Pentagon Federal Credit Union loans [Archive]

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turtle*

7-8-2008, 6:11 PM

i'm looking for a car loan. roughly $15-18k, i was thinking of going with Pentagon Federal Credit Union, with the 4.5%. i know they were 4.25 but not its 4.5%

i was wondering what everything thoughts and opinions are with them. I was going to join them by doing that one year membership off the 2nd site for $20-30 and joining them and applying for that loan.

My main concern was time frame. from when i become a member to me getting approved for the loan. And also the process.

I assume the process goes as following, i get preapproved for XXX amount and then get my a blank check that i fill out with VIN on the notes portion of the check and then i send them a copy of the bill of sales and then we are good to go.

kranky

7-8-2008, 8:33 PM

I have read that you can get approved for a car loan immediately (like the same day) after joining. Beyond that I don't know how the process works.

Remember once you join the NMFA to get into PenFed, you don't have to renew the NMFA membership in future years. Once you're in PenFed, you're in for good.

turtle*

7-9-2008, 9:36 AM

i did remember that part about one time thing.

i wonder how long the joining NMFA to get into PENFED is now...

i'm activately looking at cars right now but i'm holding off because i talked to one dealership that ran my credit and said they could of matched my 4.25% if i went thru the dealership. But the car was sold that i was looking at.

kranky

7-9-2008, 10:01 AM

I joined NMFA online while in the middle of filling out the PenFed application. No waiting.

mdcrim

7-9-2008, 10:20 AM

I love PenFed. zi currently have a home equity loan through them and have had car loans in the past. They always have very competitive rates.

turtle*

7-9-2008, 6:20 PM

eh... wasn't able to get it to work online... calling tomorrow to sign up.

ebren3

7-10-2008, 8:26 AM

Online sign up site is misleading - for non military families, the fee to join is a one time $20 fee. YOu never have to pay another thing to remain in Pen Fed. The site leads you to believe if you pay a one time $300 you will save money - do not fall for this.

Best thing about Pen Fed for me :cheesy:is the credit card rewards: 5% on gas, 2% on food, and 1.25% on everything else - NO LIMITS!!!

turtle*

7-11-2008, 10:15 PM

eh... i signed up.

$20 fee and i got suckered into opening a $5 savings account.

I gotta make a call back to get more details on the loan.

Maybe someone here can help.

I'm looking at 04 g35x with about 50k. kbb on these cars are about 17-19k. i've seen them anywhere from 13.5k -22k. I've hassled a couple of places just to see what kind of prices i can get and honestly it seems like 16-17 OTD ( tax, title, plates) is what i'm looking at. But to be on the safe side i wanted to apply for $22k ( i might find a extremely low mile one with exactly what i want)

Now my question would be if i apply for $22k loan for 60 months and only use 18k of the money, how does it work. I understand they write me a check with notes like " good for up to 22k" do i start repayment when i get the check or when i write the check. If i only use 18k of the money will they automatically recalcuate everything so it would be 18k over the 60 months. Will i be punished for making more payments ( say my payment is $400/month and i mail in $450/ month instead) A last question would be with the extra 4k can i opt to have the money and spend it on car items, say stereo stuff?:smart:

obviously i dont have too much experience with car loans as this is the first one. I normally pay cash for the car but i dont have 16-20k

shopping4my3son

7-12-2008, 7:03 AM

]
eh... i signed up.

$20 fee and i got suckered into opening a $5 savings account.

I gotta make a call back to get more details on the loan.

Maybe someone here can help.

I'm looking at 04 g35x with about 50k. kbb on these cars are about 17-19k. i've seen them anywhere from 13.5k -22k. I've hassled a couple of places just to see what kind of prices i can get and honestly it seems like 16-17 OTD ( tax, title, plates) is what i'm looking at. But to be on the safe side i wanted to apply for $22k ( i might find a extremely low mile one with exactly what i want)

Now my question would be if i apply for $22k loan for 60 months and only use 18k of the money, how does it work. I understand they write me a check with notes like " good for up to 22k" do i start repayment when i get the check or when i write the check. If i only use 18k of the money will they automatically recalcuate everything so it would be 18k over the 60 months. Will i be punished for making more payments ( say my payment is $400/month and i mail in $450/ month instead) A last question would be with the extra 4k can i opt to have the money and spend it on car items, say stereo stuff?:smart:

obviously i dont have too much experience with car loans as this is the first one. I normally pay cash for the car but i dont have 16-20k

This has been my experience.

