With the rise in bankruptcies, repossessions, and general bad credit in the United States it has given birth to a whole new segment of the car business that is designed specifically to prey upon these types of people. That's right I said prey upon. If you see slogans like "Credit Doctor" or "We Finance Anyone" run away! Well, at least be careful. Dealerships have learned over time that people who know they have credit problems will not argue or haggle as much as someone who does not have credit problems.
This is why every major automotive dealership now has a bad credit department. They have developed special sales techniques and they have fulltime "credit doctors" to work with people who have or even think they have bad credit. They advertise in the newspaper and on the radio that the credit doctor will help you fix your credit. You've heard the ads, "Good Credit, Bad Credit, No Credit, if you have a job and $99 down we can get you financed!"
The industry has now evolved to the point where they actually have establishments that exist solely to cater to the bad credit customer. They promote themselves as if they are doing the public some big favor but unfortunately this is far from the case. These dealers exist to make as much as they can off of people who are already in financial trouble.
The way these new dealerships operate is that they have sub par vehicles that a conventional dealership will not sell and they have in house financing as well as aggressive venture capitalist financing that enables them to command huge profits and charge outrageous interest rates.
Whether or not it is a dealership with a "credit doctor" department or a stand alone full time bad credit dealership they work in the same way. They seek to get the maximum amount of profit that they possible can from you by maxing out the profit in the car, getting you to borrow from a credit card, whatever it takes to increase the profit and then on top of that they will charge whatever your state maximum credit rate is which could be 28% or more. By the time it is all said and done you may pay $15,000 for a $5,000 car!
This is the absolute worst that the automotive industry has to offer, but until legislators step in and do something about it the secondary finance business will remain in place.
Gregg Hall is a business consultant and author for many online and offline businesses and lives in Navarre Florida with his 16 year old son. Get quality
car care products at http://www.carcarewizards.com
