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Thread: Missed a car payment? Good luck starting the car !

  1. #1
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    Talking Missed a car payment? Good luck starting the car !

    Thu Apr 3, 2008 8:55PM EDT

    I've never heard of this trend before, but according to USA Today, subprime borrowers buying a car are required to have a little box mounted under the car's dashboard that forces them to make payments on time. A light on the box flashes when payments are due, and if the payment is not made on time, the box starts to beep until a four-digit code is punched in to reset the system. The only way to get this code is by making the payment, and if that payment is not made on time, the car won't start.

    Apparently, customers hate them, while lenders love the little boxes because it lowers default rates. Sekurus, the company who sells these boxes, has sold over 250,000 at $250, and its competitors are looking at ways to make these payment enforcement devices more efficient. One company is selling wireless systems that sends text messages to the car, and another one is adding GPS functionality to the device to make it easy for lenders to repossess the car.

    I know times are tough for everyone, but is this really necessary? Before you know it, we'll have these little boxes locking us out the house too. It's just crazy.

    http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/hughes/25902
    Prince Loeffler
    Shugyokan Dojo

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    Just another sign of the corporate takeover of America; with the blessing of our "elected officials."
    Ricky Wood

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    Default This is nothing really new

    They have been doing this here for atleast 3 years and we are always a few years behind on new technologies.

    If people don't have the money to buy a car they probably shouldn't buy one.
    If loan companies want to get paid back, they should not lend money to people who do not have enough money to pay it back or who have a history of not paying it back.

    What you have in this situation is deadd beat customers going to a dead beat lender to borrow money that both expect will not be paid back. It sounds like a perfect match.

    One of my neighbors bought a truck from one of these "buy here pay here lots". After missing a payment he was crying to me about his engine being cut off. But by the end of that day he scraped the money together, went down and made his payment and they started him back up.

    The only people that this is a negative for is the people who want to keep driving but expect to not have to keep up on thier part of the deal. If some one objects, they don't have to buy the car.

    Laws regarding foreclosure and eviction are different than reposessing a car. So it's doubtful that mortgage lenders will apply this kind of technology.
    don engle

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    I think it's a good idea. People overstretch themselves nowadays. They need to relearn saving and waiting to buy things.

    Instant gratification is not compatible with financial security.
    Mat Rous

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    Like the Beatles said in Tax Man some time ago - "If you take a walk he'll tax your feet..." Something like that anyways.

    I do nothing on credit. If I don't have the cash to buy it, I don't buy it. People are so easily caught up in the SHINY NEW BIGGER BETTER NEED IT NOW BLING BLING stupidity circus. Tech is tech - and granted, most of it is designed to make money faster and some of it takes away our privacy and even worse. But if it makes ya look stupid and whiney for going to the circus, ya probably shoulda thunk it out a little better before ya handed over your brains to the credit company.

    C'MON PEOPLE GET A GRIP. Actually, I don't care what you do with your money. Just don't ask me for any.

    Cheers!
    Dawn Tirschel

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    The financial system needs to learn temperance too. If lenders can avoid getting burned by irresponsible behaviour, how are they going to learn good financial practices? Capitalism isn't science, it only works on consensus. People have to internalize the rules of the system in order for those rules to be effective, and companies have no buisness installing monitoring devices to ensure we're all being good little consumers. If the rules of consumption are flagging because people no longer feel beholden to them, it's because lenders of lost sight of the rules themselves. Short-sighted lending leading to a substantial default rate is a problem that ignores fundamental rules of return for investment. If that part of the system breaks, it's hardly surprising that American consumers -driven by some bizzare patriotic urge to consume that utterly baffles me- are going to break their end of the bargain too. If you create a society where people are taught from a young age to consume and spend uncritically, they are going to walk right into the trap of poorly concieved lending programmes. You can't train a nation of selfish, covetous, short sighted people from whom you can extract large amounts of disposable income and expect them to act responsibly when left to their own devices.

    Yes on an interpersonal level people are responsible for their own financial decision making, but when you present a society with a deluded neo-Victorian social outlook where goods are endless and economies only flourish, they are going to borrow far beyond their means because they assume things are only getting better. Unfortunately, Westerners have become so spoiled by hyperfecundity that telling them that things are going bad will only cause people to panic. What if I can't get the newest car or newest TV? Surely it's a sign of the coming Apocalypse. Corporate America has become similarly spoiled by years of uninterrupted growth. A slight royalties increase on the Alberta tar sands and you'd think BP AMOCO was going to drop off the face of the earth for all their crying. Do I hear the worlds smallest violin?

