PenFed: Get $350 Bonus With Car Buying Service & Loan

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• Received snail mail on this offer today. URL is https://www.penfed.org/auto350

• I've tried PenFed car buying a few years ago (prior to Covid19 shortages). I found the participating dealers all had ridiculous fees built in such as doc fees of $750 to $1000. I think they jack up these fees to make up for the truecar/penfed cut. Also, since there are often rebates that are tied to taking the manufacturer financing, taking penfed financing might cause you to lose much more than you gain. I have successfully used this strategy several times - 1 take the manufacturer financing to get the rebate and, 2 find a refinance deal and refinance as soon as you get the account number and payoff info. It is possible to find refi deals that offer 0.5-1% cash back incentive to refi. I've also found others that are for a flat $250 to $500 cash back incentive. The last one I bought just before Covid19 offered $250 cash back. The account info was available at Ford was available within 5 business days. The credit union took about 3 business days after that was finished. I paid the whole thing off in less than 3 weeks. Got $1250 rebated for taking the dealer financing and the flat $250 for the refi. I could have just paid cash at the beginning but I couldn't pass up an extra $1500. If the refi incentive is a percentage, you can have any manufacturer rebates sent to you as a check rather than applying them at the time of purchase. This increases the financed amount and thus increases the refi amount. I did it this way once but found it not worth the extra $75 it netted me to have to wait for the checks to be sent. Of note I ALWAYS find the refi incentives at credit unions not banks. I will also say I love Penfed. I have a mortgage with them and a couple of credit cards.

  • This was interesting. Thanks Charles.

• What happen if I have a deposit with a dealership already. Would I still be able to use the penfed car buying service and take advantage of this offer?

  • I don't think so if you already have a deal with the dealer. Penfed/truecar charge the dealer a fee for driving business their way. I doubt your dealer would want to pay that commission when they already have your business.

• Penfed is one of the CU pulls your tax files when you apply for their auto loans

  • I got 2 used auto loans with them at the same time in June 2022 and did not ecperience this

  • This did not happen for me last May

• I have used Penfed for their cheapest interest rates. They tend to have the cheapest rate for any open-to-all FCUs. But if you are a member of any local exclusive FCUs, that would be better. Couple of months ago, my buddy got a ~5% rate from Penfed (cheaper than 5 other places), but eventually went with a local super exclusive FCU offering 3.5%. The dealership thought it was a clearly fraudulent offer because they were offering 6.5%, being the crooked dealership as they were.

  • PenFeds rate is pretty bad compared to most credit unions. Off the top Tower FCY 2.25% 3 year. Adelfi, good coast, schools first, CU SC and maybe 50 more credit unions with lower rate.

    • Is anyone eligible to join these CUs? Or are there restrictions like location, affiliation etc? AFAIK Penfed is for anyone to join. I have no affiliation to Pentagon but joined by depositing 5$.

• It can be difficult if not impossible to login to your Penfed online account. I suggest using incognito mode. That's the only way I have been able to access my account recently. YMMV.

  • Logging in works normally for me, even (especially?) with all my anti-tracker privacy measures and extensions enabled in Firefox, and behind a VPN. Probably situation dependent.

    • I've tried for days now, seems they're using a "New and improved website", maybe that's the problem.

    • same, no issues

• A few things I'll add to this:

  Penfed only allows 1 external account to be added at any time and you need to speak to a CSR to get it changed and it takes 24 hours to happen. I imagine this doesn't impact most people, but it seems like this crowd it would.

  Additionally, they don't allow connections to all banks; in my case, I cannot push from Discover to penfed, I need to withdraw directly from Discover to make payments (student loan refinanced @ 3.3%).

  They also constantly update their website so if you use a budget app (I use Mint) it loses connectivity more than it actually connects.

  • Ya, Personal Capital connection was not very reliable IME.

• i received a telemarketer letter from them that i pre-approved 75,000$ auto loan with starting at 5.19% apr. good to know that i can upgrade to a Mercedes E class AMG if someone stole my current car :)

  • That's the cheapest AMG out there!

  • It's what all the Pentagon officials are rocking!

• Penfed sometimes has good rates and sometimes not. Their car buying service is a rebranded Truecar. I used the service a couple of times a few years ago and it was fine. Last year, when I was looking and the new car market was in upheaval with no inventory and many months between order and delivery time, the car buying services were completely useless. I doubt that has changed. I did end up using the AMEX branded car buying service but only to identify dealers who would accept AMEX credit card for payment.

• I've used PenFed a couple times for car buying. Overall good rates and no major issues. Well I was doing it when cash was ultra cheap.

  The only hassle is PenFed will not send payment directly to the dealer. So I had to wait for the check and then drive back to the dealer. This is annoying if it's not a dealer close to you. Otherwise you might need to mail the check to them after receiving. The normal process for a dealer who does not have payment on day of signing is to have you fill out their credit/loan application to use as backup if you do not provide payment within ~ week or whatever grace they give you.