#33 - Bert Straub - The Ins & Outs of Being a CAC Dealer

Hey guys and gals. We have a really awesome interview with Bert Straub today. Former CAC worker, I guess you would say, and now a independent dealer. He gives us so much insight into what makes a good CAC dealer and honestly, he educates me on how it works. Bert, thanks for being here today.

Thank you. Thanks for asking.

Welcome to the Independent Dealer podcast, the podcast for auto dealers to learn and grow together. Here are your hosts, Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson. So Bert, thanks so much for joining us today. We appreciate your. I know you're in the middle of keeping your operations up and running there at the auction, so hopefully we get some good audio. Everyone can hear us. But Bert, we really want to dive into. You are in a unique position to help educate us on credit acceptance, the do's, the don'ts, how dealers can use them and be profitable, what dealers should not use them, and some of the little quirks in between. Maybe just give us a little bit of background on you, Bert, where do you come from? What was your interaction with that company and what are you doing now?

Well, so I've really been in the car business for 30 years. I was a subprime manager for a large franchise group here in Erie for a while and we did a lot of subprime market, went into the independent world and did the subprime on that side of the scale and then left there and went to work for City Financial and we did the bypass through Chrysler Credit. And then in 2008 the financial crunch, City Financial laid off 3500 of us in a fail sweep and I was lucky to land a job with credit acceptance at the time as a market area manager, it really was probably the best time to be in the subprime market. At the time I think credit acceptance stock was $17 a share and I think this morning it's just over 450. So it was on a steady up. I hate that number because I keep thinking, man, if I would have invested in it when I was there.

Yeah, I was going to just real quick, I've got it right here on my computer. Let's see, 2008. Bert, had you got in at $22 a share, you two 59, 459 right now that's a pretty respectable return over 10 years.

So I'm not really sure if that says anything about my judgment in the car business, but so then, so then I had a 5, 6 year stint with them and loved the company. They treated me great. The corporate world, they were going in a different direction And I understood that direction, it wasn't a bad thing, and decided to open up my own dealership. And they were my first lender to come on board. So there was no hard feelings. They treated me great. And I think it's just a great company.

Great.

That's exactly. I mean, you've seen it from both sides. You know how the sausage is made. And then when you got out of it, you were still using their product. Today, right. Now, what percentage of your business, as far as your sales go currently, are you doing 100% with CAC? Are you doing 10%?

They're probably 75% of my subprime market, which is probably 30% of my sales. So if, you know, if you break that down, I think with them I'm, you know, three, four, five cars a month on a pretty consistent basis. And, you know, it's. It's been pretty steady for four years. I'm going on my fifth year.

Hey, Bert, this is Luke. Thanks for being with us. I gotta, I guess there's. There's different types of, I guess dealers with CAC right there, There's, I guess, different programs. Do you mind addressing those programs if you know them all and kind of the benefits and maybe what, you know, what you're doing with them? Are you a pool dealer or are you just tell me what, tell me what it is because unfortunately I'm not educated enough to know exactly.

Well, that's a good question, Luke, because I think that the stereotype that credit acceptance had is it's a business model for you to sell high mileage cars that are just not great. And that's not true at all. Credit acceptance over the years, even the time that I was there, was consistently trying to figure out how to get to putting more dealers on the program to get them involved. And I think the big difference is there's a purchase program which, you know, they'll purchase that car just as any ABC lender would do, and they pay you all the money up front and you deliver the car and there's nothing in the reserve. There's the portfolio program, which is for me, as a small independent, that's the program that I tend to stick with because in my mind it's building me a future, future profits, which. Now I'm in my fourth year, I've closed a couple of pools and the monthly checks will be rolling in here within the next few months. And so that makes it a little easier for me. I don't have to worry about collecting it as a buy here, pay here. I'm not taking the risk. And really, you know, I'm still getting 80% of all the money that I've put in that pool, regardless of how it performs. And then there's the, the program that's basically a no step program. I mean anybody that walks on your lot, you could put them on and the credit acceptance will pay you just the monthly payment that they collect. I don't see a whole lot of advantages for that. For myself, I do see the advantage of building good portfolios for future profits.

