark lots are not really ‘car companies’.
I mentioned that.
We’ll just have to wait for the OPs clarification as to whether he meant car “manufacturer” or car “seller”. I’m hoping he does realize they are not the same.
Look, I want my 20 cents. 'Cause otherwise, that means that every eighteen years and nine months, I can’t get a newspaper.