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Comment Re:LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS (Score 1) 907

There seems to be a "sweet spot" of just how much cash most people can come up with for used vehicle and it appears to be around $4K max.

I don't know if you mean cash literally which would make sense, but most people can qualify for loans from their bank or credit union.

I meant CASH as in CASH. Literally. Not figuratively.
I meant people paying CASH for a car. The segment of the population we are talking about in this thread does not use banks or credit unions.
That's one reason why they end up getting these horribly financed vehicles.

Comment Re:LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS (Score 1) 907

That may be true, but if you have the $5K, chances are you are not going to be shopping at one of these places in the first place.
These loans are for people who are are literally living week to week.

There seems to be a "sweet spot" of just how much cash most people can come up with for used vehicle and it appears to be around $4K max.
Case-in-point: I advertised my 12 year old pickup for $4500 and had several "offers" and tire kickers. I figured it was a very fair price for decent truck, but the buyer ended up being a dealer with a small lot of work trucks. He paid the full amount.
I asked him how much he thought he could get out of it. He said $8999.
How could a dealer find a buyer for that price when I had trouble at $4500? The difference was that they could finance it for the buyer.
Buyer had to put down maybe $2-3K, the rest was financed at a fairly high rate.

Comment Re:Opt out of the credit scam (Score 1) 907

and if we want a house we should just save up for 50years?

of course! after a year or two of living on the street, you will have saved enough money to buy a car.
Then you can live in that until you have saved enough money to buy a house.

or borrow the money from your parents like everyone else. (Romney joke)

Comment Yes They Do! (Score 1) 907

The dealer will buy a car at auction for $2000, then offer it for sale for $5000 but you HAVE to finance it through them. They will NOT let you pay cash.
They take advantage of the fact that there are a large group of people out there that are employed at low wage jobs who need a car to get to and from work.
They take $500 or $1000 down, or more if possible. Once you make a few payments, the dealer's initial cost for the vehicle is paid and if you don't make the payment, they repo the car and sell it to someone else for the same amount, financing the deal again.
These dealers can sell the same car over and over again without having to buy new inventory.

Comment Re:Panasonic AG1980P (Score 4, Informative) 201

These are excellent machines that will play back just about any VHS tape you can throw at them.
I am looking at 5 of them across the room from me right now. 3 are in excellent condition, one needs some audio work and one needs all the capacitors changed.
I also leave the screws off the covers so I can slide them back and manually clean the heads when I run into some bad tapes (tapes that were crinkled or damaged or have iron oxide flaking off).

The capacitors is the big issue with these. Every.Single.One needs to be replaced at some point.
I used to send my machines out to a place in Texas to have them changed for around $300 after I bought them on eBay.
Then there was a guy selling them on eBay with the caps changed out for around $300 and they were running like new.
I think he is still there.

These machines are excellent at playing back difficult to track tapes, or ones recorded in SLP/EP mode.
don't buy one of those all-in-one VHS to DVD machines unless your tapes are all in good condition and recorded in SP mode.

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