So from what I understand, and I was on the CAC program for about two years, struggled to make it successful, and they eventually cut me because I wasn't doing enough deals or whatever. But the three basic programs are you sell them your note, you partner with them, or they just do the collections hundred and you still carry the note. Correct. Is that what I.

That is correct. Yep.

Okay.

Yep.

And I would say probably what, 80. The majority of the people are probably on the portfolio program right. Where you, they, they buy the note. You get a little bit of money up front, something respectable.

Yep.

And then you guys are going to share in the back end profit. 80, 20 based on. Now when you said you get 80% of the back end or what we call the portfolio profit, you said regardless. But don't your losses go against that pool? So there's potential to get nothing out of that pool?

There is a potential. I mean, I used to tell my dealers, you know, you got to keep your pool chlorinated just like you do at the house. I mean, if you've got people that are peeing in your pool, it's going to get messy. So I mean, you know, there is some responsibility to the dealer to make sure you're building collectible loans. You, if you're looking at credit acceptance as just a place to throw your deadbeat customers against the wall, then take your money up front and you will reap the percussions of building bad pools. And that's not, you know, credit acceptance is fine with you taking advantage of it for the time being, but eventually it's going to, it's going to burn itself out on you. And that's, that's. Go ahead.

I'm sorry. So in the portfolio pool. Yeah, I mean, I mean if you put a lot of bad people in your buy here, pay here pool, you're going to do the same thing. So I kind of understand where you're going with that. What is the typical profit that a dealer should see if they're in the portfolio pool? What's the typical profit up front look like? Are you getting a little profit from the, you know, from the sell of the car or are you just kind of breaking even when you, when you put that car in your portfolio?

Now I looked at my report this morning before we did this just so I had a little bit of knowledge. I mean I'm at about a thirteen or fourteen hundred dollar front end gross profit. Put the money in the bank at the time of delivery and that's with about a fifteen hundred dollar down payment. So I'm not really putting any money out on the street. I'm making profitable deals delivering the car and you know, expecting some back end profits in the future. So it's how you structure it. Realistically in the portfolio there's nobody that says well I don't want to, I have to have all my money up front. Well, would you take a fifteen hundred dollar deal on that car today and if the answer is yes, then deliver it?

Well that's, to me that sounds like a good option. How long? And I'll circle back around on something. But how long? When you put the money. So we put this deal in the pool, how long is it before you're going to see any residual income from that deal?

Well, I mean that's going to, I mean that unfortunately is depending on how fast you got to your pool being closed at 50, which is their new program, or 100 which was the old program. So you know, however long it takes you to get to 50 cars to close that pool, to where they can actually start managing the performance on that. So it's, it's, there's no simple math to look at each deal. I used to tell my dealers every deal every time and then it would work itself out. And I think that's the problem. If you're looking at it as a specific deal this time and this only then you're really, you're shortchanging yourself. I think, I think you're going to miss the whole potential of the way the program is designed.

So what is a good number for a dealer out there listening to need to sell a month to close the pools to make it worth their while using cac?

Well, I mean my first pool, I mean I think it was worth my while. I managed, you know, $1,400 front end profit on 100 cars. It took me a little over 18 months to close that pool. At that time I got a check for roughly $11,000 that I could spread out over those hundred deals. And as of this morning, I think My, my new monthly checks will be coming in at roughly February, March of this coming year. So I don't know, I mean I, my smarty pants remark is, is, you know, are the rest of your deals paying you over time and would you pass on a fifteen hundred dollar deal to not have that potential? I don't know. Those are the questions that I think people get into the weeds about. Well, what about tomorrow? What about tomorrow? And I would tell my guys, focus on today. What will you do to deliver that car today? And is this a deal you would take and then once you get that pool closed, then we'll manage it, you know, then we can, we can figure it out. I happen to be met with a gentleman here at the auction today who that he's been questioning, well, what's going on? It's literally been five years since he was able to close a pool. But today I showed him on his report, you're gonna get a check for $5,000. He goes, what do you mean I'm getting a check? It's there. So he was surprised to think that, you know, he's been paying into this thing for five years. He's not doing real great with it, but he's managed to keep it open and he's gonna get a check for five grand. And he was smiling ear to ear and he's a small guy, but. So I think those are the loaded questions that people get in the weeds that you really can't just answer.

