Re: Buying a car with cash - preferred method?

Last two cars I have bought have been done by Switch. As long as you have the funds in your account it's simple and painless, and costs less than a banker's draft.

Reply to
PeterE
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Yes they are, Draft is just a more modern spelling (probably influenced by the seppos) of draught.

Reply to
Tim S Kemp

VAT is exactly the point, such services are not vatable (or at least that's what the supermarkets are claiming). Likewise I recently bought some furniture and got "free" insurance, because the insurance tax rate is lower than the VAT rate. Whether the government continues to put up with such things remains to be seen.

Reply to
Stephen Burke

Cash is fine but seedy, and of course risky - you could get mugged.

Credit card is no good. Dealers won't accept them for such high amounts unless you agree to paying a surcharge to cover the fee the CC co charges them, typically 2-3%.

Banker's draft is fine but the bank will charge you a fee.

Switch is fine but it may be inconvenient having to speak to the bank and be asked all kinds of security questions to which you've forgotten the answers.

An ordinary cheque is fine too, provided you pay several days in advance.

Reply to
Ronald Raygun

It's an attempt at a VAT fiddle which HMCE doesn't like. They only pay VAT on the 97.5% Sainsbury's receive, not the the 2.5% Sainsbury's card services receive.

Reply to
Jonathan Bryce

Barclays Connect card (debit card) for 8600 with no questions asked by Barclays, sailed through and owner of my first brand new car ;-)

Andy

Reply to
Andy

banker's draft / counter cheque / 'building society cheque'

i.e. not a personal cheque

the above are cheques drawn on the name of the institution rather than the account holder

Reply to
Martyn Hodson

Lol - I bet Customs and Excise love that!

Reply to
Drinking Onions

"Slim_Shady_Monkey" wrote in message news:bghe2d$9ap$ snipped-for-privacy@news8.svr.pol.co.uk...

more pointedly it's the impact on their cash float that the large unplanned withdrawal has

i'm sure you'd be very pee'd off if you walked into the bank after a deal like that had just happened and ended up getting 100 pounds in pound coins

Reply to
Martyn Hodson

It's a profitable one too, if you pay cash on £10 for goods costing £5, sainsbury collects £1.48VAT and reclaims 74p VAT, handing over to the Govt

74p VAT.

If you payh by card card services take 2.5% first, so VAT is charged on £9.75, sainsburys collect 1.45VAT, handing over to the Govt 71p VAT.

Factor in the credit card charges to supermarkets being in the 1% region and you can see that the card services division is a profitable non-vat business. In fact if they take it to the extreme their supply is not vatable (banking services) but they can claim input tax on purchases like IT systems, telephone charges etc so they may even be getting refunds from the VAT...

Reply to
Tim S Kemp

They don't (but I guess you mean that )

But as they've just won at a tribunal complaining about it I am unsure why sainsbury's are still running it.

Tim

Reply to
tim

Altenatively, what's your address?

Reply to
pete boyall

"Tim S Kemp" wrote

I thought you needed to make VATable supplies in order to remain VAT-registered? At least my friendly VAT inspector recently told me that they could "force" de-registration if VATable supplies dropped to zero (even though other, non-VATable, supplies were still being made) ...

Thus no VATable supplies = no VAT registration = no refund for input tax ... ?

Reply to
Tim

Yes. Last time I paid like this they asked for a letter from the bank as well saying it was genuine. Caused me some problems at my bank as they'd never heard of doing this. Perhaps that's why they closed the branch. ;-)

Reply to
Dave Plowman

You can also get a bank cheque. Should be free, or far less than 20 quid.

Reply to
Dave Plowman

Hence the Lol. :)

Milking it as long as they can either on the grounds of "contractual reasons" if they "split" or something into a different company or just milking it till they are forced to stop?

Reply to
Drinking Onions

Nope. Banks have special arrangements. IIRC they cannot reclaim input tax at all.

Reply to
Huge

And how hard is it to forge the letter as well as the draft? What I've done in the past is call the issuing branch (don't accept the number from the purchaser - look it up yourself) and check that they issued the draft and that all the details are the same as the draft they issued. Outside of banking hours? I suspect I'd not accept a draft.

When selling, the only satisfactory method is to wait until the money has cleared before releasing the car. The purchaser might not be very happy about it.

The last two times, I've taken cash - 8K the last time. Checking all the notes for forgeries is a PITA.

As for buying, the last time I skimmed a draft for 19K over the counter and the bloke put it in the drawer without even looking at it.

Reply to
Huge

That's what a bankers draft *is*.

Reply to
Huge

This is a good point. A banker's draft is a very specific thing required for certain legal purposes and different to a bank 3rd party cheque. I've not used either for years but my bank used to charge for drafts whilst cheques were free. For the purposes of buying a car, a bank cheque represents guaranteed payment and cannot be stopped (unless stolen) so is just as good as a draft.

Still, all this stuff is a bit old hat nowadays. Debit cards (Switch, Visa Delta, Barclays Connect) are the way to go.

Reply to
Steve Knight

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