Some of the top myths or misconceptions about use car dealerships and buy-here pay-here dealerships are that they have really high interest rates, and that we don’t work with people if they’re a payment behind or something. They believe that we’ll repo’ the car and that we sell poor quality vehicles.
As far as high interest rates, some dealerships do. But here at Cars and Credit, we have the lowest interest rate in our town. It’s a pretty good interest rate at 18.95%. Everybody else starts at 20, 22, 24, and 25 percent. That makes a difference when it comes to those monthly payments.
We also work with people. We don’t want to repossess the vehicle. We work with people as much as we can. We’re not going to make any money if we repo’ a car, so we want to keep our customers in the vehicle and keep them paying as much as possible.
And to answer the misconception that used car and buy-here pay-here dealerships sell poor quality vehicles, well…we can’t sell a poor quality vehicle—we’re not going to get paid if we try to keep them in a car that’s not running. We have to make sure that the car we’re selling is good quality from the very beginning where it is accepted onto our lot.
We’ve been selling vehicles and helping people the in the Cleveland, Tennessee area since 2002—lots of time to dispel those types of myths.
People tell us all the time, “Wow, I’m going to tell everybody about you. Because you’re not what I expected.”
Recently, there was a gentleman who had been looking for a vehicle—and like I said, there’s a lot of competition. We have a lot of bigger lots and bigger companies that sell in this town.
The gentleman told us that he’d gone to two of them. The both told him that he could come in, do all the paperwork, and drive off with a vehicle for $500 down. One of them he spent almost all day there. At the end of it, all the paperwork, he’s thinking he’s getting this car. But they come back and tell him he needs $5,000 down.
So he came here, we got him pre-qualified, and that’s pretty much all he needed because he had everything we needed.
We’re like, “OK, so you’re pre-qualified!” We showed him the vehicles in his price range according to his debt-to-income ratio and what he could afford. He test drove two or three vehicles, and finally picked one. He was just so happy.
Later he told us that he was still kind of in doubt through the process that this was really going to happen until he finished signing the last piece of paperwork. He said, “I’m really thankful,” and told us the story about how he had been to those other places in town, and how he was at the last place for a really long time and ended up not being able to get a car because he was not able to afford $5,000 down.
Our new customer said that he was going to send everybody he knew to us. We offer a referral program, so that is encouragement.
Referral Program
Our referral program is that give $200 to the customer who refers someone who buys. And the new customer gets full tank of gas. The conditions are that the person who gives the referral has to be a customer. If they’re behind on their payment, the referral money goes to their payment. If not, they just get the money in their pocket. It’s pretty simple.
