Here is a cautionary tale in case you are financing and trading an Air towards Gravity. I decided to use PenFed for financing as their originally quoted interest rate was pretty good, 5.54% compared to BofA 6.25%. What I did not realize is that they are rather old school and take a LOT of time with things. Unfortunately Lucid financial services failed repeatedly to generate a correct purchase agreement showing either the down payment I had already made, the correct sales tax, or the updated trade value for my vehicle. This caused PenFed to refuse to finance the lower amount requested because the Lucid Purchase agreement and my financing application had two different numbers for expected $ due from lender. I didn’t want to delay things further (it had been many hours back and forth over 5 days), so I agreed to borrow the higher incorrect amount on the purchase agreement so that PenFed would disburse the $, and Lucid would pay me back the remainder as a refund, so I could actually pick up my car. What I did not realize is that PenFed sends a physical check via FedEx (not overnight) with 2-3 business day delivery, and STILL had not mailed the check out as of 10AM this morning. So I decided to say screw this, I’m not waiting for “check is in the mail” to get my car so I cancelled the loan with PenFed, and instead applied via Bank of America which resulted in rapid approval and 5.49% rate so better than PenFed, and sent the approval letter to my SA. What PenFed couldn’t accomplish in nearly a week BofA seemed to be able to do in an hour. The service people at PenFed were lovely and helped as best they could, but the issue is I needed to take delivery of the car due to a planned trip where I needed 7 seats and was hoping not to rent a car last minute for additional expense. So if you got lots of time on your hands, sure do the credit union thing but between Lucid Financial (they are not Lucid motors but a subcontracted entity) screwing up the purchase agreement repeatedly and PenFed unable to allow me to borrow a lower amount and then taking days to send a check, I lost my patience, and I’m sure made my poor SA think I’m crazy with the frequent texts and emails. Lucid sales people are great at least and I appreciate their patience in accommodating this stupid situation created by Lucid Financial and a slow credit union.
