I am looking to lease an f-type and I heard a lot about penfed. A lot of the reviews for penfed have been fairly negative. I was wondering if penfed is a legitimate credit union or are they "out to get you"?

 

Try searching the forum for 'penfed' - you'll find a lot of discussion of them, and a number of people have used them and recommend them.


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I personally have no experience with them.

 

Where are these negative penfed reviews you speak of?

I'm on my third penfed car loan and they'll be the first I go to for my next one.

With the loan for my F-Type they actually fixed a titling issue that the dealer refused to fix for me. A mistake which was the dealer's fault in the first place. A mistake that would have cost me over $10k. Called penfed and they took care of it over the phone and issued me a new corrected title.

If you have good credit and are responsible with the monthly payments, PenFed tends to be the best credit union option out there when comparing interest rates and loan types.

 

I used PenFed for my FTR purchase and they were great to work with. No issues at all. I am curious what the complaints were that you saw elsewhere?

I have heard that they can be a bit more difficult to work with if you've got less than great credit, so that may where the issues originate.

 

Yeah that would be my only guess as to why some people had issues. Hard to blame PenFed for that without more details.

I put them at the same level as USAA in terms of customer service.

 

Typically, the best and most reliable financial institutions tend to make things harder on customers with questionable credit and/or make them pay with higher interest rates. That's a major reason they are so financially solid. It's the ones who say, "bad credit, no problem," that you should run away from.

 

only speculation on my part as I've never dealt with penfed or a balloon type of loan...but it could be that some people were bitten by the balloon payment. Maybe, for whatever reason, the balloon payment was much more than the car was worth so they had to pay out of pocket. Happened with balloon type of payments in housing. People loved the low monthly payments, until it was time for the balloon payment and couldn't get a good loan bc interest rates jumped. Similar could be said of leasing. There are stories of people getting hammered on penalties because they returned a car that was beyond normal wear and tear. Each form of financing has its downside.

 

True enough. With any kind of loan like this, you either need to be comfortable with reselling at a loss if the market turns against you or with buying out the car in some way or another at the end of the term.

Personally I was debating between leasing and buying outright, and ended up with the balloon payment loan as something of a middle ground. I figure by the time the 3 years is up, I'll know if I plan to keep it long term or not.

 

I currently have a traditional car loan with penfed. They like everything to be done elrctronically, but no issues. I would use them again. What is nature of negative reviews as others have asked?

 

The negative reviews were mostly on yelp.com

 

Well there's your problem.

 

PenFed used to be my "go to" but I have since changed. I bought 2 cars when they were 1.5% but now they are 2.99%. You can go to any of the big banks and get better than this now. Heck even State Farm offered me 1.99% when I was buying my FTR

 

I had my Ferrari refinanced through PenFed and were very easy to deal with. When I paid off the car they promptly sent the title. The PenFed VISA doesn't have foreign exchange fees and is great for use when traveling abroad.

 

Exactly...!