Some Dealers Miffed at Credit Unions

Some dealership managers are feeling burned by credit unions.

Several credit unions have established working relationships with auto dealers looking for consumer auto loan sources. But Zain Haroon, general sales manager of Hamer Toyota in Mission Hills, CA, regrets hooking up with those lending institutions.

“Five or six years ago, we started sending a lot of deals to credit unions, but we're never seeing those customers again for financial services because credit unions are selling them their products,” he says at the F&I Management and Technology Conference in Las Vegas.

Some dealerships sign up their customers as credit union members in order to arrange financing for vehicles purchased at the dealerships. Many dealers say the arrangement works. Haroon isn't one of them.

“We signed up the customers, and the credit unions took the business,” he says of the financing. “How do we educate dealers so this doesn't happen again?”