UKC

My car died at the weekend so I've been looking at getting a nearly new passat with 0% finance from the dealer. Anyway rang up yesterday negotiated price and put a deposit on the car (this was at lunch time), now waiting to hear back to see if the finance has been approved and its driving me crazy! How long would you think it should take to approve the finance? Would have thought a credit check takes a matter of minutes not days.

In reply to stella1: Hi Auto accepts usually only take about half an hour for a high credit score. Anything else will have to be looked at by the underwriters, even then as long as your credit history isn't too "complicated ", next day would be normal.
Even less strong cases wouldn't take more than a couple of days, I would chase it up.
Regards,
Jon

In reply to stella1:

We financed a new car just before xmas and the credit check took about 10 mins (while we looked around all the nicer, more expensive cars in the showroom!) However I changed my phone a few weeks ago and that took almost 2 hours, including having to fax ID to equifax.

Makes no sense but I would have thought they could give you a decision by now.

Cheers, m

Thanks for the replys I will give them a ring when I get home from work. I'm putting down a 10k deposit on a 16k car and have a fairly good credit score so would have thought that it wouldn't take too long.

It was a bit weird though as they didn't actually ask me what my income is just who I was employed by and for how long.

In reply to stella1: I worked as a Peugeot car salesman in a dealership for a year.

Finance approval for someone with a fairly clean credit rating is instant or within a couple of hours.

The dealership are desperate for the sale, so if someone is not getting approved, it gets special attention and will be looked at by the finance company and they will try everything possible to get a deal together.

Even with difficult cases, it shouldn't take more than a couple of days. If it's been two days, definitely give them a call.

In reply to stella1: They don't usually ask income, for car loans, they search previous credit history and look at the strength/risk of the deal proposed, a £6K risk on a £16k car is pretty strong, so you should have no difficulty. with that.
Cheers,
Jon

In reply to stella1: come to think of it, we didn't usually tell people if their finance was approved, because it was usually instant, or a foregone conclusion. The deals were setup so that it would take someone with a really bad credit record to get refused.

So yeah, it's most likely been approved.