0% Finance for cars

vulcanbomber

Just looking on the net to try & find a site to buy a car from and stumbled across this site which basically is allowing you to buy a car from most manufacturers on interest free finance with no deposit and you can spread the term for up to 5 years. If you want to put down a deposit, they will give you an additional 10% of your deposit towards your purchase.

Just wondered if anyone has used this site, as it seems to good to be true or is it?

It is showing an address in Hull as its base with contact telephone numbers and a RBS with FSA logo on the site.

http://www.interestfree4cars.com/

gibby

be careful


firstly as a money saver dont buy a new car as the depreciation as soon as you drive it away is massive

get one a year or 2 old as its quite a bit cheaper and avoids negative finnance.

usuallly 0% means the price is higher at the start as they have to make a profit on it


shop around as you will be able to get the same car much much cheaper elsewhere - even with normal crdit terms

there is no such thing as 0% as they make it back somewhere


Gibby

gibby

sorry to post again

never ever buy the car on the first visit

as they will always phone you up a day or so later and offer you another 1k or so off the price.

this has happened to me EVERY TIME as the sale manager calls back to get the deal.

last time I went to a garage they knocked 2k off the price of a car and offered free serviceing for 2 years on top of the original price.


there is a massive mark up on all cars - at least a grand to play with -

its also the same with all direct sales firms - windows etc

a better way is to find a car supermarket - as they are usally better than main dealers


as a rule a 7K car in a normal show room is 4k in a good garage - with a 1 or 2 year guarntee included

go for diesel if you can as you will save a fortune on fuel and bio d is now much cheaper and better if you can find it


Gibby

mrcow

One area where you'd lose out would be that when purchasing a new car, you can get good trade-in deals and discounts.

But, then you have still have to finance the deal.

I've never heard of this company, so can't comment on them specifically, but just bear in mind what a massive purchase a car is to most people, and it's worth spending a lot of time researching your options and looking at the finance/purchase options as an overall cost.

This site has missing infomation about finance terms which would make me wary.

Xbigman

If they have an FSA symbol then contact the FSA and check if they are registered/regulated. If they are you should be ok, if not inform the FSA and they will put a stop to them.
Regards



X

burbs_2

Gibby - Being a car dealer what you say about dealers selling a car worth 4k for 7k in their showroom is complete fiction. If dealers actually do that then they would be out of business. As you posted before that statement, there is usually about a grand to play with, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less depending on car and where its sourced from.

The answer to the OP is i do not know if this company is "dodgy" but i have heard of them in the past. I did hear that they offer 0% over 5 years but they do undertake a credit check on you and then come back to you to tell you that you have been unsuccesful with the credit scoring and they cannot offer you a 0% deal............but they can offer you a higher percentage deal if you wanted it.

grumbler

'Don't want to get ripped off - too good to be true?' thread...

dunesand

0% means that you normally have no room to play with in the price. The price you see is what you get.

Side comment... Diesel's are NOT cheaper. My 307 1.6 does around 35 mpg. The HDI does around 50 mpg. But remember that the petrol needs servicing every 20,000 miles, where as the diesel every 6,000. So what you're saving over a year in fuel minus the money spent on servicing means the saving suddenly is quite negligible.

Buying new isn't always bad. If you look at auto trader, you can get deals on new cars which save you loads. An example is the Mazda3 I'm currently looking to get, the 1.6 TS2 trim is £14,075 new, but I can get it OTR for £11,975. That's £2,100 saving! In a year I'll be able to sell this car for around £12,000 because Mazda's depreciation is quite good. New Vauxhall Astra's for example, are something different, they drop in price so fast that you can get a year old car for £9k that cost over £12k new.

How's this for a notion. There's no point in ever owning a car, because it's a bad investment. So what you do is take out a loan, say my Mazda example, at 6.0% over 7 years. It's around £180 a month which is reasonable. After two years you sell it for £9k (being £14 new this isn't unreasonable), but have paid off £180 * 24 = £4,300. Which means I paid £12k, lost £3k in depreciation and pay off the loan with what I get for the car. If you get your payment so that you’re just paying off the depreciation, as well insuring the amount you get for the car is equal to or greater than the remaining loan amount, you'll flog the car with nothing left to pay on the loan.

