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> "Immobilizers are most often seen in cases of sub-prime borrowers with questionable credit," he said. "The devices are very effective at keeping people on tim

• throwawaybzx9 9y ago
  It amazes you? Really? It doesn't at all seem par for the course for a system that rewards this type of behavior? Profit no matter what is designed to fuck people over like this. Follow the money and it won't be surprising at all why the system still exists as it does.
  • Danihan 9y ago
    It rewards taking a risk on people with questionable credit histories?
• jnordwick 9y ago
  While i sympathize, with a high risk of default you need to charge very high interest rates and markups. You cannot get around the economics with a Care Bear stare.
  • FussyZeus 9y ago
    I agree with you in theory, except that the artificially high prices and higher interest means that the people most at-risk for default are then made MORE RISKY. I understand that a bank has to be careful with high risk loans, but this is effectively like tying a ball and chain to an olympic runner, and then sending them to prison when they lose the race. And frankly, all of that is forgivable; what is not is when the dealers then use these remote GPS devices to disable the vehicles, with NO GODDAMN IDEA what the vehicle is currently doing: Sure, they could tell if it was on the highway but would they actually care? And what if the person is working a night job, as many in poverty do? How do they get home? Or what about the case awhile back of the woman who's baby was in the damn car when it was towed? I get it, it's a business risk, but these things are DESIGNED, purposely, to fuck people out of their money and do tons of damage besides that. Exactly how much is a bank allowed to ruin someones life over a CAR LOAN? Crap like this is why we need a Consumers Bill of Rights.
    • lotsofpulp 9y ago
      What do you mean by artificially high price and interest? I'm not familiar with Canada's auto sales market, but unless some organization has a monopoly on selling cars and there is a monopoly of lenders, then there are usually a sufficient number of buyers and sellers in the auto market so that price discovery is happening in sufficient manner such that neither the buyer nor seller are at an advantage. Also, unless there is data, I don't believe a company would disable a car in a manner that would be unsafe for anyone, at the least since it's a massive liability for them and there's no reason to. If anything, the GPS/car disabling would allow for lower costs for buyers since there is less risk for the lender, which would benefit the buyers who are responsible.
      • djrogers 9y ago
        You don't have to be familiar with Canada's auto sales market to see this - there are dealers like this all over the US, you just aren't aware of them because you haven't tried to buy a used car with a horrible credit score and no cash (good for you BTW). These "tote-the-note" lots proliferate in low-income urban areas, and often offer sub-standard cars at higher prices than the traditional used car market, and top it off with really high interest rates. Often they will sell and repo the same cars over and over, taking payments and down payments until the buyer hits a streak of bad luck or poor decision making. On one had, the fact that these dealers do repo cars so often sorta justifies the big interest rates - after all, why would you loan money at a higher risk without a higher return? The flip side is that this tends to be very bad for society as a whole, making it insanely more expensive to be poor.
        • thomaskcr 9y ago
          I think you're making assumptions on intent/motivations. It's not like you can't bring your own financing to any car dealer, if you really can't secure a loan from anyone else - then for these used car lots the costs of being willing to deal with that market are rolled into the price of this car. They aren't just a lot, they are a high-default finance and repo operation also. They need to pay additional insurance, monitor their cars - their rates can't be great and every car requires some version of gap insurance on their end probably at least for a while if they're rolling these costs into the sale price and then requiring no or little down payment. I assume since they're smaller operations their money has a higher time-value to them -- i.e. if a higher than normal number of people pay late one month, they may be late on their debt payments since I assume they have some type of line of credit and they themselves probably don't have the best rate. I don't think they are specifically out to mess up people's lives is all I'm saying, it's easy to get caught up in the emotional side of a car repossession but think about if a client didn't pay you and you were racking up credit card interest waiting for them so you can pay your own bills -- would you feel bad about taking back your work after a certain period of time?
  • s73ver_ 9y ago
    I do not believe that. For one, those high interest rates and markups can often exacerbate the problem.
    • klipt 9y ago
      But for a lower rate, you can lend your money to someone much less risky. Why buy a 1% junk bond if you can get 1% government bonds? The real long term solution is good public transit, so poor people don't have to go into debt to commute.
      • xyzzy_plugh 9y ago
        I don't buy it. The poorest often work the worst hours, such as late at night, and might travel the furthest. I've never seen a transit system anywhere that solves that problem. If I'm coming home at 3am I don't want to transfer buses 4 times.
        • krath94 9y ago
          Everything you just said supports the person you're replying to's argument about a better public transit system. What's next, Bernie, do you believe that car ownership is a "right"?
          • nkrisc 9y ago
            Here's the thing, all rights are arbitrary and granted by people to people. Some are easy to agree on (right to life) and some are more contentious (right to bear arms) but all are intended for the benefit of society. If it would be in the best interest of a functional society to grant the right to reasonable transportation to everyone, then it is something we ought to consider. Some things that were previously considered rights are no longer necessary or desirable as society advances (the right to own slaves) while other things that were not previously considered rights (guaranteed access to the internet) might start to make sense as our world changes around us.
