Bought a Honda Pilot last night, dealer stated "You can put up to $3000 on credit card", I didn't push it as I had other issues of negotiation I cared about more.

casey

in the past yr or so we purchased 2 new toyotas from different dealers...each toyota dlr put the entire car on amer exp..,.they werent happy, but they did it

Did you know that with some loan companies, VWcredit for example, you can make your loan payments online by credit card. Then you dont have the hassle.

No, but you have a loan



*tisk tisk*

Still... lots of people get car loans. I had no idea some allowed credit card payments. I'm on my way to VW now. :-)

Besides, maybe you can get the loan and pay it off immediately by credit card. Usually there's no pre-payment penalty.

Bought a Subaru Outback and the sales rep said we could put $5k on the Visa. When we went to pay, the finance dept. said $6K. So got some Marriott points. Nissan was not so generous and only allowed $1,500.

I hadn't thought of this. I am getting a new car this month and we always just pay cash. I think we will just put it on AMEX this time and pay it off when the bill comes and get the miles. Hope it works! Thanks for the tip!

You can buy a lot of used cars and motorycles on your card via PayPal...I have cranked a lot of points that way!

I just checked this for Audi Financial Services, which is part of VW Credit. There was no option for credit card payments, only ACH debit.

Its been a few yrs. since I have been on the receiving end of credit card transaction but I can tell you this. The percentage rate for credit card transactions that a business is charged by a credit card company is directly proportional to the amount of transactions and the dollar amount they do per month. The highest rate I remember seeing was just under 2% fee per transaction and it went substantially lower than that for more volume and $ amount. From what I seem to remember, a car dealership with a maintenance dept. (read more $) should only be paying somewhere between 0.5% - 0.25%. So if they are crying 3% transaction fee on you, they are purely padding their profit.

I suspect your info on merchant fees is a little out of date.

With that said, it would not be correct, IMHO, to accept that it was around 3%. Maybe 1.2%. I doubt very much that a .25% rate is available to any merchant.

I purchased an $80K "slighly used" sports car last summer on my AMEX Platinum Card. I worked down the dealer $5K below market value (from $85K) first, then after that agreement was reached, asked him to put it on my AMEX. He didn't take AMEX, so I offered to pay him $1K to make the transaction happen. As he worked in a small city, he called around to the other dealerships and was able to convince the sales manager at the BMW dealership to do the transaction. The BMW dealer told me it would cost them @$2500 in charges from AMEX, and I agreed to reimburse them that amount. My dealer then agreed to compensate the BMW dealer $500 (out of his $1000) for their time. Once the transaction went through, the BMW dealer wrote a check to my dealer for $80K to close the loop.

AMEX was a little bit difficult to work with. It turns out that one's "limit" is set by taking an average of the previous 6 months balances. To accomodate this transaction, I needed to "prepay" the $80K to AMEX via a wire transfer. Once it was recieved, my transaction could be processed.

In short, I negotiated this transaction for three reasons:

1) 80,000 points through AMEX Memberships Rewards. Note: 100,000 points can be used for a roundtrip Upper Class ticket on Virgin Atlantic from the US (West Coast) to London. That is worth $8,500 at full fare, and my family tries to take advantage of this "freebie" once per year.

2) I saved $1,500 under fair market value for the sports car despite the extra "costs"

3) This transaction helped me reach the $250K minimum on my Platinum card to earn a Black card. This reason alone made it worth it as I can now check that off my life "to do" list... (And for those who do not see the value in the black card, the concierge service is worth it alone. I had a client meeting on Valentine's Day, and all of the choice restaurants were full. My concierge got me a reservation at a very exclusive location - with just two hours notice).

Good luck with the car purchase!

-H

Indeed, but VS award availability is not comparable to full fare because it is capacity controlled. I think Z-class advance purchase fares are a more reasonable comparison, and those are typically around $4,600 (of which a substantial portion is taxes, fees and fuel surcharge which also must be paid on award redemptions.)

I own a business, and the rate I pay to accept credit cards is determine buy the Merchant Processor, Type of card, and My average transaction amount. Here is a website to give you a idea what rates are.
http://www.infomerchant.net/creditca...rocessors.html
Also I have a merchant agreement with Visa/Mastercard/Amex and Discover and I CANNOT discriminate against a customer on what type of card they want to use or how much money they want to charge.
And i'ts not in the dealerships best interest to allow you to use your credit card to pay off the entire car purchase and let me tell you why!
Example: You negotiate a really good deal, dealership runs your credit score and it's fantastic 750 +, they are willing to sell the car to you below sticker, WHY?, because they are hoping to finance you car! When they finance your car they make additional money, they have prenegotiated interest rates with finance companies such as Citibank, BofA, Chase, Etc.
The dealership buys the interest rate at say 5.4% and sells it to you for 5.9% netting them .5% on the total transaction up front, and If you payoff the loan within the first or second payment the dealership will have to refund the .5% back to the loan company. So why would they just let you pay for the car with a credit card, it isn't in there best interest. Although technically, if you push the issue about taking the credit card they really don't have a choice!

While it is undeniably true that dealerships like to make money by financing cars, the fact remains that dealers who reject credit cards invariably accept certified checks. Financing arrangements are not part of that equation. Even if someone with a credit limit high enough to charge a BMW doesn't have that much ready cash, that sort of person typically has access to better financing than the dealership offers and the knowledge to use it.