Purchasing a car at some stage soon - and while I have savings I’m wondering if there is any option to use a credit card for part/all of the car purchase - basically in order to points hack / get max reward points or airline loyalty points …. thoughts?!
Buy a Car on Credit Card to Get Points. Yes or Not?
Chewycaramels1990 on 07/05/2019 - 22:46
Comments
This. They may let you pay the deposit prior to settlement/delivery (that’s what happened when I bought my Evo X) but not all dealers allow without a surcharge.
Thanks mate
Has been asked, and answered multiple times
All dealers pass on the card fee, around 1-2% for transactions over $2,000. If you get this fee waived through negotiation, it's only because you weren't the strongest negotiator on the vehicle price.
depends on how many points you get, it might be worth paying the extra, but it most probably isn't.
And make damn sure that you can pay it off before interest hits
But yes that represents up to $200/$10,000 in fees. Substantial
Thanks @spackbace, I appreciate your thorough posts.
I guess my first port of call is determine the possibility, secondly weigh up the cc fees cs the points gained for the sale.The dealer wanted to charge me 0.9% interest to use my credit card to pay my car service (I earn 1% in cash terms in flybuys dollars), Didn't think it was worth it tbh.
Not (in borat accent)
Appreciate the humour :)
Anyone know if you can buy a house on a credit card???
Yes
That's a pretty small house!
Dog house??
Definitely put the car on credit card to get the reward points. There are 2 main considerations though.
1: The credit card surcharge needs to be low enough or waived to make earning the points worthwhile, so do the maths to find out how much your points will cost you.
2: Make sure you have savings available to pay the credit card bill in full to avoid interest.I brought a $15000 car from a dealer late last year on credit card. They had no surcharge up to $5000 and 1.5% above $5000 ($150 surcharge) but the amount of points I earn was worth it. CommBank Diamond Mastercard with double points promotion. 37500 CommBank points, which equals 18750 velocity points without any bonus.
How much are those commbank and velocity points worth?
The velocity points would be worth $222 if you sold them for 1.2c each, which is a common selling price. If you redeem them for business class flights, they will be worth more. Don’t think you can sell CommBank points as there is no way to transfer to someone else that I know of.
Not
without going off topic.
I wanted to purchase a car using my savings and didn't want to fork out the cost of buying a bank cheque. Or carry a bundle of cash on myself.
Initially the car dealer had ok it (>15k) a eftpos payment. when i ended up picking up the car, they had changed their minds. I had i either had to bring cash or transfer the money into their account.I know commbank waived the bank cheque fee once if I got a car insurance quote, fwiw. Really the cost is under $20 vs a $5000+ expense, it's not huge in the scheme of things…
i know in the scheme of things would have been easier to do. i hated buying those cheques, plus ran out of time to go to get it. So a quick call to the salesmen to confirm it was ok to pay via eftpos. Ended up being not the case.
I didn't points hack, but I did get a 0% interest balance transfer for a Citibank Credit Card. They sent me a cheque for $15k to pay off my "other card" which I banked and used to help pay for my car. In effect it was a 15k loan with zero interest which I paid off each month for 18months. Not sure if they still do the "convenience cheque" anymore though as this was 3 years ago.
Merged from Can I buy a new car with my credit card?
Hey all,
Will be purchasing the new RAV 4 in a few weeks, total cost will be around $35k
Is it possible to use my CC (AMEX velocity platinum) to make the payment in order to get points?
My credit limit is $25k I think, is it possible to increase this?
Thanks!
Have you asked the car dealer if a surcharge applies?
Surcharge might cost more than the points are worth.
Good point, I have not!
I recently did this. They told me upfront about the surcharge.
When we got a price that had been negotiated, I said I would agree if they waived the surcharge. In the end, they did. We both got the price we wanted so everyone was happy.
As 35>25, I would say no.
What did the bank say when you asked them about a credit increase?
What did the dealer say when you asked if you could pay via credit card?
They both suggested I ask OzBargain, weird innit?
That is very strange. Considering they are both very simple yes/no questions that only the dealer and bank would know the answer to, it seems strange they would suggest to ask randoms on the internet who have no knowledge of your financial situation, or the pos system at the dealer.
Theoretically you can buy a car with a credit card, ask the dealer if they accept Amex.
Only Amex can tell you if you can increase the limit.
There will deffo be a credit card payment fee with the dealer, ask how much it is.
Do you have the cash to pay the credit card bill off in full at the end of the month?
If not it will cost you even more on interest charges.
Work out how many points you will get and the value of those points compared to the total cost including the extra payment and interest charges.
Maybe there is cheap finance available you can access through the dealer, that would allow direct debit repayments from your credit card. Slow point accumulation but it might work out better, if youre cashed up and earn interest on it.Money is no issue, just thought I'd see if I could get more points, but yea it may not be worth it in the end, thank you!
There would be no drama with doing this assuming you're buying through a franchise dealership not Mustafa's Used Cars..
I used my Amex ($15k) as a part payment when buying my new car, and paid the balanace via bank cheque. No surcharge to pay with credit card.
Ah interesting thank you! That sounds like a good option especially if there is no surcharge
Who would've thought a forum is a place to obtain people's useful previous experiences in similar situations
There would be no drama with doing this assuming you're buying through a franchise dealership not Mustafa's Used Cars..
Every dealership I've worked for has had a card surcharge for payments above $2k. All major dealerships
Yes you can pay by credit card but all depends on dealer l. I last did it and negotiated to reduce the credit card surcharge fee to 1% on a $20K car. I tried to have them drop it to no fee but I had already bargained hard on the car price
Not sure about Amex though that may be harder.
AMEX fees are normally higher than visa/mc, hence why the 'rewards' programs are better.
At the end of the day, you the customer end up footing the bill for these rewards programs via higher prices or surcharges
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/455385
Among other posts like this, which a basic search would've revealed
I think you can deposit extra funds into your credit card. Even if you owe $0. If you drop 10k into it you will be able to spend 35k from it. Once spent, you'll be left owing $25k.
However if after putting your $10k in you want to take it out they normally charge you a cash advance fee of maybe …2%
Can I buy a new car with my credit card?
Yes you can, but surcharge applies.
If you're prepared to pay the CC surcharge at the dealership, I'm sure you'll be fine.
More importantly, do you have $35k cash in the bank to pay off the card after you purchase the car? If not, then you will pay an exorbitantly high CC interest rate.
If you have a green Amex car, which is a debit card with the balance settled monthly in full, and not a credit card, in theory their is no limit.
I just did a quick check on my card and for a $60,000 expenditure no pre-approval is required.
Do dealers allow you to pay by credit card though? Will they cover the credit card fees from the merchant? Otherwise, if you're able to pay off the card in full and want to rack up the points then why not?