Slashdot Mirror
Miss a Payment? Your Car Stops Running
HughPickens.com writes Auto loans to borrowers considered subprime, those with credit scores at or below 640, have spiked in the last five years with roughly 25 percent of all new auto loans made last year subprime, a volume of $145 billion in the first three months of this year. Now the NYT reports that before they can drive off the lot, many subprime borrowers must have their car outfitted with a so-called starter interrupt device, which allows lenders to remotely disable the ignition. By simply clicking a mouse or tapping a smartphone, lenders retain the ultimate control. Borrowers must stay current with their payments, or lose access to their vehicle and a leading device maker, PassTime of Littleton, Colo., says its technology has reduced late payments to roughly 7 percent from nearly 29 percent. "The devices are reshaping the dynamics of auto lending by making timely payments as vital to driving a car as gasoline."
Mary Bolender, who lives in Las Vegas, needed to get her daughter to an emergency room, but her 2005 Chrysler van would not start. Bolender was three days behind on her monthly car payment. Her lender remotely activated a device in her car's dashboard that prevented her car from starting. Before she could get back on the road, she had to pay more than $389, money she did not have that morning in March. "I felt absolutely helpless," said Bolender, a single mother who stopped working to care for her daughter. Some borrowers say their cars were disabled when they were only a few days behind on their payments, leaving them stranded in dangerous neighborhoods. Others said their cars were shut down while idling at stoplights. Some described how they could not take their children to school or to doctor's appointments. One woman in Nevada said her car was shut down while she was driving on the freeway. Attorney Robert Swearingen says there's an old common law principle that a lender can't "breach the peace" in a repossession. That means they can't put a person in harm's way. To Swearingen, that would mean "turning off a car in a bad neighborhood, or for a single female at night."
Mary Bolender, who lives in Las Vegas, needed to get her daughter to an emergency room, but her 2005 Chrysler van would not start. Bolender was three days behind on her monthly car payment. Her lender remotely activated a device in her car's dashboard that prevented her car from starting. Before she could get back on the road, she had to pay more than $389, money she did not have that morning in March. "I felt absolutely helpless," said Bolender, a single mother who stopped working to care for her daughter. Some borrowers say their cars were disabled when they were only a few days behind on their payments, leaving them stranded in dangerous neighborhoods. Others said their cars were shut down while idling at stoplights. Some described how they could not take their children to school or to doctor's appointments. One woman in Nevada said her car was shut down while she was driving on the freeway. Attorney Robert Swearingen says there's an old common law principle that a lender can't "breach the peace" in a repossession. That means they can't put a person in harm's way. To Swearingen, that would mean "turning off a car in a bad neighborhood, or for a single female at night."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They'll rob you, but they probably won't rape you.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
This technology isn't new. An Austin car dealer a few years back had something similar where the buyer would pay weekly and punch a code on the receipt on a PINpad or else their car wouldn't start.
IIRC, A disgruntled ex-employee had a valid employee's password, logged on through that, and disabled all cars in the system out of malice, paid customers or not, having all their vehicle horns honk as well until the batteries died.
Not impressed with a system like this. Even after it is removed, the fact that it likely was installed by someone who just hacked and twisted wires at almost random may mean electrical issues down the line.
Horseshit.
If all sellers have their costs go down, prices stay the same and profits go up.
Or they get together as a group and decide where to set the price.
Your faith in the market to respond to these ways in a way which isn't anti-consumer is quaint, but it isn't what happens in the real world.
In the real world, corporations have shareholders to answer to, and a lowering of costs doesn't translate into a lowering of prices.
So I have zero faith that your theoretical model of competition in any way matches what actually happens. Because corporations have demonstrated time and time again they aren't interested in such things.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Debt slavery is perfectly legal in the US as long as you call it 'alimony'.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
>>>People who got NINJA loans were a prime reason for the mortgage crisis.
Not quite. People who gave out NINJA loans to people who had no hope of repaying these loans and then proceeding to misrepresent these loans as AAA were the prime reason for the crisis.
