Anonymous wrote:I bought a car on my credit card at Jack Taylor Toyota in Alexandria back in 2016. There were no fees.
I tried again in 2020 at a different dealership (VW) and there were fees for using a credit card plus a jump in price because I lost all of the discounts they only offered if you used their financing. We ended up getting the best deal by getting a 24-month car loan. We had to make 3 payments to avoid a prepay penalty so we paid off in 3 months. We saved a lot over buying with our credit card even when I estimated what we'd get in cc points.
OP, what is the refinancing part? I didn't think you could refinance a credit card unless you transfer the balance to a different card but maybe I'm clueless.
Really, the only reason to do this with Amex Platinum is that car dealers usually code as "Small Business". Which means that this transaction, for me, generates 15 times the normal points. So a $50,000 car is worth 750,000 miles/points. That equates to about $15,000 benefit as I use them. Getting a dealer to take the card is one thing. Leg work. There's always some dealer who will or I know someone who's a friend of a dealer. The issue is that I don't want to spend the money outright right now and that's where the problem is. I would like to buy the car, get the points and then finance the purchase using a car loan at 1-2 percent. Refinancing a car is generally easy. Problem is that banks only want to refinance other banks' financing. I almost got a banker to do it, but at the end the manager would only extend a personal loan. That diminishes the value considerably. I have time. In the end I'll probably just buy the car and be a pig not a hog.