After you write the check repayment would start ustually anywhere from 30-45 days later. Call and ask what your due date will be to make sure after you buy a car. If you use less than approved for your monthly payment will be based on the amount you use. You will not be punished for making extra payments. Just make sure that it's applied to principle and not interest. And sorry to say you probably wont be able to take the extra 4K for stereo stuff. Unless you buy those items from the dealer with them installing everything and they bump up the price of the car then your loan will cover it.

Good Luck shopping!!!

kranky

7-12-2008, 7:35 AM

Agree with shopping4my3son.

And you didn't get "suckered" into opening a $5 savings account - that's a requirement to join a credit union.

turtle*

7-12-2008, 2:15 PM

Agree with shopping4my3son.

And you didn't get "suckered" into opening a $5 savings account - that's a requirement to join a credit union.

oh i was under the impression that it was a new thing since no one ever mentioned the $5 here. Oh well $5 to save me a ton on my car loan for the next 60 months is worth it.

blah i got this for applying for 25k

Your loan was not approved for the following reason(s):

Excessive obligations in relation to income (overextended).
Past or present delinquent account(s).
Length of time accounts have been established.

redid again for 20k and i'm waiting for approval.

esm

7-12-2008, 3:11 PM

I'm wondering how this NMFA / PENFED thing works.

Looks like I do have to join NMFA first and then apply for PENFED membership, right? How do they know whether I'm an NMFA member or not?

I guess I have to open an account at PENFED and fund it, right? Is there any minimum I have to place into that account?

turtle*

7-12-2008, 3:15 PM

harrispizza4

7-12-2008, 9:37 PM

mdcrim

7-13-2008, 5:47 AM

If I remember correctly, they send you a check for the entire amount of the loan made out to you and the car dealership. You then take the check to the dealership, endorse it and hand it over.

My experience is that, after you buy the car, the dealership normally gives you several days to bring them your check. They will have you fill out their financing forms so that if you don't return with a check they have you on the hook at their financing rate.

freesia39

7-13-2008, 1:07 PM

I've never herd of a bank giving a check for you to write out for a car loan....I thought the bank pays the dealership for the amount and you pay the bank. I went right through the dealership when I bought my 06 and got 0% for 4 years. Do they really give you a check like that?? Bonus for you if they do....hope it all works out for you cuz it sure does feel good to drive off in your new ride!

If you get a loan online through Capital One Auto Finance, they send you a blank check authorized up to the amount they are willing to loan you. If the check gets cashed, then your loan begins with Capital One.

kranky

7-13-2008, 4:04 PM

NMFA is linked with fedpen, signed up thru them and your in fedpen.

i figured you can fund it anyway you can. they gave me options of auto-debt from account or coupon book and a couple of others.

sadly i got declined and is in the process of looking up why...

edit, found out why i got denied.

4 stinking dollars. i owed DTE energy when i lived there. i paid all my bills on time and i guess it overlap a week into the next billing cycle, i never got the bill fowarded to my in chicago so i never got the bill. this was due 3/07 now i'll have to call collections monday to get this taken care of.

How long till this is off my credit report? ball park 1 month i'm thinking. $4 is what cuased my loan to get denied.

Negative information can stay on your report for 7 years. I would recommend calling DTE, make payment arrangements, and asking them to remove the negative from your report. Stress that you paid all your bills on time, you believed the final payment was in full, and had their final bill been forwarded to your new address you certainly would have taken care of it promptly. It's critical that they agree to remove it from your report. Just paying the bill will not automatically cause it to come off your report.

turtle*

7-13-2008, 5:29 PM

Negative information can stay on your report for 7 years. I would recommend calling DTE, make payment arrangements, and asking them to remove the negative from your report. Stress that you paid all your bills on time, you believed the final payment was in full, and had their final bill been forwarded to your new address you certainly would have taken care of it promptly. It's critical that they agree to remove it from your report. Just paying the bill will not automatically cause it to come off your report.

thanks kranky, those were my exact thoughts. In all honesty that is exactly what happen. i paid all my bills on time there and my last payment was never received. I have received newsletter emails from them till this date but never one asking for payment on the $4. Although my credit score is in the upper 7xx, this might of been the reason why i never hit the 8xx mark.

