112 Auto Blogs

A lot of buy-here pay-here and used car dealerships find that people have a preconceived notion that their salespeople are just out to rip them off.

Another myth is that the vehicles that buy-here pay-here and used car dealerships sell from their inventory, are vehicles with high mileage and only older cars. That's not true.

The average type of vehicle sold at 112 Auto Sales are anywhere from 2010 to 2016. For example, I've got a 2002 Toyota RAV4 which has 65,000 miles on it. It's like brand new.

Another misconception is that buy-here pay-here, dealers are out to sell cars and then repossess them just to get money. That's a myth. No question about it.

We want our customers to stay in their vehicles and pay their notes so that at the end of their loan--if they haven't done anything else--all those payments were being reported to the credit bureaus as on time payments and will boost their credit scores.

The benefit of a boosted score is a lower interest rate on their next vehicle. And better terms and conditions.

I've had buy-here pay-here customers come in and buy a vehicle from us. Two and a half years later they're going into their next vehicle. They came back to us because we did the right thing by them. We put them in another vehicle and this time they can get and interest rate with a credit union that is 3% or 4% instead of 24%.

Here's another myth: People think that buy-here pay-here dealerships just want to keep customers in the cycle and not let them go anywhere else.

That's not true. That's not true because a lot of buy-here pay-here dealers do report to credit bureaus; if the customer is doing the right thing and making their payments on time, then they should be—and are--rewarded for that. When they are, when they go to buy their next car they’ll find their credit situation improved dramatically because next to buying a house the biggest purchase most people make is buying a car.

We know it's important to treat the customer fairly. The customer makes their payments on time, which is what we want, and we want to make sure that they get rewarded for that. We do that by reporting payments to credit bureaus to help them boost their credit scores.

We even have repeat customers just because they're happy with doing business with us. It’s crazy. A lot of people just don't want to deal with banks. And I've had people come in and I tell them, “Listen man, I can get you a rate of 5% to 6%.” And they’ll tell me, “No, no, I like it here. I like coming in every week and paying.”

I says, “I can set you up with the banks to make your payments every week.” “No, I don't trust them.”

That's what they tell me. People just like to come into our friendly environment and they like the fact that they can stop into the dealership, say “hello,” make their payments, whatever the case is. A lot of people like to do that even though they can make their payments online, or ACH it, or call in a credit card.