Fuming...just Bought Car And Apr Changed Without Informing Me....is This Legal

nomoneytoday

It's not illegal. They made an offer of credit. You had the choice to accept it or not.

Fortunately you picked the best option. A loan at 29% is scandalous!

Rafter

There is no law requiring a salesperson to volunteer the APR over the phone and at those rates of course they aren't.

However a 3k loan over 13 months at 7.9% APR is only going to be £130 in interest. Now banks get money to lend from savers who want to earn about 5% interest at the moment. The saver is going to want to earn £80 in interest so the margin for the bank is about £49. Out of that they have to credit search you, do all the paperwork, process 13 direct debits, cover the costs of fraud and bad debts and probably pay car craft some sales commission.

In other words the loan would be loss making.

Pop in a 30% APR though and the margin on the loan increases to £400 which covers all those costs and leaves a nice profit too.

Short term, low value loans don't make money for the provider which is why they are so expensive. Large long term loans (like mortgages) are better value.

R.

peterbaker

Anyone trying to obtain my money by deception is quite likely to find themselves explaining themselves to the authorities. I don't care whether they sell loans or air tickets, they will either conduct their business honestly or I will deliberately obstruct them by reporting their behaviour. If more people did the same then maybe the ner-do-wells might get the message.

Loans for used cars are often loss-making at reasonable APR's? Get out of the business then is my message to them.

Prefer to stay in the business and try to obtain profit by trickery?

Parasites deserve to be squashed.

MarkyMarkD

C'mon, Peter.

Remembers that the sales person provided a compliant APR disclosure before the buyer was legally bound. To claim there was any mis-selling here is simply ridiculous.

The worst thing that's happened is that someone has agreed to a finance deal at a reasonable APR, and then changed the arrangements *by phone at their own choice*, been quoted revised payments, and not been made aware until a full written quotation with APR was provided of the revised APR.

And the buyer wasn't legally bound until they signed the contract, and wouldn't have been if they had failed to sign the contract - which, in fact, they did.

sarahmoo

horrible business though eh!
Anyway, thanks for all your thoughts. My new car FROM MOTORPOINT is great!

withabix

sarahmoo wrote: »

horrible business though eh!
Anyway, thanks for all your thoughts. My new car FROM MOTORPOINT is great!

Ooooh! Norty Motorpoint.

Or more likely Norty car salesman after his commission. Possibly Norty LloydsTSB/Black Horse who provide the finance at Motorpoint.

Tut Tut.

We buy our cars from them, but get the money elsewhere!

bargainbetty

I'm in a similar spot.... applied for a car loan with Northern Rock, and starting by asking what their rates were. 6.2 % I am told. I then spend 15 minutes going through all the questions, ten of which involve why I really REALLY should take out their PPI (hmmm) only to be offered a loan at 9.9%.

When I questioned it, I got this reply.... 'Oh, 6.2% is our typical APR.... but you don't qualify.'

The car showroom where I purchased the vehicle were even more surprising.... having already been offered a 5% deal, the manager said his rates were actually 6%. When challenged he told me that most car showrooms offering finance have some flexibility to set their own rates, and he would 'charge me what he pleased'. His maths is off too, as the 6% he tried to charge me was actually closer to 15% when I calculated the total repayment amount.

Funnily enough, I went elsewhere....

Con artists to a man IMHO.

jonesMUFCforever

Sounds like the 6% was the flat rate offered not the APR!

rusty-london

My girlfriend and I had a similar experience with another well known car supermarket in London. They gave us the figures for the finance at one APR, then when they printed off the paperwork the APR figure was about 10% higher than the original one :eek:

Needless to say there way one or two choice words between myself and the salesman then we made our way elsewhere.

In the end we got a great deal on a brand new Renault at 1.3% APR with some pretty impressive discounts thrown in :j :j

Skyhigh

This seems to be a familiar trick across many car sales companies.

It also happened to my father, who had negotiated a decent rate, but the next day when they had prepared the papers to be signed....the rate had doubled!

So he got a loan from the bank instead, at a much better rate.


Still, everyone should be wary of these dirty tricks :-/