$4 freaking dollars pretty much got me denied of my car loan. Collections opens at 9am Monday and thats when i'll call DTE's collections agency. As of right now its scheduled to stay on my record until 03/ 2014 :mad:

pryan67

7-14-2008, 5:47 AM

if you call anyone...make sure you record that phone call...if legal in your state...

but I'm curious as to why you were denied if your FICO is in the upper 700s...most anyplace will approve you with those FICO scores...where did you pull your scores from?

who's the crook? I mean...who's the CA?

I personally would NOT deal with the CA at all...they're all dirtbags...every single one of them that I've dealt with or heard of...

turtle*

7-14-2008, 2:26 PM

i have a providian credit card and they give me monthly credit score updates as long as i hold my card with them. They use transunion and for the past year i've almost never dipped below 750 as a credit score. only once when i applied for my new american express card. otherwise i'm knock on 8xx door.

with that given i figure my credit score has/is great given that i'm only 22 and my oldest card is 01/05 and i don't owe anything on any card and if i do it would be like 20% of my aviable credit.

i applied for the penfed car loan at 4.5% and like i said i got denied twice, first was for 25k and while i make about 28k i figure maybe it was too much. The first loan was denied right off the bat i guess i was asking too much. So i opted to go for $20k, and that went thru to the guys who review it, they denied me. I called up asked what was the reason they told me i had a "DTE Energy " delinquent reported. It didn't make sense to me what so ever. I ran my free credit report. I got the transunion first, it came back clean and clear of anything, no mention of DTE or anything. i went to do the other credit place but it wasn't working for me. I pulled up my experian and right off the bat it was highlighed "DTE Energy " $4 as of 3/07

I just made the payment cost me like $9 with fees and all that stuff. I was talking to the lady, she was very nice. Informed me that it can be anywhere from 15-30 days. They will notify everything needed. I couldn't record it since i was on a home phone and didn't view this thread to think about it. They had my most updated address but not my phone number. I had e-statements so i was never getting my FINAL bill in the mail it was online. She said the would of never sent me anything nor would they send up a follow up bill since it was my FINAL bill. It was/is possible that collections gave me a call on my old home phone but i cant say anything about that.

Now that everything SEEMS as it is fixed, i'm a little confused on what to do with car loan situation. i'll report back when something has changed.

edit,,, i assume CA means collections agency/ agent. DTE has their own department of collections i guess. Maybe the outsource cause it sounds like it when i was going thru the teley prompt.

pryan67

7-15-2008, 1:12 PM

yep...that's a GREAT score...keep in mind that FICO looks at the utilization of individual cards as well as total utilization...

so, let's say you have a 15000 Amex

a 15000 Citibank

and a 500 Capital One card

you have 300 on the CapOne card...so you're at less than 1% total utilization...which is a FICO boost

however...you're at 60% on the capone card....so you'll take a score hit for that

are they going to delete it, or are they just going to mark it as a paid colelction?

you may take another score hit if they just update it to paid...so don't be surprised...

too bad you didn't record that call, since they admitted to NOT sending you a bill, which is illegal...

turtle*

7-15-2008, 8:16 PM

they admited to not sending me a follow-up type bill. aside from the e-statement that i was suppose to get. Honestly i dont think i ever got it because i have a force of habit, everytime i get a bill i pay it when i see the bill or i don't even open untill i'm ready. This is how i've done everything.

i said exactly what kranky wrote above and she agreed with me and told me everything should be taken care of within 15-30 day GENERALLY. I didn't think to ask if it was going to be deleted as i assume that what "taken care of " ment. I think i have 30 days with experian to view my account if not i'll just put the $10 to look at it again next month.

as for the utilization stuff, all my cards range from 1500 to 7500 between 6-7 total cards. generally i have 250$ on the car i use to the most and like $60 on the backup. thats how i've been doing things.

edit just viewed my update :

Status:
Account charged off/Collection account. $4 written off. $4 past due as of Jul 2008.

Status Details:
This account is scheduled to continue on record until Mar 2014.
This item was verified and updated on Jul 2008.

Doesn't look like it matters... still remains on there. I might have to give another call to see if the plan was for it to be removed.

pryan67

7-16-2008, 8:55 AM

don't see if the plan was for it to be removed...tell them "I was told that this item would be removed upon paying it, since I was never properly billed in the first place. It hasn't been deleted yet, so I'd like you to follow through with that"

turtle*

7-16-2008, 10:07 AM

just got off the phone. DTE put me on hold for a rep for 20 mins.

so instead i called experain and put up a dispute with them. they told me untill the $$$ was offically charged, nothing can happen. I put the authorization number they gave me on the system and now i just have to wait.