To work out how much you spend, simply work out how much you can put on a car a month, work out the depreciation (more or less) over say two years, and you'll hit the amount you can spend. This'll only then be effective if you get a car which doesn't plummet in price over the time you have it!

mrcow

dunesand wrote:

An example is the Mazda3 I'm currently looking to get, the 1.6 TS2 trim is £14,075 new, but I can get it OTR for £11,975. That's £2,100 saving! In a year I'll be able to sell this car for around £12,000 because Mazda's depreciation is quite good.

Erm....don't mean to point out the blinking obvious to you.....but....

Who is going to buy a car off you for £12k when they can 'get it OTR for £11975'?

I think that your strategy/thinking may need a little tweaking.....

burbs_2

dunesand wrote:

0% means that you normally have no room to play with in the price. The price you see is what you get.

Side comment... Diesel's are NOT cheaper. My 307 1.6 does around 35 mpg. The HDI does around 50 mpg. But remember that the petrol needs servicing every 20,000 miles, where as the diesel every 6,000. So what you're saving over a year in fuel minus the money spent on servicing means the saving suddenly is quite negligible.

Buying new isn't always bad. If you look at auto trader, you can get deals on new cars which save you loads. An example is the Mazda3 I'm currently looking to get, the 1.6 TS2 trim is £14,075 new, but I can get it OTR for £11,975. That's £2,100 saving! In a year I'll be able to sell this car for around £12,000 because Mazda's depreciation is quite good. New Vauxhall Astra's for example, are something different, they drop in price so fast that you can get a year old car for £9k that cost over £12k new.

How's this for a notion. There's no point in ever owning a car, because it's a bad investment. So what you do is take out a loan, say my Mazda example, at 6.0% over 7 years. It's around £180 a month which is reasonable. After two years you sell it for £9k (being £14 new this isn't unreasonable), but have paid off £180 * 24 = £4,300. Which means I paid £12k, lost £3k in depreciation and pay off the loan with what I get for the car. If you get your payment so that you’re just paying off the depreciation, as well insuring the amount you get for the car is equal to or greater than the remaining loan amount, you'll flog the car with nothing left to pay on the loan.

To work out how much you spend, simply work out how much you can put on a car a month, work out the depreciation (more or less) over say two years, and you'll hit the amount you can spend. This'll only then be effective if you get a car which doesn't plummet in price over the time you have it!

Some of the things you say do not make sense at all mate.

Diesel cars are cheaper to run than petrol cars.

You will not be able to sell the Mazda 3 1.6 TR2 for £12,000 as a second hand car, there is no way. You can buy it through dealers with around 4000 miles on the clock for £11,000. 1 example is a Mazda Dealer in Preston has it for sale now for £10,900. You could knock a further couple of hundred of this price anyway so i dont see where you are getting your figures from mate

dunesand

Grand! Feedback!

mrcow.
The £12k is optimistic a little i admit. ;-) Just because there's a deal for OTR at under £12k new, doesn't mean someone isn't going to buy it for the list price of £14k. As I mentioned the depreciation on these are really good in comparison to other motors.

Go to Auto trader and punch in a Mazda3, with TS2 as a trim and a colour as black. There's one that's £14k! OTR list price would be £14,300.

burbs.
if you're going to get the newer diesels found in say a VW/Skoda etc you'll get what, 65 mpg? I doubt you'll find a petrol that will come close to that, and even with the services costs, you'll probably find you're making some saving. But diesels doing around 50-60?
On a average mileage of say 10,000 miles for a year, you'd get 180 galloons from a 55mpg diesel. A petrol doing 35, is around 285. The diesel's costing around £650 a year, the petrol's around a £1,000.
Now the petrol will need to be serviced, in the example of my peugeot (not great I know, but let's stick with the french for now), I had 1 service at 10k, then the next is due at 30k, where as the diesel is due at 6k, then 12k, then 18, then 24,k, then 30k. So my 2 services costing me £300 a piece, against the diesel's 5, that's £1200 more over three years, which is £400 a year. I'm only saving £350 a year to run the diesel anyway! Oh, and don't forget the extra £50 a year you'll pay for the pollution. So if you've getting a 307, you'll save £100 in running costs for the petrol.
MPG isn't everything.