Well, I think that any dealer would take a $1,500 front end profit on most cars. I think that makes sense. What I hear from other dealers is that they're not able to hold that gross. Bert, what recommendations do you have for dealers to do that? Is it a certain car? Is it a certain customer, Is it back end products? Where are dealers missing the boat? Because I feel like there's some dealers that maybe don't understand what's going on.

Well, I think part of that problem would be is, you know, some of these bigger dealers, I mean they start getting into, you know, I've got a pack, I've got, you know, I've got commissions that I'm paying, you know, pay plans really in my opinion are what dictate the success or failure of, of this program in the long run. You know, you got a finance manager that's thinking he's going to do all the push ups on this thing. There's no back end reserve on it. He booms that customer and that deal never sees the day of light. And that's a problem where, you know, if you're buying cars at average ish. And when I say average book value, I mean, it's tough. I mean, I'm out here right now and I'm trying to pay clean book on cars and I'm still getting run over by it. But it's not dictated so much as the customer. It's the down payment, it's the structure of the deal. It's every deal, every time. I really just try to stay, stay at average. If you can buy cars at average or clean without over reconditioning them. Because that's the other problem. You know, these, these new car dealers tend to opt for the purchase program, which is all my money up front. I'm just not going to build a big pool because I've over reconditioned them. The other stigma is, is I think right now 2014, 15 Toyotas are bringing the moon. I mean, these guys are holding three grand profits on these cars. With someone that's got $1,500 down and $1,000 trade and you got a $3,500 front end deal, why wouldn't you take that?

Mm, I found that was my biggest issue. And that's one thing I'd like to throw out there is I think it fits, depending on your model. And the issue I ran into when I was a CAC dealer is I'm a buy here, pay here price primarily. So I had CAC to kind of supplement some of the deals. And that's the way I looked at it, is, hey, I'm gonna send these guys the deals that are out of my area that are maybe a little in the gray area or maybe I don't like them personally for some reason, I don't know. But I ran into is that there wasn't enough of them. And so every deal that CAC wanted, you know, a stable customer with a decent down payment wanted them inside my portfolio too. So I was basically looking at it like, well, if I wanted to close a pool or get to some dollar amount with cac, I would have to give up some of my best customers that I wanted to hold in house. So as a buy here, pay here, I was also over reconditioning my cars too, because I'm a buy here, pay here, and I wanted them to be nice and run good and you know what I'm saying, run the note.

So then, so then let me be the market area manager in this case. If a dealer tells me that, then the first thing I would say Is then why wouldn't you want some of your good customers to be in a 2014 or 2015 that you don't have to take the risk and put that on the street. Wouldn't it be beneficial for you to. Now today credit acceptance is allowing a $3,000 negative trade on cars. So you mean to tell me there's probably a handful of customers that you're collecting every month that are good customers that have maybe paid to even on their trade. Could you flip that guy into a three or four year old car with 60 or 70,000 miles on it, pay yourself off that money and then reap that as a great customer, building a good pool of business for future profits that you don't have to worry about.

Yeah. And so that's the other factor that people need to put into the equation is you have to have the inventory that CAC likes. Correct. Because yeah, as a buy here, pay here. I'm not stocking 3 year old cars. I'm not stocking 2016s on my lot.

Some of us do there, Jeff.

Yeah, yeah. Luke's who's got deep pockets and Luke will finance those. So he has the guts to put a $15,000 street money on the street in a car or something like that with a good customer. So you do have to make sure that you've got the cars. And that was the other issue I ran into is I did not have the inventory that CAC liked. Mine was a little too on the buy here, pay here side of cars.

