IS_Mine

I am still confused by this.

Usually, if you are getting a loan from a bank or credit union they give you a certified check with your name and the dealerships name on it. I have yet to hear of a bank or credit union spitting up a blank check, you usually don't even go pull the check until you are certain you want to buy the car, because the moment you get that check in hand is the moment the bank wants to start collecting interest.

In my case I had to give the dealership a check of my own, with the payment for the car, and then once they recieved the check from the credit union they sent my check back. And, I only had to give them my own check so I could drive my car home that same day.

I just think that particular dealership doesn't want to fool with the paperwork, or there is some tax law that makes it difficult in CA. If CA has the car you want and you live out of state, why not do a dealer transport?

kensteele

^^based on your last comment then, i wouldn't give them my money since it is obvious they don't want to do business with you.

kensteele

Wow, that's pretty amazing actually. The dealership let you drive away with the car on a personal draft hoping that a legit certified check was forth coming?

There's so much fraud going on these days...still that's no reason for the dealership to conduct legit business. However, the law varies from state to state and I know that Cali has some weird laws when it comes to vehicle sales, etc. (someone from Cali please chime in).

Anyway, a blank check is a check that is issued by a bank (like Capital One for example) where they leave out the amount and the TO: section and the buyer fills in those pieces at the time of sale. The whole idea is your are pre-approved up to a certain amount and you can shop around. When you are ready to buy, you write in the amount you wish to finance and you write in the dealership's name. Some dealerships will not accept these "blank checks."

This is all info, again it's probably not relevent to OP, but as Javier said, it is sorta strange.

javyLSU

iTrader: (21)

California does have some screwy laws, especially when it comes to vehicles... If anyone's interested, here's the document I mentioned earlier that's needed to avoid paying California sales tax IF you are truly an out-of-state purchaser AND user (in other words, you can't have an address in Texas and use the vehicle 100% in California). The document is pretty clear on what is required for this type of transaction.

Javier

akinaboy

I don't know where 'Blank check' subject came from, but I was going to send them a Certified Bank Cashier's Check with their dealer name typed up on the check officially.
There can't be a blank cashier's check. All cashier's checks have to include beneficiery(<- typo?) 's name on them.

IS_Mine

Well, yes they let me go, and the only reason I suppose is because they do TONS of business with the credit union I bank with. Plus, I live in the south where on good faith we tend to judge people's characters. :P

socalJD

It probably helps if you also look like Daisy Duke (Jessica Simpson version) . . .

Evitzee

I agree that, on the surface, the dealer seems particularly obstinate. But we don't know all the history here. Perhaps the dealer got burned before with a flim-flam from an out of state buyer. One deal gone bad could be enough for a dealer to say, 'Thanks, but no thanks' for future deals like this. That is their perogative as no dealer has to do business with any particular person if they feel 'hinky' about the deal. There is so much fraud going on these days that a dealer has to feel comfortable that he won't get screwed. That's life.

At this point the dealer has already run a credit check on the buyer. Perhaps he saw something in the credit check that raised a red flag. Or maybe the buyer doesn't want a credit check run on him since the financing is coming from a third party. There are just lots of little pieces of information that we don't know here. But to say the dealer is being totally unreasonable is a bit premature from the facts presented so far.

When I bought my IS in August I had never dealt with the dealer before except for a couple of email and phone messages, yet they let me drive the car home with no money changing hands with the 'promise' I would return in two days with the sizable down payment (60%), and the balance with a loan through LFS. And I wanted the car to be titled in my home county which was 250 miles away. They didn't have any problem with this but being over 50 with a much better than average credit score made it a lot easier for the dealer to ok the deal than if I was younger, perhaps with less than stellar credit, and wanting to cart the car away on a trailer. None of these things would mean the deal would not be a good one, but the dealer has to look out for himself.

With desk top laser printers Certified and Cashier's checks are easy to forge. It's a headache. Fraud is rampant.

2point5is

i just bought a lexus from california and im from new hapshire, did the loan through the dealer no problem, had the car shipped out of state and that was that. give mike norris a call from mission viejo lexus a call, there pricing was the best too. most of the california dealers are a bunch of crybabys, they were scared to work with me, thought i was working some scam. there is nothing illegal about it, so long as they have a bill af lading everything is fine.

Landon

mystro1v

I too bought my car from Lexus of Mission Viejo. They were great to work with. I'm from WA and had purchased my IS350 (Certified Pre-Owned) over email and a few phone conversations. I had gone to them with a "Blank Check" type loan and while they said they weren't able to take it, they offered to get me better financing (which they did) and take care of the shipping for me under that financing.

The issue I faced was that I wouldn't be paying CA tax but I would have to pay the WA tax out of pocket once I got the car registered up here. Instead, I decided to make a trip out of it and flew down on a Saturday morning, purchased the car, and drove it all the way back up to Seattle by late Sunday evening. The financing took care of most of the tax while I had to pay the difference between CA and WA tax out of pocket when registering.

In my research, Lexus of Cerritos and Lexus of Mission Viejo were the best on pricing. Ryan Imp was my sales guy at Mission Viejo.

Good luck!

-m