  • CPLX 9y ago
    Being poor is fucking expensive.
    • Danihan 9y ago
      No, having a bad reputation and poor credit history is expensive.
      • vehementi 9y ago
        Being poor is expensive
      • dpark 9y ago
        Creditors do not care a bit about your reputation. And no credit history is almost as bad as poor credit. If you have no credit history, you should expect to overpay when financing anything.
        • test6554 9y ago
          No credit history is a wildcard. You could go either way and they choose to not trust a stranger to the system rather than give you huge credit that you may not be able to handle responsibly. It's easy to get a low limit store credit card ($250 limit) as someone with no credit history. It may have an annual fee. If you pay it off reliably over a year, pay the annual fee one time you will have a moderately good credit history. Then you can get another credit card with no annual fee and cancel the first one. Then keep this second one for decades, because it will show that your nearly oldest credit card account is still in good standing after many years.
        • JumpCrisscross 9y ago
          > no credit history is almost as bad as poor credit Seconding this. It took me a long time to get over my German Swiss aversion to consumer debt. You are certainly penalised for doing that in America--from getting an apartment to factoring invoices at my business, many things became harder.
    • buttcoinslol 9y ago
  • test6554 9y ago
    Agreed. People with bad credit are pooled together and all charged more to make up for the ones within that pool who default. You can't simply put people with good credit in that pool because they will shop around for a better rate and they will find one. As someone who has shared an apartment with a person with poor credit who is also a habitual liar and hides/blames others for their problems... I believe in giving people the opportunity to rebuild credit slowly, but have no problem whatsoever with limiting opportunities and charging those people more until they work to regain credibility.
  • icantdrive55 9y ago
    1. Since Dodd Frank banks/dealerships found a way to sell a big purchase to a desperate, gullible consumer, and make their "nut". 2. My biggest gripe is a vechicle is more than an asset to many people. People use it for shelter. People use it for safety. (Imagine the first person who is trying to flee a dangerious situation and the vechicle won't start). They use it for safety. They use it to get them to that lousy job. I think we need to put some in some Dodd frank like automotive prohibitory regulations. Remotely disabling a persons vechicle, or towing should be that very last option. The customer should always be well informed of the exact time, and location of any lockout. (I'm looking to by a new car, and the pressure to finance is rediculious. They offer incentives to finance. I'm going to buy with cash, but I haven't found a vechicle I even like, in my price range. It's still the slimiest industry, on so many levels. If the car wasen't for an elderly relative, I'd by a low mileage used vechicle, or a classic car in the secondary market.)
  • RandomInteger4 9y ago
    In an ideal world, we wouldn't give more benefits to people who were more well off. To use a rather odd analogy, imagine you're playing an RPG that becomes extremely easy as you advance in the game. Enemies just dying within 10 ft. of you. That's a shitty game. Earning that one extra dollar on the margin as you climb the economic hierarchy should be more difficult, not less. I hate this idea that people wouldn't be motivated to earn more just because it's more challenging to do so. What kind of pathetic excuse for a human thinks like that? Our society is backwards.
• balls187 9y ago
  > None of this is illegal (except in this case obviously) but it still feels like something that should be illegal, amazes me we're so poor at going after what's obviously a predatory business practice. Legality often has nothing to do with it. It's whether or not someone is willing to fight. In the US, it's a cumbersome process to fight something like this, so businesses routinely abuse the system.
• jcampbell1 9y ago
  These scumbags are the only ones willing to provide financing for undocumented immigrants to get to their jobs. Cognitive Dissonance.
• 0xfaded 9y ago
  I think if one really wanted to put effort into a Care Bear style NPO, one possible solution is to buy up a fleet of used toyota corollas and finance them to poorer buyers using similar style methods (e.g. keep the immobilizer and repossessions) but using non-predatory pricing schemes. As part of the deal, you provide all maintenance at your shops to keep the cars in good condition, but because you only deal with a single car type you can keep costs down, similar to how Ryanair maintains a homogeneous fleet of A330's. You might even be able to provide a group insurance plan. Of course this would require a true Care Bear to execute, since you could probably make a lot of money if you just left in the predatory pricing. And the problem would have never existed if decent public transport existed in the first place, which self driving cars may eventually provide some semblance of.
  • SilasX 9y ago
    I've suggested exactly this model every time someone claims the terms are unfair. It would give you a self-funding charity with an ever-upward beneficial spiral. So why doesn't it happen? Because it's not unfair, in the sense of charging too much relative to the risk.
    • 0xfaded 9y ago
      I think there's two factors here 1. The relative risk is reduced only when your risk pool size becomes huge, and it would be difficult for a start-up charity to weather the initial storm. 2. The execution of such a charity would be non-trivial. As a dumb example, if someone wanted to make "uber for the poor", a charity that provides free ride hailing using donated time and resources donated entirely by the drivers, you would still need to build the app and run the infrastructure. Actually owning the vehicles and maintaining them only adds to the burden.