Tag: finance

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finance

How To Buy A New Car and Not Get Screwed

There’s some excellent advice in this 6 minute presentation by Rob Gruhl. Basically its a summary of the best approach to take when on the hunt for a vehicle. I especially like the part about getting your own finance – not relying on the dealer – it just makes sense and should save a bunch of headaches and admin fees.

Rob Gruhl – How to Buy a New Car – Ignite Seattle 2007

Here’s a short summary if you don’t want to watch the whole 5 minutes:

  • Take your time and use two full weekends – they’re under more pressure to make the sale than you are to buy.
  • Get financing from your own choice of bank – A dealer may be colluding with their own banking partners.
  • Don’t sell your old car to the same dealer – You’ll always get screwed on a trade-in.
  • Pick at least three different cars as options – It gives you the flexibility to toy around and compare.
  • Test drive! Test drive! Test drive! Then go home. Don’t buy.
  • Always try to play dealers off against each other on the final price.
  • Get the “drive it off the lot” price – That’s the final number with all the fees added in.
  • Confirm availability – Make sure the car is in stock, i.e. get the VIN number
  • Don’t sign until everything is absolutely clear and the vehicle is ready.
  • The visit to the office – Do NOT but any of the add-on insurances, top-ups or extras they try to milk you for. They’re all overinflated in price.
  • In general, just be a pain in the ass. Don’t let them walk over you.

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Entertainment Humor TV

TV Chairman Epic Fail [Financial Collapse Dept]

In perhaps the most fitting tribute to the shaky world economy, Chairperson of the Finance Portfolio Committee, Nhlanhla Nene, is brought down to earth.

Categories
finance

The Global Financial Crisis for Dummies

The Financial Crisis Explained...in English

If you want the lowdown on what exactly has happened in the global economy to cause the panic and strain we’ve been seeing over the past few weeks in finance markets worldwide, you could do a lot worse than the following links:

In The Giant Pool of Money, This American Life producer Alex Blumberg teams up with NPR’s Adam Davidson to tell the surprisingly entertaining story of how the U.S. got itself into a housing crisis.

In the follow up show, Another Frightening Show About the Economy, Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson recount what happened when the credit markets froze, and how the housing crisis started impacting the markets as a whole through the ‘evils’ of unregulated credit default swaps.

In plain spoken English these guys do a great job of informing the rest of us exactly what the hell happened.

As an added bonus, they’ve now started the Planet Money Podcast and Planet Money Blog, essential material for anyone who wants to keep abreast of what is happening in the world of money.

Categories
finance

Where to get a free credit report

Dangerous little pieces of plastic
Dangerous little pieces of plastic

Financial woes abound during this period of worldly financial turmoil. In addition to this, people across South Africa are being forced to hand back their big, expensive vehicles, with tears in their eyes at their inability to make the next payment. Some have even lost huge sums of money on purchases that have simply become too expensive with the current interest rates.

I’m glad I’m not in that boat, and perhaps it has something to do with knowing my credit status. It’s also quite handy to check up on who’s been checking out your credit status. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who is watching the credit givers, if you will.

If you need to get access to your personal credit report, which the credit bureaux legally have to provide to you at no cost once per year, head over to MyCredit.co.za and register for your Transunion ITC report. Registration there was quick and easy and you get a cool pdf report emailed to you pretty quickly once registration is complete and the report has been ordered. I enjoyed tracing the deliberately confusing trail that I have intricately laid down for anyone who examines my credit situation. After all, they don’t need to know everything perfectly accurately, now do they?

There’s also CreditExpert, who will give you your status as per Experian’s records, but after registering they still wanted a whole lot of that eminently forgeable paperwork they call FICA records, so I have not yet seen the quality of their report.

Have fun. You now have the knowledge to get yourself out of any credit situation you might be stuck in. Oh, and when you’ve fixed that, take a minute and cut up one of those credit cards. It’ll do you a world of good.

Categories
Rants

Motor Finance Corporation (MFC) Sucks

If you’re looking for MFC’s Contact Details, click here. (And good luck!!)

Citroen C4
Image via Wikipedia

So here’s a letter which I sent on Friday to all the email addresses I could find at MFC (motor finance corporation) following their ghastly service.
Email addresses included:
epienaar@mfc.co.za (address no longer exists),
Jaco Kruger – jkruger@mfc.co.za (read at 2007/06/25 08:19:34 AM )(he got a fax too!!!), Linda Thompson – lthompson@mfc.co.za (who read at 2007/06/25 09:20:44 AM and responded by palming me off to Louis Masilo, who hasn’t responded),
care@mfc.co.za (hehe, now that’s a joke),
Steven Khoza – SKhoza@mfc.co.za (read at 06/25/2007 08:21:52 AM),
Pat Singh – PSingh@mfc.co.za (read at 2007/06/26 10:04:42 AM),
and PDuBruyn@mfc.co.za (address no longer exists).

Oh well, at least now its on the internet for all to see… I have to be off – in search of a new finance house for my vehicle.

Dear Sir,

On Wednesday of this week I supplied the necessary detail as part of a request for a border letter to take my vehicle, Citroen C4 SKC002GP, into Botswana this weekend. This was well within the requirements stated of submitting the request 48 hours prior to departure. Having received no response I contacted the call centre today (Friday) as I am due for imminent departure, as was clearly stated on my request.

I was assured this morning that everything was fine and that I would receive the letter via fax early this afternoon. I proceeded to phone again at least 5 times at around 2pm, 3pm and 4pm to ensure that I would still receive it. Each time I was greeted by helpful call centre assistants, each time giving out my ID number and each time I was assured the letter was on its way. At one stage I even had two call-centre assistants on the line simultaneously. I also spoke to Mr Jaco Kruger a number of times who also assured me the letter was forthcoming. Upon calling at 4:40pm the call centre was closed and I received an abrupt message detailing MFCs office hours.

I am now in a position where I am unable to take my vehicle across the border to my destination. It is also Friday evening which leaves little option for making other arrangements. Any arrangement I do make is going to become an extra expense which I will then have to bear. As you should understand, I am rather irate. Fuming, in fact. I’m also highly distressed and am questioning my choice of MFC as a finance house. This
is also reflecting very poorly on potential future dealings with the Imperial Bank group as well as Nedbank Group.

Needless to say I will be investigating a transfer of my business to another financial institution upon my return to work on Tuesday.

Thank you for your time. I now need to go make other arrangements for my early morning departure tomorrow. On the off chance that you receive this mail on Friday evening, a prompt reaction to rectify this state would be most welcome.

Should you wish to discuss this incident, please feel free to contact me.

Regards,
Shaun Dewberry

Technorati Tags: MotorFinanceCorporation, mfc, mfc, finance, vehicle, service, customerservice, imperialbank, nedbank, bad

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