Toyota Financial Services Pre-approval Certificate

Bait. Now you get the hook.

 

The worst part is to issue that certificate they must check your credit rating. Each time your credit rating is checked, it drops a bit. Not much, but a bit. Kind of stupid, but that's how these accountants work. So yours dropped when you applied for the certificate, then it dropped again when the dealership checked.

 

The dealership wants all your personal information since Toyota may not share it with them or in a timely fashion and in case your Toyota financing falls through they can shop financing for you from their list of financial partners (of which they make some profit on).

 

This is simply not true. The score model takes into account that people shop for cars, and multiple checks at different dealers only count as a single inquiry if they are made within a reasonable time of each other.

 

Its called marketing.
The Bait: Congratulations! You are pre-approved for ....
The Hook: You walked into the dealership parading the worthless piece of paper, and voluntarily surrendered your valuable identity (name, SSN, DOB, employer info, income, bank account info, etc.). Now that dealership and Toyota's lending arm know everything about you. Don't you feel special now?

The 3 evil credit agencies sell your credit worthiness to companies (banks/credit card companies, and apparently dealerships).

30 Days is the time frame. The first HARD inquiry, will drop your credit score some, and starts the clock. For the next 29 days, you could have multiple HARD credit inquiries, as long as it is for the same type of inquiry as the initial, your score is supposed to be unchanged.

The evil credit agencies are purposely vague about this.

 

Not true. They buy a list of qualified people and send out the certificates to qualified buyers. They can not run a credit check that would affect your credit score without your advance permission.

Th OP mentioned that the certificate was good for a purchase at Toyota on-line, he did not apparently go through the Toyota on-line website but went to the dealership which earns a commission on every application that they bring to Toyota Financial. Why would they want to promote the on-line site? No benefit to them.

 

Live and learn. Now you know. Trust nothing.

Sounds like you have not bought a house/condo/townhome w/ a loan yet. If you had, you want to be pre-approved, not pre-qualified.
Pre-qualified = minimal information checked. LOW Standard. Essentially a THEORETICAL dollar amount of a loan you MIGHT get.
Pre-approve = Maximum dollar loan amount you WILL get. All kinds of info is required for this and you will be signing legal documents that allow the bank/underwriting agent to make inquiries to your employer, banks, credit card companies, IRS, etc.

Clearly you did not go through any pre-approval process. Granted buying a car is cheaper than a house, but you would have been filling out forms, and signing away permission to investigate.

As you get other junk mail, open them and just analyze them. Some are easy to spot. Others, look official and scary.

 

Ahhhh, you fell for "scarcity." I had better act, its only good for 30days.

Toyota Financing would have caved if you were to come in say 31, 40, 50 days later and said I will only buy at 0% APR. They would try to do a pseudo best financing terms for you. Stick to your guns and start walking out. They will chase you down, b/c a sale is walking out the door.

Now as interest rates go up, in meaningless amounts, 0% APR maybe gone. But, given how many consumers are used to 0% and if a competing manufacture continues to offer 0%, the competition will likely cave and go 0% or close (0.9%).

 

When I (briefly) considered buying a new Prius, my local dealer hit me with two different prices. The "0% interest" price was $1500 more than the standard financing price. Needless to say, that quickly ended my consideration of a new purchase.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Yeah, I think the fine print for current deal does say that:
0% APR OR. $1,500 REBATE.

Play w/ an interest calculator. I used $29K, 6yrs, 2%APR, gave me $1799 in total interest paid. 0%APR w/ a higher price tag may make sense, depending on the best APR of the loan you can get.

What if you put a LARGE down payment, say 20-50%? They might cave and give you the lower purchase price @ 0%APR, b/c this would cost them less, maybe even saving them money?

 

I also found out the special financing rate can't be combined with the employee/family pricing. Not really surprising since they'd likely lose money doing that.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

If they (dealer & Toyota Financing) really want to sell (move that car ogf the lot), they can bend/change the rules.

Read Edmunds New Car Buying Guide. Very informative. Maybe you can get a better price than the family price?

 

Don't forget the insurance industry. They get credit info also to assess your risk.