# Buying a car on a credit card



## Dave (Apr 5, 2009)

I will be buying my very first car this summer and I would love to put it on my 1% cashback. Not sure however if it is possible with new or used car dealers such as H. Gregoire. Has anyone tried it ? 

Dave

P.S. It goes without saying that the balance would be paid on time.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

Good luck finding a dealer that will accept that form of payment. Do a search in this forum as this topic has been discussed in the past few months.

Remember too it is illegal for a merchant to add a surcharge because you decided to buy it that way. Any dealer who accepts this idea, may well ask you to pay this fee.

Therefore, I cannot recommend this method.

If you have the cash, just write them a cheque.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

the-royal-mail said:


> Remember too it is illegal for a merchant to add a surcharge because you decided to buy it that way. Any dealer who accepts this idea, may well ask you to pay this fee.
> 
> Therefore, I cannot recommend this method.
> 
> If you have the cash, just write them a cheque.


Yet it is perfectly legal for them to offer a "cash discount" as many stores still do

Not many reward cards defeat the fees, but a free cash back card does. I'd just pay cash and ask for a disount. Cars are priced for cheap financing, as that is a big marketing trick for people to buy new vs used "The low financing made it worth it"


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## Karen (Jul 24, 2010)

I tried to do that when I bought a new car last year. I wanted to pay with my credit card in order to collect about 1250 airmile points. I would then have paid off the cc in full, since I had the cash to pay for the car. The dealer, however, had a policy of only allowing up to $3000 on a credit card, so that is what I did and wrote a cheque for the balance. An acquaintance of mine recently had the same experience, including the $3,000 limit. The dealer's rationale, as explained to my acquaintance, was that the dealer would lose too much money in fees to the credit card issuer if they accepted payment in full on a cc.


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## Dave (Apr 5, 2009)

Thanks all ! That is what I thought. I will definitively search previous discussions.

Dave


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## slacker (Mar 8, 2010)

Yup. The credit card fee paid by the merchant to Visa or Mastercard is somewhere between 1.5% to 3%, so it's not really worth it for them to let you do this. This example demonstrates why the entire "rewards" credit card program is paid for by consumers themselves.


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## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

The best we were able to do was put the max (I think it was also about $3k) on the credit card, and we got all the accessories (about $4 or 5K) and upgrades put on 2 more seperate transactions.


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## FrugalTrader (Oct 13, 2008)

Karen said:


> I tried to do that when I bought a new car last year. I wanted to pay with my credit card in order to collect about 1250 airmile points. I would then have paid off the cc in full, since I had the cash to pay for the car. The dealer, however, had a policy of only allowing up to $3000 on a credit card, so that is what I did and wrote a cheque for the balance. An acquaintance of mine recently had the same experience, including the $3,000 limit. The dealer's rationale, as explained to my acquaintance, was that the dealer would lose too much money in fees to the credit card issuer if they accepted payment in full on a cc.



+1 The dealer we worked with only allowed $3k as well on the CC.


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## Square Root (Jan 30, 2010)

Have put $5,000 deposit for a new car on my AMEX card in the past. Hope to do this again soon.


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## marina628 (Dec 14, 2010)

I was able to use my credit card for $6000 on the last car as it was a custom order they took $3000 on the order and then I paid $3000 when we picked it up 3 months later.Generally $3000 is max any dealer will accept on any car.


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## Marlin (Mar 26, 2011)

Yes, it is possible as well as you can get 1% cashback. There is some auto dealers which offer some percent cashback offer. But it to be for special season.


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## LondonHomes (Dec 29, 2010)

I few years back I put my deposit down on a new GM car using the GM Visa. I delayed pickup until the next billing cycle and used the 5% rebate on my deposit to further reduce the amount of money I had to pay. 

But like others the dealer wouldn't let me pay the full balance on the CC.


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## bean438 (Jul 18, 2009)

slacker said:


> Yup. The credit card fee paid by the merchant to Visa or Mastercard is somewhere between 1.5% to 3%, so it's not really worth it for them to let you do this. This example demonstrates why the entire "rewards" credit card program is paid for by consumers themselves.


3% of a 30k car is 900 bucks. The dealer still makes about 2100 dollars if you pay MSRP.

I am sure if you walked, they would take the cc.


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