If you’ve ever considered a career as an F&I manager, fucking don’t. If that doesn’t dissuade you, then come eat some crayons with me and play in my sandbox. I’m an F&I manager at a large Audi dealer, and I’ve aged at least 30 years in my last decade in the box.
This job forces you to become a banker, a shark, a lawyer, a jester and a coke addict within the first year. It’s a miracle I’m still alive, and it’s deals like this one that put me one step closer to my grave.
We had a sales call come in for an SQ6 from a buyer in a shoulder city in our province right in the middle of a blizzard. He may or may not have been calling from our nation’s capital, and he was calling from the side that doesn’t say ‘wah’ instead of ‘yes’. Our top-closer/junkyard dog/latchkey sales rep was lucky enough to answer the call.
The buyer didn’t ask for anything unreasonable - he wanted to do all of the numbers over the phone before making the long ass trek to our store. He’d need 3 business days to get home since he was picking up an EV, so all seemed normal.
They agreed on a price, he sent over his driver’s license, we took a deposit on his credit card over the phone and all mostly seemed ok.
Mostly.
My sales rep brought me the file and it was set up in a slightly unusual way for an EV. We write up leases on EVs like candy since the values fall off a cliff before your pen has even touched the paper. This one was set up as a low equity finance.
For the savvy buyers out there, one of the worst ways for your wallet to buy an EV is brand new and in cash. One of the even worse ways is to take out a loan for a millennia with minimal cash down.
Which is exactly what our buyer Sean was doing. Red flag 1.
The sales rep shrugged it off and said he seemed like an upstanding citizen on the phone in the 10 minutes it took to go from ‘hello’ to taking a deposit. Red flag 2. He’d also point blank refused to do our remote ID verification, citing that he works in cybersecurity and that’s how the fraudsters get you. It appears the irony of that statement was lost on Sean.
Fuck it dude, it was cold as shit outside and I had nothing better to do so I may as well do my job. Let’s see if I can help this guy make a huge financial mistake.
We go through the credit app and all seems normal - good job, mortgage, kids, dog, no coke addiction (he wasn’t in the car business) so all seemed ok. I asked him about picking up the car and the drive back and he told me he could do tomorrow.
Tomorrow?
It was late evening when we were chatting and he was apparently living over 5 hours away in the middle of a blizzard. How the hell would he make it down here by tomorrow?
Alarm bells started going off like crazy, so I went on to ask him what he was going to do about winter tires. The 21 inch hockey pucks on the car were great for warmer weather, but would be absolutely useless in the shizzard taking place outside.
Sean must have rehearsed everything up to this point because he had no idea what to say. He asked if he really needed them and if they could just be in the payment.
Well hold up there Seanzy, why don’t we do some creative accounting for you? If I stick them in your millennium loan you’ll have to pay luxury tax and interest on them and they’ll cost you an extra $2k (thanks Trudeau).
We can settle them up over the counter and you can handle the rest with the CRA yourself, how’s that for a plan?
He wouldn’t bite. Red flag 3.
Credit came back good to go, but something wasn’t sitting well. How the hell was he expecting to come down here tomorrow to pick up the car? How the fuck would he drive home in 2 feet of snow on summer tires? Why the fuck is he ok to pay $2k in interest/taxes for seemingly no good reason?
The boffins at AFS and I decided to have a little chat and after lots of digging, we decided Sean was up to no good. His credit app came back without issue, sure, but something stunk worse than the shits in my poop app (link in my bio).
The crew decided it wasn’t worth the risk. They flagged him as a possible ID theft and we never heard from him again.
Until 2 weeks later when he tried the same thing at my sister store.
My former colleague/fellow F&I manager at the store gave me a buzz wondering if I recognized Sean’s name. He submitted a credit app and it was flagged instantly as possible fraud.
You mean the ID thief? Yup, rip your deal in half. Buying an SQ6 on a long term finance? Take that ripped up deal and refill your toilet paper supply with it. That ones gotta go straight down the tubes.
Turns out, my old colleague gets a justice boner serving the long dick of the law. He didn’t take kindly to what Sean was doing, and decided to work with the popo to set a trap.
They scheduled pick up for Sean for the next day as if all was ok, and had a nice little sting operation ready for him once his ID scan failed. He rolled in thinking he’d be driving off in his new EV, but instead got the shock of his life from a group of Toronto’s finest.
Justice has been served.
EDIT: added a space between AFS and ‘and’. Idk how I missed that. Thanks for the love y’all, I’ll try to make these posts a regular thing again.