Trying to get a hold of DTE and confirm they agreed to remove it internally.

pryan67

7-17-2008, 6:45 PM

well, Experian will likely mark it as a paid collection (which will further hurt your score)....but you might get lucky if DTE deletes it manually...

KiriJoan

7-19-2008, 8:48 PM

FYI about your car loan.

I just did this. I went through AAA financials and got a car loan for 4.95%. It was only for $12k though. I'm 22 as well. Good credit (about 730 ish). I make $43k a year.

I got denied originally for a $16k loan. I applied for 16 because I wasn't sure how much my car was going to cost and I was sure it wasn't going to be more than 16, just like you. But they said no because I was simply too young. I just kept getting no, no, no. You're too young and haven't had estabilished credit long enough (even though I got a card the day I turned 18 pretty much and I have yet to close that account despite never really using it).

I ended up giving in and asking my MIL to cosign. After we agreed to that, I found a car for only $12k and they said they would finance me for that without my MIL. Which is good, because I really didn't like the idea of doing that.

Obviously all situations are different, I just wanted to give you a heads up to what I just went through. The woman helping me with my loan was very nice, but she explained that with everything the way it is right now it's really difficult to get a loan for anything really. But honestly, all they ever cited me for was not having long enough established credit. So when I see you being the same age as me I want to share my experience. That's all.

turtle*

7-21-2008, 3:16 PM

THanks a lot for that bit of info.

Every situation is different from the next. Your making more then i am for one by a big amount. I myself make around 32k a year. With my little negative from DTE enegry as or right now, and i dont think they will take off. I've been looking for other places or just like you, getting a co-signer . My father agreeded to co-signing for the car loan.

I honestly was going to do a normal dealership type loan for w/e they can give me i assume its like 6-7%. but worst case i'm looking at 8%, i know most online sites i've seen in the 6%

given that 16k loan of 60 months @ 5% = 283.07 a payment
and @ 8% = 304.15

its only $1264

i'm right now trying to look up if a co-signer hurts my score or anything vice versa. There aren't going to be any late payments or anything. My father i THINK has very simliar numbers to be and he is 50, he should be making about 40-55k a year, no huge negatives on his account, credit history dating aleast 10 years ago. It doesn't make any sense for them to deny it if my father co-signs for it but i'm trying to see if there are anything negative that can happen. if there is i'll just take the hit of paying $1300 more over the next 5 years.

Or are there any other low interest rate used auto loans out there for me.... google isn't exactly helping to many junk

kranky

7-21-2008, 4:13 PM

While you wait for DTE to remove that late payment from your record, you could go with the co-signer. It won't hurt your score. And when DTE does remove that black mark from your report, you can always look into refinancing the loan at a better rate. You might find that you don't need to be stuck with ALL of the extra $1264 - you might only need to pay the higher rate for a few months until you can refi with a clean record.

KiriJoan

7-21-2008, 5:26 PM

Well, if you have AAA, I'd say go with them. If you don't have them, you might want to consider signing up for a year and then going with them. Like I said, I got 4.95%. Not fantasic, but a good rate. My loan ended up being for about 12.7 after taxes, registration and GAP and my payments are $223.

turtle*

7-31-2008, 3:58 PM

still no update from them. but in the process of getting quotes and etc. And then asking my dad to co-sign and everything he said, he has got a good rate thru his credit card checks or something. we might go that route then.

turtle*

8-27-2008, 12:04 PM

so an update.. i got a letter from experian. they changed my status on the DTE to " PAID, CLOSED/ACCOUNT charged off. $4 written off"

i called them and asked if it was still on my report and they told me i have to get DTE to send me paperwork. For them to remove something i would need paperwork from DTE and not just a verbal agreement.

So back to square one. on a good note, father has agreed to co-sign but haven't located the car yet.

Wondering what to do about the DTE?

edit: just looked at my FICO score JULY i was at 773 and now in AUGUST 748. I didn't do anything that would impact it much other then PAY my debt to DTE

KiriJoan

8-28-2008, 5:13 AM

Yes, but you had a loan company run your credit for a car loan right? Those types of things bring down your score.

pryan67

8-28-2008, 9:22 AM

typically an INQ would cost ~7 points...so if the dealer shotgunned your application..you could have taken a good sized hit...

I would WRITE to DTE about their agreement to remove the late...and mention that it hasn't been done yet, and that EX has verified it...

tell them that you need them to remove it within 10 days...