Conversations involving a phone company, insurance company, credit card company or anyone who needs to offer you something that even sounds like lending you money are somewhat problematic at the moment. The problems always start with the same question...
"Could you please provide your social security number?"
There are a few ways we have answered this question:
Option 1: "I don't have a social security number"
Congratulations you have just established yourself as someone who might one day aspire to be a homeless person. What ever conversation you were having is now over. For a while this was the only way we could answer the question, this resulted in a lot of short conversations.
Option 2: "My social security number is XXX XX XXXX."
Good start. So far, so good. Only problem is that the very next thing that will happen is that the person you are speaking to will enter that number into their system and then pause for a while before looking somewhat confused and embarking on a variation of the following conversation.
"That's strange I cant seem to find your credit score in the system"
"Oh, I don't have a credit score"
"You don't have a credit score?"
"Yes, I only recently arrived in the US, I don't have a credit score"
"I'll have to speak with my manager…"
It's at this point that you either:
a - Get told to go away (most car loans)
b - Pay a bond ($500 to go on a month to month phone plan)
c - Pay a few extra months of whatever in advance. (Rent)
d - Pay a rate approximately 500% of what an american would consider "normal" (car insurance companies love this option as they know you cant walk away as you are required by law to have insurance)
All of which you have no choice to submit to if you want what ever they are offering as you're basically one minuscule step away from being a homeless person in their eyes.
Which gets us to cars. We're in Houston, we need a car. In fact, because neither of us are particularly patient people, we need two cars.
The story of the first car was detailed previously. We got round the credit issue on that one by taking the highly unexpected step of just paying for the thing outright. This also caused a bit of confusion as various sales/financing people had to ask for directions on how to cope with someone just rocking up with a bank cheque for the required amount. The systems just expected that if you're buying a car, you're doing it on credit.
For the second car we took advantage of the one glaring exception to the whole credit purgatory we currently find ourselves in. European car manufacturers.
This may be a Houston thing or it may be more wide spread, but while an attempt to buy a Toyota, Ford, Chevy or any number of perfectly sensible vehicles new or second hand on a loan or lease you will, very politely, be told to *%#! off.
 |
| An example of a car you will not be able to get because you are financial scum. |
However if you walk into BMW, Audi, Mercedes or Porsche and attempt more or less the same thing. They'll be happy to help once they've established you've got a job. In fact they'll let you "borrow" the car while they sort out all those annoying details.
 |
| Just drive it away. |
No kidding, with a letter we'd printed off that afternoon and a NSW drivers license Audi let us drive a 2011 S5 with 25 miles on the clock straight off the lot. They said we could rock in next week and get the actual ownership papers. So this is exactly what we did, after putting about 800 miles on the thing while we were borrowing it.