Yeah, and that's a good point. But here's one that I've just done recently. I mean I sold a 2010 Mercedes glass. I don't even know what glk or something. I mean it's a car that was so far out of the realm of what typical credit acceptance deal would be. But I was able to put that car out there for a $3,500 gross with a customer with $2,000 down. And it was absolutely shocking to me because every part of my body said this is never going to work. And lo and behold, the right customer came in. She had a good job, she didn't make an astronomical amount of money, but it just happened to work. And I think she was in the low fives credit score, you know what I mean? So I just keep going back to the dealers that think they know how the program works are the ones that will fail the first. It's really every deal every time. Keep your inventory at about average. I think right Now I'm at 121% average wholesale. And I'm sitting at a 47 day turn on 20 cars. 15 or 20, 18 cars I think this morning.

Yeah, I'm thinking here, Bert, and.

What.

I, what I'm hearing and if I'm wrong on this, please do tell me. It sounds like this product, CAC in general may work better for a dealer who is a prime to near prime store that needs that extra boost to take care of customers that don't fit in those boxes. Is that the best dealer for this? Because I'm with Jeff. Any deal that CAC would do I'm probably going to do. So if I do put someone in a CAC is probably not going to work for me. What are we missing?

And I'm with Jeff too because I don't have the guts that you have. So I think you're, you're right. But I think the other thing that, that really helps the independent dealer is credit acceptance, is able to help that guy that's got three cars on his lot. You know what I mean? And that's the, you know, now there's some stipulations on whether that guy that's got three cars on his lot today is going to expand to be a bigger dealer. You know, one of my first dealers was working out of a, an old car wash, an old power washer, quarter slots, putting it in there. The guy had five cars on his lot and he is now the number one dealer in our district consistently, month after month after month. But he drank the Kool Aid. For lack of a better term. He just does every deal every time. I think to your point. Yeah. That I think even the franchise stores are starting to see this as a potential to. Wow, are we really missing the boat here? Because they're buying a little better car now. They're, you know, it's a car that, you know, these franchise guys are certifying, why wouldn't they put it on there? Funding is phenomenal because let's face it, if you've got to chase steps, you know, most of the funding I do, I take a picture on my phone, fax it over, it's Pre approved within 15 minutes and I deliver the car and I'm funded normally within the same day, if not the next morning.

That's, I've never heard a complaint about CAC's funding and process compared to other ABC finance company. And that's funny. I think that's what has made them so strong in our industry and made that stock price do what it's done. I Do believe they're a good fit for a lot of people. One thing I wanted to ask you about, you see out there, people, dealers not pricing their cars or pricing their cars and maybe they can't price them to get them into cac. Where do you stand on that? Number one, do you price your cars on your website? And number two, and on your lot and number two, what's a good practice there?

That's the million dollar question. If I could figure out a great way to answer that, then I wouldn't have to be selling cars. The situation is you're never going to be the cheapest and that's kind of the way I've taken it. I don't have a problem. I price most of my cars at nada retail, if not just a touch higher. And honestly, it doesn't seem to be affecting me on my drive by traffic retail customer that's on the website. I still seem to be getting plenty of leads. My applications were up last month by about 10, 11% year over year. So I'm not seeing a drop by pricing my cars that high. But I know that if you were to try to find me on car gurus or one of that, I'm just never going to be the cheapest and I'm okay with that.

I think that's actually a good point made there, Bert. You know, so many of us are racing to the bottom on Cargurus or whatever that is to move inventory. But I believe showing value and in price in your cars around nada is probably where everyone should be. If we did, we'd all make a little more money.

Right?

Right. And I think that's. And that's fine. So you know, I get people that will come in, you know, that'll say, well geez, that's awful high. And I'll say it is. But understand that normally people have a trade, normally people want to finance. And honestly, Mr. Customer, the credit unions, dick, you know, what we can sell the car for. So I'll price it accordingly. Why don't you drive the car? You know, I mean, so I mean I can deflect that. I don't know if I'm, you know, I mean, I'm sure if there's that true online buyer, I'm probably never seeing him. But if I never seen him, I guess I kind of sleep okay because I didn't know I missed him.

