supplying your social security number when paying

I have no idea as I'm not in Maryland.

But I object to turning over my driver's license. It has a magnetic strip on the back. I have no idea what kind of information is on that, but no one but a police officer, Highway patrol or the DMV has a right to swipe it and read it. If I hand it to someone, I am consenting to them accessing that information. I don't hand over my license to ANYONE. I

In fact, I refused to hand it over to a cashier at Ralph's because they wanted to swipe it because I was writing a check. I said they could write down the information like everyone else. She said it was "store policy". I told them this was *my* policy and I walked out leaving $100 worth of groceries in front of her...including ice cream...for them to reshelve. I think it is illegal in California for a store to demand a driver's license and swipe it to read the information.

When I went to test drive a Prius at San Diego Toyota I took a photocopy of my driver's license and proof of insurance with me. The salesman asked me for my license. I gave him the photocopy. He wouldn't except the photo copy of the license. He said he needed the original. I took it out to show him the original. He wanted it. I asked why. He said he had to take it inside. I told him no. (I've heard some dealers not only run credit checks but run several of them. Every time a credit check is run it LOWERS your credit rating. That puts you in a weak position if they finance you.) I got out of the car. I started walking toward my old car. He shouted after me to wait. Suddenly he didn't need the license. I made a gesture and I got in my car and drove off.

The next day I bought a car from Howard Sheehy at Kearny Mesa Toyota. Howard was not interested in seeing my driver's license at all.

And the internet manager at San Diego Toyota contacted me a few days later saying they had the Prius I wanted. I replied, telling him what his salesman tried to do. I told him I bought my Prius at Kearny Mesa Toyota. Then I wrote: "You work on commission...right? Too bad. Big mistake. Really big mistake."

And I make sure I tell everyone to stay away from San Diego Toyota. I doubt that incident is the only shady thing they are pulling on customers. And I would NEVER have my car serviced there.

 

I'm pretty sure they just want your SSN so they can check your credit. One of the myriad forms they shove in your face is a "permission to check credit" form. Dealers seem to like to do this even if you're paying cash.

Your cashier's check is not the same as cash, by the way. There are many reports of bad cachier's checks out there, so the dealer may ask you to wait until it clears before giving you the car. He has that option, especially if he can't check your credit to see if you are a good risk.

How you handle the situation is up to you and what you are comfortable with.

 

i was required to supply my SSN and it was known upfront that i was paying cash.

 

I was required to provide my SSN also, it was included on the 'credit check' form they had me fill out even though I financed through an outside lender. Said they had to run it anyways because I was not paying with straight-up cash. They checked the Toyota financing rate as well for me, it was .9% higher than the rate I was going to use all along.

 

I did not have to supply a SS# and paid for the car with a personal check on a day when the banks were closed.

 

I have never lived in your state but I can't imagine any state would have a law requiring that you provide that kind of personnel information to a car dealer before he could sell you a car. Be sure to let us know what the Maryland A. G. has to say.

There have been a lot of problems with fake cashier's checks the last few years but I don't think that's what this is about. Sounds to me like they want to check your credit for some reason. You did the right thing, be careful, don't trust them, and be ready to walk (or run) out the door and buy your Prius somwhere else.

 

I went through this yesterday i paid cash for my new 06. I paid with 2 cashiers checks cash for the whole car.

I stoped also when they asked me for my SS#.

The explaination i got kinda made sense, since the transaction was over 10K cash transaction there was a federal reporting that had to occour.

I thought this was only for cash as in lots of 100$ bills etc.....

they also had me fill out the credit app, but i left out the sections with income, and i did not sign it. I think they just used it as a generic form to get my info to do the registration paperowork etc.....

 

If someone is passing bad cashiers checks, a credit check isn't going to help much, whether it's legitmate or false credit info.

Passing off fake checks for a new car would be a major criminal offense, so the seller should make a good effort to verify the identity of the buyer and the legitimacy of the checks (When I sold my car privately, if I couldn't contact the bank to verify paymenty I'd use an escrow service.)

