Special Finance Bad Credit Car Loans

Often, a car dealer will decide to do special finance only because they happen to have a person on their staff who is familiar with bad credit auto financing - someone that knows the business and is familiar with at least a half dozen lenders that are licensed in your state and do business in the various sectors of bad credit car loans. In many cases, when that person leaves the dealership, the dealer simply stops offering bad credit car loans.

Here's what you'll go through if that happens: you stop in, talk to a salesperson, and pick out a car. The dealer then runs your credit report. Once they find out you have bad credit, the new finance manager lets you know that they can't get you financed. The result of all this is that you now have an inquiry on your credit report and you still don't have a new car. In addition to the inquiry, the process can also be frustrating and, in some cases, very embarrassing.

At this point in time, you may decide to try a bad credit car loan web site. Any site will do, right? After all, aren't all of these web sites pretty much the same?

No, not really. Just as all car dealers don't offer bad credit car loans and, therefore, are not the same, all bad credit car loan web sites are not the same, either.

Many of these web sites promise you an "instant approval", with "no down payment". Other sites might state that "all applications are accepted". Remember, if what they're telling you sounds too good to be true, it probably is. One more thing: if a web site tells you that all applications are "accepted", that only means that they will take a bad credit car loan application from you. It doesn't mean that they will approve that same application (isn't it remarkable how the words "accept" and "approve" appear to be similar but really don't mean the same thing?).

So what should you do if you have bad credit? First, you should look for a web site that's affiliated with the Better Business Bureau. The "BBB" seal on a site means that the company has applied to the bureau and has agreed to follow its business guidelines. It also means that that company is careful in answering all complaints and getting them resolved in a timely manner.

Secondly, be sure the bad credit car loan application you fill out is SSL encrypted. This means that the personal information you send electronically remains secure. Without this safeguard, your information can be intercepted and used to further ruin your credit before you even have the chance to rebuild it.