I'd be willing to bet you if it's the right car, you're seeing them. So that would be my argument to that. So I Believe you. I believe you're on the right track there, Burke.

Thank you.

One of the keys to success I found was you'd mentioned the down payment, Bert. Your average down payment is about 1,500.

It is, it is. And how I get to that, I think it's a process. I can normally tell people that the bank's going to require about 10% down and everybody shakes their head. Yes, I said, and then obviously you're going to want to pay for the tax, title and licensing. Well, yeah, and if you, if you take that math, it almost works out to be 12 to 1500 dollars across the board pretty consistently and pretty easily. But I think it's how we present it. You know, I can't tell you how many times that when I was doing training, you know, I'd go in there and close a customer. Well, how much money are you putting down? Well, I'm putting down $700. I said, okay, plus tax tags. Right. I mean, obviously. And they'd go, oh, yeah, well how much is that? And you'd tell them, you know, it's another five or six or $700. Well, yeah, I guess I can. But if you just ask them how much money down they have, everybody's got 500 bucks.

You're so right.

I just avoid that process. My process is whatever I tell them, I tell them it's going to be about 10% down plus tax, title and licensing. Oh, okay. I just don't seem to get the objections.

Yeah. And what I found with the CAC program is your initial profit, your upfront profit pretty, pretty often reflects your down payment, you know, and if absolutely not enough, it's all solved by additional down payment. So you need to be getting consistently, you know, 1200 to $2,000 down to make the program, the CAC program work. And if you're carrying a nicer car, that should go hand in hand, you know.

Well, and not only this, if you're, if you're carrying a nicer car and you're pricing it towards or slightly above nada retail and that customer comes in with that $500 hoop trade, all of a sudden you've got a deal that this Guy could put $500 cash in his thousand dollar hoop, boom, you're there. The, the program knows that. And I think you put the deal together. I think the other thing that people think is, I don't want the trade. No, take every one of them cars. I mean, even if you call the car $25, take them all.

Yep, I agree with that. What you said earlier, you just mentioned this in passing and I want to circle back around to it. You were talking about pay plans causing issues. Are we talking about managers pay plans or sales staff's pay plans? Where were you going? Down that rabbit hole?

I think all of it, honestly. Because credit acceptance doesn't necessarily break out back end profit and front end profit. It becomes a little bit of an issue because who's getting paid, right? So you know, your salesman ups this customer and the customer scores 450. It's going to be a credit acceptance. Now that salesman is told, oh, you better turn it over to the subprime department and you're going to get paid a flat. Well now the salesman's got a little bit of an attitude thinking, oh yeah, I just wasted my time for a flat. The finance manager thinks, well, why am I going to do all this push up? Because it's all front end profit and I don't make any money on the back end. And those are the, those are the struggles that I've seen consistently that really kill the deal. I think if you could figure out an easy way to. Here's the process, right? I hate to go back to process, but the process of how the program is implemented will be the success. And the success will be designed around the pay plan. And if you pay these guys on a percentage, pay them on the percentage of the down payment, hey, guess what? You know you're going to get paid 10%, 20% of however much money you get down. All of a sudden there's your profit on the deal because this guy's worked for something he can tangibly affect and bring to the table. So I think that's, and I know credit acceptance. I don't know if they've done anything with the franchise world on the purchase program, but I know they had been working on it and a few years back that they were trying to get these pay plans and these structures of how they present the profit on the deal to be more friendly to the managers.

You know what, I just right off top of my head, of course I don't do this. So. But what I'm starting to think is why not build a pay plan for the back end profits from CAC to pay your, you know, sales staff, that's that are retained and also your F and I manager and your manager. I think, I think that could be built into the process to get more buy in. I think that might be a way to go there.

