How to buy a car with an American Express card

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• KBuffett says:

  1 May1 May 09:47

  Has anyone sold a car on Facebook. I’m pondering selling a couple of cars (£15k and £26k) and hoping to achieve more than Webuyanycar.
  I have some time on my hands, but not sure if the hassle factor is worthwhile.

  • Benilyn says:

    1 May1 May 10:05

    You will get swarmed by dealers who will low bid (as expected they need to eat) but bit less hassle than Joe Bloggs kicking tyres. You will get swarmed by Joe Bloggs making low bids as well so get ready to ignore these people or get thick skin.

    But you can get business done here in the end, lot of patience.

  • will says:

    1 May1 May 12:54

    eBay is easy and relatively cheap, pistonheads I think is free.
    I sold a £40k car on pistonheads pretty much right between what we buy any car and a dealer would have sold it for.

    Not a fan of selling cars on facebook.

    If you want hassle free try collecting cars.

• Lumma says:

  1 May1 May 11:40

  Does everyone on this site pay outright for their cars?

  • Rob M says:

    1 May1 May 11:52

    It is quite common to use a personal loan which you could get as low as 2.8% APR to buy out a PCP using the right to withdraw or overpay a PCP to minimise interest costs – assuming you can get a better deal with a PCP rather than cash. It doesn’t make a lot of sense owning the car – assuming you could use that cash to get a better ROI than 2.8% for the loan.

  • Tim says:

    1 May1 May 12:26

    When driving 20k miles per year, I used to buy a nearly new car at auction once per quarter and sell once a quarter privately. Did that for ten years or so. Then leased for ten years when miles less than 10k. Cost of car if owning is depreciation, interest (cost or lost) and maintenance. Partner’s lease was up for renewal in March. We declined and I bought her a 9 month old top spec Mazda3 for just above CAP trade. Bought blind and delivered by a main dealer. Used car prices could go either way this year. But I picked it up for £11,000 less than list and expect £6,000 depreciation over next three years. Beats leasing a Golf or Mazda3 by £100 per month. But depends on circumstance.

    • KBuffett says:

      1 May1 May 13:09

      How did the financials/depreciation work when you were buying and selling every quarter?

      I’d love to be able to game depreciation free motoring. Or get close to it and drive great cars.

  • Jordan D says:

    1 May1 May 12:33

    I would have done, but Volvo had a 50% deposit and 50% at 0% finance for 3 years, so obviously went that way!

    • Louise K says:

      1 May1 May 14:41

      So did we! I also managed to bag and ex employee family discount so we are VERY happy with our deal. Just a shame they won’t let me put the whole deposit on AMEX

  • will says:

    1 May1 May 12:59

    I think the biggest reason to buy a car outright is the impact the liability of repayments for a car can have on mortgage application affordability criteria if your at that time in life.

  • KBuffett says:

    1 May1 May 13:11

    If you’ve got the cash, used car dealer finance tends to work out very expensive. There’s no way I’d be paying 5-9% per year, that’s crazy.

    • Tariq says:

      1 May1 May 17:11

      Used finance deals always look bad in comparison to new car deals as manufacturers put incentives into new car finance to sell cars.

  • RussellH says:

    1 May1 May 14:39

    Always have done, yes. And apart from 1979, when I bought new for export, and tax free, and the following car in 1984 which was a new personal import from Belgium, always used.
    Always paid cash – no loans. Never paid over £10K after trade in either.

  • GaryC says:

    1 May1 May 15:51

    I always pay cash for my cars – unless there is a particularly sweet deal that is dependent upon PCP, in which case I pay off the PCP after a couple of months so as not to screw over the dealer.

  • HBommie says:

    1 May1 May 18:44

    Used to buy outright, but why have £30-£40 grand in a depreciating asset. I balanced this against lease and lease has won over the last 4 years. All new purchases.

    Used is a different story and depends on purchase price v depreciation and length of ownership.

  • Navara says:

    1 May1 May 21:48

    Yes, normally with credit card unless it’s from motorpoint with Tesco vouchers😉

• The Streets says:

  1 May1 May 11:42

  We bought ours at Car Giant using multiple Curve cards because of the daily limit

  • Tarmohamed says:

    1 May1 May 22:49

    Bought 2 cars from them. Always had issues. Will buy again from them though.

    • Magic Mike says:

      2 May2 May 19:45

      As a counterpoint, I’ve bought two cars from CarGiant, never had issues…

• James says:

  1 May1 May 12:16

  Sweet Lord. Thanks for that decent into hell.
  Imagine the contempt these people will have for those that buy the filthy rag.

• Nigel W says:

  1 May1 May 12:17

  The irony of this article coming out today as I just bought and picked up my car (Seat) earlier this morning.

  Annoyingly the garage only could accept 1K from credit card (so I paid the deposit part of my car on this), but then paid the rest with my Tesco Bank debit card so I shall be earning a nice bounty of points on that!

• Lady London says:

  1 May1 May 13:18

  I think I’m going to be sick. This is beyond saccharine. Even Waitrose doesn’t get near to this.

  Clearly big gap for Lord Rothermere public and private. I wish that world really existed.

• Bob says:

  1 May1 May 13:30

  A very close friend of mine bought from Cazoo and he cannot recommend enough. He was very happy with the car and the customer service. They really do care their customers.

• Tom says:

  1 May1 May 14:28

  Due to a change in circumstances (home working!) I’m seriously considering buying myself out of the PCP on our runaround (3.5 year old A1) – for circa £12K – then selling the car, potentially via ‘Motorway’. Anyone have any experience of using them? Example price was coming out approximately £14,000 (£500 better than WBAC.com). Reviews look good online. And I can’t be bothered to sell it privately!

  • Tariq says:

    1 May1 May 17:26

    No experience, but personally I wouldn’t bother settling the finance and then selling it – take it to Motorway straight away to get them to confirm their price and then they should be able to settle the outstanding finance directly and give you the remainder in cash…

    The risk with buyers like WBAC, etc is that they give you an inflated price on their website and then try and knock it down when you take the car in to have it assessed/purchased.

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