A friend of a friend has a car with one of these. It might be possible to bypass it, but blocking the signal isn't the solution. He parked his car in an underground garage, and when he came back it wouldn't start. Turns out if the disabler hasn't received a ping in a certain elapsed time it also disables the starter. He called the loan company, and they had to send a technician to get the car to start, and be able to drive out of the garage.
If all sellers have their costs go down, prices stay the same and profits go up.
Profits will go up because they will be able to make loans to people who weren't able to afford the interest rates they would have needed to pay before.
Or they get together as a group and decide where to set the price.
Besides being collusion, which is illegal, your assertion is easily debunked by anyone who has ever purchased a used car. You can play dealers off of one another, or even just buy a car from Craigslist. There are dealers all over the freaking place, and you can get financing from non-dealers. There are far too many parties involved for collusion. The used car market is very close to pure capitalism, except for transaction taxes, registration, proof of insurance, and other regulations which make the transaction too expensive to do frequently.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
That's not as big a cost as you think. You see, these kinds of car dealers that specialize in bad-credit buyers expect to repossess the cars eventually. They don't make their money from buying a car and selling it once at a higher price; they make their money from selling, repossessing, and re-selling the same car over and over again, while collecting usurious interest payments in the intervals between sale and repossession. All these devices do is make the cycle more efficient (and thus more profitable) by shortening the time between the first non-payment and the repossession.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Forced competition between even a handful of carriers - long considered oligopolistic - is driving down cell phone pricing plans considerably.
The USA has some of the highest cell phone costs in the developed world.
Let me rephrase: The cellular market in the United States is not yet at equilibrium. Competition is causing prices to become less "highest" over time and to gradually approach the more efficient price seen in other countries.
We visited a friend last night that is trying to sell a vehicle that's been sitting awhile. The battery is dead and a potential buyer made outlandish claims for what could be wrong with the vehicle in order to try to lowball her. All that would have been necessary to avoid that fiasco was to replace the battery, air-up the tires, and check the fluid levels and top-off as needed, then drive it around a bit to verify that it's still good to go.
I could probably remove or bypass this anti-nonpayment disabler device in the same way that one could disable a breathalyzer or antitheft starter disabler device, but I don't think that most people could. What they need to do is to define rules for how long a grace-period post-payment-due should be, then make the device in the car itself notify the users through audio playback that they are past-due and have x days or x starts left before the vehicle shuts down until payment is received. That would satisfy a moral obligation to not leave someone stranded without notice, and would also prompt people to make their car payments if it's slipped their mind.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Being poor can be a real juggling act.
You probably don't have enough liquid assets to pay cash for a big-ticket item, but you can scrape by lots of "easy payments", even those the interest rates may be ruinous. You may, in fact, spend considerable time and effort on juggling bills because you can't pay them all, you simply rotate who gets stiffed that month. And then pay again because there will be penalties and late fees.
Being poor involves a completely different mindset. You can't afford to trade convenience for money because you have no money. You become timid because so many of life's problems can be smoothed out or solved if you have money, but you don't have money. So you take extra care to try and not have those problems.
And, of course, you buy a pair of carboard-soled boots every 6 months because you cannot afford to just up and buy leather-soled boots that will last 6 years, even though in the long run it's cheaper. Because everything has to be done in the short run.
It's all very well to say "pay cash", but you have to have the cash to begin with. If you start out at zero and you have no excess income to save, you're not going to have the cash. If your reserves are low and Tiny Tim breaks a leg, there go all the savings.
Then again, we all know that if they'd just work hard, they would all be billionaires, just like us hard-working folks. Who gives a crap about stupid lazy poor people?
I cant believe the degree to which blame shifting is happening in this thread. How about you meet your financial obligations, or dont take out loans you cant afford?
When you park illegally and they boot your car, do you then complain that you werent able to pick up your sick diabetic daughter from chemotherapy? Or do you have a moment of introspection and ask, "how did I screw up in this situation, and how can I do better?"