And that's it. I mean I think that's, you Know that was one of the things that we had always tried to do, get these guys excited. Hey, you know what, if we close a pool net check comes in and it's 10 grand, we're going to give you a percentage of it. You know what I mean? If you, if you build the pay plan to build the excitement, then I think this thing catches on fire. And you, and you do a lot of deals. But, but it is, it is. Let's face it, we're salesmen, we're all money oriented for the, for the majority of the time.

Do you. So down, I still don't know a lot about cac. Just to qualify the, the question I'm about to ask, do we, are we selling F and I products to these customers? What are we doing on the back end side?

So you're not necessarily selling the warranty because what you'll see is the structure of the deal is based on the return on the investment. So credit acceptance says we know that a car that has a warranty is going to return a better investment than one that doesn't. So you'll see when you're adding warranty or adding product or adding gap to these loans how your initial profit will change. So technically, yeah, you better go out there and sell this customer on the idea that this is a great way to rebuild your credit. We've included a two year warranty on this car to basically help you with any future problems that you may have. We're going to protect you. And I mean so there is some selling in that. But you would see the structure of the deals definitely are affected by adding or subtracting warranty or gap products.

Are they required from cac?

They are not required. No, they can't require it, but it does affect your advance. So there's been, there's been deals that, and this sounds crazy, there's been deals that I would add a warranty and all of a sudden my deal went to negative to where I just can't sell it. But it's a protected loan. So why wouldn't that customer want the warranty? But I can't put the warranty on because all of a sudden it went from maybe a twelve hundred dollar deal to a hundred dollar deal. And I just can't take a hundred dollar deal today for whatever reason.

Guess we could get more down payment that instance, couldn't we?

Yeah, and that's exactly it. Yep, that's exactly it.

And the other real miracle to the CAC program or their, their, their secret sauce is the, is their Software is their interface. We haven't talked about that at all. If you don't know cac, when you have the ability to upload all your inventory to their algorithm and their calculations, and when you plug a customer in, it orders your cars for from most profitable to least profitable based on that customer, their down payment, their payment ability. And then from there you go in and you tweak with all the variables from warranty to gap insurance to interest rate to term. And you can play with all these variables until you come out to the most optimal profit payment for the customer. Correct?

Absolutely. And that's the. We used to. The standing joke was, you know, you'd go to talk to Oz because he was the man behind the curtain and you don't know it. I don't know if anybody knows it. I think there's one guy in that chrome building that knows it.

And that's what's funny. You put a warranty on something like, you know, I don't know, a Honda Accord, and it may increase your profit, but you put a warranty on a, I don't know, an Audi or something and they know that. No, no, no, that's, that's, that's good. You're like, yep, I knew it. That's, that's why I killed the deal. They don't, you know, I guess.

Bert, did you put a warranty on that? Bing, you.

So I did, I did and it worked out really well. So, so yeah, and you mentioned the interest rate. I said, you know, that was another thing. You get these, some of these customers that, you know, they're, they're not necessarily bad people, but they've got a lot of blemishes. And, and all of a sudden this guy thinks that, you know, the max state rate in my area for a year old, two year old car is 18%. I'm not paying 18%. Then you can say, listen, I know you've been a few other places, we've looked at your bureau, they've turned you down. What if I could get you the option of a 10% interest rate? Well, I'd love that. Great. Can you put down another thousand dollars? Because I took that 8% discount, just added $1,000 gross because he gave me the money down up front, similar to what you're doing with buying your mortgage rate. Now. We can do that. You know what I mean? So that's the beauty of that secret sauce that you'd mentioned. And you're doing all of this real time, not having to get it pre approved. Their System allows you to make these decisions on the spot which were best for you and the customer and deliver the car.

That is the best part of it is it's an instant decision when the computer says this is it. As long as your steps are all there and you didn't lie on any of the data that you entered, it is what it is. You're not waiting for a callback from the bank. You're not waiting for, you know, a counter offer. You're not waiting for those things. And that is the beauty. You can roll that car with 99% surety.

Yep, yep, for sure.

So is in, I guess in closing, do we have any more questions? Jeff? I just wanted to wrap it up and see if Bert had, you know, I guess could wrap up exactly what dealers need to do. I mean, is it any different than our normal business?

