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Saturday, August 4, 2007
New Car: The Aftermath
I wrote yesterday, assuming everything involving my car was hunky-dory. I was excited! Disaster struck at about 11:30AM, when I received a call back from Bethany at Bank of America’s E-Loans department. She, of course, did not call me until about three minutes before I had to log on to work, so I let it ring to voicemail. I checked my voicemail on my first break, which was at 1PM, only to find that apparently, BoA only finances above $7500. Well, that’s a surprise. I read all the notices that were attached to my loan application, all the fine print, and there was nothing that stipulated that. Absolutely nothing. I was approved for up to $10,000, but there was nothing anywhere that said I’d be without financing if I didn’t spend enough on the car. Had I known that, it might have changed the way I was shopping.
I had a crisis at work yesterday as a result. I spent my entire hour lunch break on the phone with Bank of America, trying to sort something out. I got as far as getting approved for a personal loan for an interest rate of about 21.9%. That’s more than double what my auto loan was approved for. It was a load of bull, if you ask me. I just wanted to buy my car, but it isn’t worth that much to me! So, I broke down and started crying about five minutes before I was supposed to get back to work. I tried to pull it together, but the realization that business hours ended in one hour and that I would then have to wait until Monday to figure it out anyway at that point had me freaking out and just completely unhinged. I talked to one of the supervisors here, and did my best not to sob, but basically said, “I have to leave; I have to get this sorted.” He made one of my occurrences go away so that basically I stay at only two occurrences overall, which I really appreciated, even though I know, in my head, that this should be number three for me. I left, acquiring many concerned looks along the way. I called Johnathan on my way home to vent and just to generally try to get myself to calm down, which worked, and then I called Rick to get his advice. I then started calling around. The first suggestion was to call the dealership, which I did. I talked to the guy who sold me my car, who suggested I see about FirstTech Credit Union, and then if I wasn’t able to figure anything out, I could come in at 8:30 today to sort it out at the dealership.
So, after I got off the phone with Tim at the dealership, I put in an application online at FirstTech’s website. Immediately afterward, I called them, essentially to get it pushed through faster if at all possible. I talked to a really nice girl named Whitney, who helped me get it all sorted out, and got me approved. All I had to do at that point was take my purchase order into the bank branch, which I immediately did. We got it all sorted out, and by about 6:30, I was walking out of the bank with a cashier’s check in my hand for the car. I took that down to the dealership this morning. I also spent a little while this morning, getting my oil changed on the car and all the fluids checked, and then went down to FirstTech to get my ban accounts set up.
Needless to say, I am not going back to Bank of America. As soon as my direct deposit gets changed over to the other credit union, I’ll be closing out all of my accounts with Bank of America. I’ve already applied for a credit card with FirstTech so that I can close out the card with Bank of America as soon as possible without feeling like I’m going to put myself without a safety backup. This whole situation just had me so freaked out, so frustrated that I would absolutely not trust my money with them anymore. Obviously I’m not worth it to them, anyway. Credit Unions have nicer employees, anyway.
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