    Unless people get more comfortable with bad news -and believe me that's all we've got to look forward to economically for a long time- artificial perpetuation of a broken economic model through more and more invasive means is going to be a permanent fixture. What really needs to happen is for these people to have their vehicles taken away from them for failure to pay, and for the loan company to face the full brunt of it's loss. The market correction can happen now, or we can forestall it while the effects of corporate mismanagement and irresponsible borrowing compound themselves and make the inevitable correction catastrophic rather than merely unpleasant. Are people going to loose their houses? Yes. Is it going to destroy families and leave tens of thousands of people derelict? Yes. Will it drive financial institutions into chaos? I pray daily for it.

    I used to think that the population at large could be reached with rational discourse, but history shows us that the best way to effect change in a broken system is to let it break and leave the poor, desperate masses to rot for a while. Fear and hunger are the engines of progress, and although this viewpoint is rankly fascist, there's nothing wrong with using fascist thinking as a historical tool. England built a responsible, more sustainable society from it's empire of arrogance only after the destruction of two world wars, and America became one nation only after it's own civil war. Rational discourse has the potential to liberate us from the dangers of historical repetition, but we seem to have traded it in for a beeping box that kicks your keister for missing a car payment. Given that we're not going to escape the cruel embrace of history on this go-around, I'm forecasting another bumper crop of extra Wrathy Grapes. Oh well, Dulce et decorum in pro patria mortis I guess.
    Iain Richardson, compulsive post-having cake eater-wanter.

    "He shoots first who laughs last."
    - Alexsandr Lebed,

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    Default Some thoughts

    As these devices proliferate, why I am thinking of the first multi-million dollar lawsuit settlement when something bad happens to the driver due to an erroneously disabled automobile not starting when it should. (As in the driver was in fact current with their loan terms).

    I am also concerned because why I concede a (minor) point with leased vehicles, and the many restrictions now imposed on them because the ownership didn’t transfer - with a standard car loan you own it - with the lender’s lien imposed. I’m certainly paying for the depreciation as the owner.

    It is like all these benevolent OnStar etc. commercials you now see on TV, as in the car slams into the tree, the helpful remote voice reaches out to contact the owner - and then calls for emergency services.

    Just like we are all going to be track-able 24x7 by GPS features imbedded in our cell phones.

    Big Brother is getting bigger everyday.


    Perhaps within two decades only civil libertarians and right-wing militia types will be driving around in “classic pre-Y2K” automobiles and using analog cell phones for privacy principles.

    Responsibility?
    IMHO once we got rid of “debtor’s prisons” we continue on this societal slippery slope to this financial Armageddon. Bring back Ebeneezer’s attitudes!


    Also Iain at least BP AMOCO produces products the masses use. From the chronicles of antiquity the punishment of having molten gold poured down the throats of greedy George Sorros speculator types maybe should now be reconsidered?
    John McPartland
    Well, but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!  I mean, if I went 'round saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

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    Surely such a device would not be too difficult to bypass.
    David F. Craik

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    Quote Originally Posted by Soulend View Post
    Surely such a device would not be too difficult to bypass.
    I agree. With engines in the 90's being faster when chipped it was easy to bypass the normal on board circuit to make the injectors run faster. Even with the Cat.1 car alarms, they are easy to disrupt. So bypassing a small item like that will be up on the net when they figure out the way around it.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Senjojutsu View Post
    IMHO once we got rid of “debtor’s prisons” we continue on this societal slippery slope to this financial Armageddon. Bring back Ebeneezer’s attitudes!


    Also Iain at least BP AMOCO produces products the masses use. From the chronicles of antiquity the punishment of having molten gold poured down the throats of greedy George Sorros speculator types maybe should now be reconsidered?
    Oh that there were a man with 'nards enough to carry out his justice against strong and weak alike....
    Iain Richardson, compulsive post-having cake eater-wanter.

    "He shoots first who laughs last."
    - Alexsandr Lebed,

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