No, I don't think it is. I think that I do know that credit acceptance over the years has changed. You know how a dealer may enroll in the program. I'm not 100% sure if it's changed yet again, but I would say if you reach out to the toll free number, they'll get you in connection with a market area manager. And boy, if you mention my name then I get a free banner. So that'd be awesome.

One thing we didn't mention and I think is a key factor in this and I don't want to rewind too far, but dealer rating. Don't you get rated as a dealer? Right. And that affects your front end profit? Correct. That's something dealers be aware of your rating. Do you buy in in the beginning because is that a still option to buy in as a dealer and have your rating start higher than it would normally?

That is true and I believe that is still in play that dealers can be signed on for an initial fee and you get a higher advance. And I don't know, maybe if credit acceptance may yell at me for saying this, but for me being a small dealer, I just didn't have $9,000 to go ahead and enroll and take an advance of an extra $200 a deal on if I sold the deal. So for me, I didn't pay the money and I know the business. I think for a dealer that knows he's going to be able to sell 50 cars in six months or he's going to sell 100 cars in less than a year, then there may be that advantage of taking that initial cash and putting it towards a better advance. But for the, for the most part, I opted not to do that. I don't regret it because honestly, I, when I was starting out on my own, I just didn't have the extra $10,000 to say, enroll me in this bank program.

That's interesting. That rating hasn't been affected. You've built your dealer rating up since you started, I assume, by having good loans and good performance, correct?

Yeah, I was a four rated dealer when I came on. That's what you started as. And as of this morning, I'm 2.6, which means I'm 3 is what they consider to be average, for lack of a better word. They're expecting for you to collect as a three minor, outperforming their expectations by a little bit. So I'm a 2.6. So I'm getting a little bit more of an advanced than what their projections were.

And what's, what's the best you've seen out there, Bert? Who you know, what's the best rating that you've noticed?

Well, one is the best rating. I did have a franchise BMW dealership that maintained a 1 rating for three years, but these guys just absolutely hammered the customers. They, they really helped keep the performance of their pools. They watched their collections. You know, credit acceptance nevers expects you as a dealer to collect money, but they give you the tools that if you see somebody, hey, boy, this guy's missed his first payment, well, that affects your dealer rating. So what this dealership was doing is they were calling that customer at day 27 saying, hey, you know what? A couple of days you got a payment coming. Are you all set? Can I help you make that payment? So, you know, they really work the system to keep their pool clean and, you know, so you can do it if you put in the effort. And then that's, I think at the time they were getting an extra $450 per deal right across the board.

Is there a point at which your dealer rating falls where they cut you off?

Oh, yeah, yeah. If you get down past a six, they will tell you it's, it's time to go. And, and, and you really, I mean, it's, it's kind of like some of these customers that we see. I mean, a customer comes in with a credit score of 3 something, I mean, that guy's worked at getting that number. I mean, it's, it's, it just doesn't happen because life happened. You know what I mean? And yeah, you know, if you're, if you're putting cars on the road that have ticks in the motor and then the car breaks down, you didn't sell them a warranty and they're not paying. If you're playing with, you know, the guy brought in a $50 car, but you showed it as $2,000 down payment. You inflated the numbers and yeah, you're playing with fire. I mean, you got there because you deserve to get there.

You also get cut off, if you like me. And you use them as an underwriting tool for two years and only do about five deals. They're gonna sniff you out real quick and cut your. Cut your. Cut your login. So be careful of that.

Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I think they, you know, they want you to at least be able to do one deal every three or four months, I think is how they. They've got it set and they'll keep you active, but.

Alright, Bert, appreciate your time.

Thanks a lot, Bert. That was.

We've all learned and we'll let you get back to the lanes.

Yeah. And thank you. And seriously, I mean, I, you know, this business is tough enough to fight against each other. If there's anything I can do to help anybody, reach out to me in the groups or on Facebook. And if I can help, I'd be glad to help anybody.

That's great, Bert. Thanks a lot, man.

Thanks.

All right. Thank you, guys.