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Not exactly a hard question

February 14th, 2007 at 03:47 am

So I call my car loan company. All I want to know is how the interest is calculated.

The lady tells me it is about $y a day. Umm? For every day that I have the loan?

She doesn't know, she only knows it is $y a day this month, the total interest paid last month was X and the interest next month will be about X......

OK great, and my question is, how is that calculated? All I want to know is if I pay down the principle will it effect the interest or is the interest calculated for the life of the loan regardless of principle?

She doesn't know.

What good is a live person answering the phone about a loan if they don't know the terms of the loan?

She offers to transfer me to a local branch to speak to a loan officer.

Lovely.

I get transfered to a nice woman who asks to direct my call, sigh, loan officer, that is what I was transfered for, why can't people who are doing the transfering state the nature when they transfer, do I HAVE to repeat myself a million times?

Of course, there is no loan officer in the office that day....um hello you are a bank, all you do is take money and LOAN it!

So off I go transfered to another person.

"How may I direct your call?"

Sigh....

Loan officer..I need to speak to a loan officer, I just want to know how the interest is calculated on my car loan.

"I am sorry our loan officer is busy now, I can transfer you to his voice mail"

sigh.....
fine....

Really how hard can it be for a bank to know how it's interest is calculated? I left my message and an hour later got a call from a very nice man who explained and told me I had to pay down the principle in person. (btw 'busy' meant out ot lunch)

Why on earth they want you to be in person is beyond me, but regardless we now know for sure it will save on interest and we will be headed over there soon as all checks are in. (bonus plus income tax plus some loot leftover)

4 Responses to “Not exactly a hard question”

  1. daylily Says:
    1171462573

    I keep a spreadsheet of my mortgage, my car loan and my student loan. I am able to track each payment, calculate the interest and see the results of paying early.
    Interested?

  2. princessperky Says:
    1171497517

    That is exactly why I wanted to know, so we know paying eary is good, and how good, thanks for the offer, but I have a good enough one on excell.

  3. daylily Says:
    1171548759

    I'm not following. If you have an amortization schedule set up in Excel then you should be able to figure out how much interest you are paying monthly without having to call the loan company, provided you know what the original annual interest rate on the loan was.

  4. princessperky Says:
    1171563122

    had to find out if it was calculated on amount still owed or on set amount (yes I have seen a car loan where paying early didn't change interest amounts)

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