 

Does Maryland by chance have an excise tax on cars? Could have something to do with that.

 

I was asked for the ssn when I put down the deposit, but got to thinking about it and protested that I would be paying with a cashier's check. When I said that, they started gushing apologies and used a felt tip pen to black out every instance of the ssn on their forms. The sales woman even called me the next day to assure me that they had no record of my ssn. I live in California, by the way, which could make a difference.

Jeff

 

Myth...just checking on your credit and getting your score does NOTHING to your score.

 

It does if it's done multiple times. I got this from a mortgage broker who had nothing to do with financing my car or my house.

 

From http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/scoring.htm
"Have you applied for new credit recently? Many scoring models consider whether you have applied for credit recently by looking at “inquiries†on your credit report when you apply for credit. If you have applied for too many new accounts recently, that may negatively affect your score. However, not all inquiries are counted. Inquiries by creditors who are monitoring your account or looking at credit reports to make “prescreened†credit offers are not counted."

I strongly recommend reading the contents of that site, and getting your free credit report each year to make sure there are no errors.

 

your mortgage broker is full of it.

HOWEVER, his reasoning for saying that is rather transparent. multiple inquiries on your credit status usually indicates the person is getting ready to make a major purchase which WILL most likely change his or her credit rating by changing their debt load.

credit ratings are updated every month or so. about 30 days after the flood of inquiries, if no purchase or change has been made...

then no harm done...not one iota.

my advice... get another broker. if he cant give you any better information than that...RUN AWAY!!

 

1. I do believe it's longer than 30 days. 2. It doesn't matter how long the dip in your credit rating stays, it only matters whether it is around when you are trying to close the deal with someone who has not yet run your credit report.

I made the mistake, when buying my house, of signing up at Lending Tree for one of those free loan quote services. My credit report was run twenty times by different companies and my credit score dropped to the floor. Fortunately I already had already approached a mortage company for the primary mortgage and they were able to use the credit report they pulled before all that happened. Unfortunately, they had to use the newer, lower credit score to determinte the terms of my second mortgage. And I called several different companies--once those credit reports were pulled, no other company was willing to deal with me at all. Sure, after six months all would be golden again. But I already found the house I wanted, and I needed a place to live.

 

A good suggestion at http://www.carbuyingtips.com/ was that while doing a test drive, DON'T leave your driver's license with them. Because they will only use it to run your credit score without telling you. Instead, bring a photocopy of your license with you, an clearly mark on the photocopy that no permission to run your credit score is granted and that running a credit score without someone's permission is subject to a $5,000 fine (the exact statute is listed somewhere on the web site).

Of course, when starting this thread, you were talking about providing information while paying. So this comment does not really apply to that.

 

Unless there is a tax implication [such as deductible interest that
must be reported] or other statute-driven procedure [like most
motor vehicle registries insist on grabbing your SSN anyways], there
is NO reason for a dealer to need your SSN and I think it may even
be illegal for them to ask for it in the case of full payment. It's
just one more of a thousand ways that corporations raid your privacy,
and stuff far too much information about you into vulnerable,
internet-connected databases, which invariably get plundered and
fed into the burgeoning identity-theft market. There's no question
about how bad that's gotten.
.
Go out of your way to keep your SSN and any other data they don't
need away from these clowns. They're part of the problem.
.
_H*

 

It is perhaps a security measure as well... Working for a bank I can say that cashiers checks are no longer trust worthy. Although you got it from a financial institution and know it is good (and it is) they are more likely to be couterfit than a personal check thus making it a higher probability for fraud to the dealer than if they did their own financing for you. If they have your social it is easier to track you down as well as to file charges since they have more documentation about you. Sounds paranoid but you would be astounded how many couterfit cashiers checks I see a month used to defraud unsuspecting customers and businesses.

Just my thoughts.

 

Same here in CA. The *require* SSN unless you pay with green cash.