Warning About New Car Dealer Advertising:

Advertisers spends millions in psychological wording research to trick you. Marketers have been lying to us for years. Why does a 2 foot long bag of potato chips have only 6" of chips in a bag blown up like a balloon? No one would buy a 6" bag of chips for $3.99. "Some settling may have occurred during shipping." Translation: Some lying may have occurred during marketing! Here's some classic examples:
1.9% APR** With approved credit
You thought it said "I love Paris in the Springtime" right? Wrong! See the extra "the"? It really says "I love Paris in the the Springtime". Your brain tricked you, as I knew it would. A store can't sell 30 cases of beans at 25 cents each, so they make an aisle stack with a sign that said 3 for $1 and sold out in 2 days, for 8 cents more per can! You'll be tricked into thinking you are paying less, when you are actually paying more. Advertisers rely on your brain to trick you so they don't have to lie. How about this slogan mouthwash: "Helps fight the germs that cause bad breath." Wow, you think, it will kill the germs in my mouth and I won't have bad breath! Wrong, I said it "helps kill the germs". I did not say that it actually kills the germs. If it does not hurt the process, then it helps the process, right? Therefore it helps kill the germs. It's all word games. When new dealer ads say 1.9% APR, look for the "*" (fine print). It will say "with approved credit only", or "qualified buyers only". This 1.9% reels you car buyers in, and you must have perfect credit to get a 1.9% APR auto loan. Most car buyers don't. Other new car dealer scams you may hear on the radio:
"We'll Get You Out Of Your Current Lease No Matter How Much You Still Owe!""We'll Payoff Your Loan No Matter How Much You Still Own!""We'll Give You $4000 For Any Trade-In!""Don't Make A $5000 Mistake!""No Reasonable Offer Will Be Refused!" (Except yours, because it's unreasonable)
In the ads above, car dealers are not doing you any favors, they want you to buy a car from them. They also want your trade in so they can give you $4,000 below market value, sell you a new car at full MSRP, then resell your trade in for a high price. Here's how the scam works: If you are upside down on your car loan and you still owe $10,000 for it, the dealer pays off your car loan, then you owe that $10,000 to the dealer. This gets financed along with your new car purchase of say, $15,000. Now you are financing 2 cars for $25,000! Did you know that? Your new car purchase payments are spread out over 60 or 72 months so you don't notice what just happened. The more months they add to the new auto loan, the lower the payments. In many cases the payments could be less than your current auto loan, so you think you're saving money when you just got shafted! Their ad made you think that trading in a car relieves you of your obligation to that car. It does not! This gets many car buyers into trouble. You are actually taking on double your current debt, when you thought you were dropping one debt for another and buying a new car. They lied to you in their ad, they are not doing you any favors, they are piling more debt onto you. They dipped you out of it and then dipped you right back into it under their umbrella of debt. Very clever trick, but now you're onto them. Next time you hear those ads, you'll know what they're up to. Trade-in buyers are the world's dumbest people and never pay attention to the back end of the deal, only the front. Here's how the new car buying ads should be worded:
"We'll Get You Out Of Your Current Lease, then roll what you owe plus penalties into your new car purchase, so you can payoff 2 cars!"