Bought a car, but lost a house sale
About three weeks ago we started talking to Suzuki in Toronto to lease a Grand Vitara from them. (Did you know that if you spellcheck Vitara it suggests Viagra?) Anyway, the sales guy, said the fact we were immigrants etc would not matter and that we should supply as much info as possible about ourselves and we would get the lease.
We sent them the lease forms, our passport and visa details, info relating to our house purchase and mortgage approval from HSBC Canada. We also sent details of our UK driving licenses and just about everything else except our DNA, although we did suggest that they could get that from CHC if they needed it!!
After three weeks of going backwards and forwards, chasing emails and phone calls that were not returned, they finally came back and declined our finance. The reason they gave was we have no SIN number, as we were not Canadian citizens. AAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH. As this fact was obvious from the outset, we were a little cheesed off to say the least.
After moping around for a day feeling sorry for ourselves, we thought back to our visit to Ontario in April. We had visited the Ford dealership just down from our hotel and had a lengthy conversation with the sales guy about a new Ford Explorer Sport Trac they had. Chris liked the idea of owning a real North American truck and so we had a look round it etc. However, we had somewhat dismissed this idea as we felt the truck might be a little over-the-top for us.
Due to being rejected from Suzuki, we contacted the Ford guy, explained that we would be interested in the Sport trac and asked him to send details of delivery times and costs etc. He came back pretty quickly saying he had one in stock and could offer us a $4k discount. We then broached the subject of leasing and he, like the Suzuki guy said it should not be a problem.
He sent us a leasing form, which was very basic and only asked for our address, salary and reference details. We completed this and gave our HSBC Premier Account manager as a reference and faxed it back last night.
I then contacted our HSBC manager and warned him that he may get a call from Ford over the coming days, he replied an hour later to say they had just contacted him – very fast. We heard nothing more last night, but to be fair it was getting late by this time.
Tonight, we got an email from Ford to say that our finance had been approved and when did we want to collect the truck. To say we were shocked is an understatement. Suzuki took three weeks to faff around and say no, Ford came back in less than two days with a yes, based on far less info than we sent to the others.
So, we are now able to collect our brand new truck on arrival in Belleville in three weeks time!
We now have our house and car sorted!
Oh, the bad news is that the people who made an offer on our UK house have pulled out. Don’t you just love the UK real estate trade! This would not happen in Canada.
So we are back to square one with the house sale. At least they pulled out almost immediately and not right at the last minute.
By the way, we have been quoted $1,440 to insure the Ford, which we didn’t think was too bad considering all the horror stories we have heard from others.
