mdog wrote:
“JD broke the credit contract that was signed and initialed by myself and their representative and the dealer played immediate hardball. No negotiating.”
No, JD did not break the contract, you did. Goes to the three fundamentals of a valid contract. A contract has to have three essential elements to be a valid contract. Two parties, agreement as to terms and conditions, and consideration (usually money) for the subject of the contract (service or object), in this case the tractor. JD offered you terms (the contract as written), if you accepted without revision, you & JD had agreement as to terms. If you changed/altered the terms then not until JD acknowledged that they accepted the change(s) was there (again) a valid contract – namely agreement. You cannot unilaterally change the terms of an agreement. The parties, both or all parties, must agree to any change or modifications to the terms and do so in writing.
With respect to the dealer signing:
You were in fact, technically, dealing with someone who was/is not authorized to make or agree to modifications to the contract. That agreement to the actual contract with JD corporataion is reserved to JD corporation. The dealer is a independent business and not a part, nor is the dealer an employee of JD – for good reasons. This reservation, or limitation on the scope of the dealers authority often is stated somewhere in the contract (in the fine print, of course), or an accompanying document or notice states it. The dealer may have been symbolically acting to accept your signature, much like a witness or notary, but only when the signed contract was received by JD and they notified you of acceptance, “welcome to the JD family and congrats on your new tractor” language, was the contract officially consummated. Alternatively, the fact that the contract likely states that the agreement is with JD Corporation, or JD Credit Corporation, and the Dealer as an independent businessman who is licensed to sell JD products, he is not an employee nor officer of JD Corporation or JD Credit Corporation. Only a designated corporate officer or actual JD employee authorized to make and/or agree to changes in the standard contract can.
Come-on mdog, this is just common sense as to how modern business is structured.
Not until JD corporation received the contract you modified and signed, and acknowledged acceptance of the changes was the contract actually valid and final. So, JD had every right to refuse your contract modifications. Your changing the terms of the contract they gave you to sign required them to acknowledge it, since until they agreed to the changes you made did there exist mutually agreed to terms, therefore there was no valid contract. The fact that you may/might be ignorant of these fundamentals of contracts, or JD Corporate role, does not make your changes and/or the contract you altered and signed a valid contract.
You could actually be viewed as breaking the contract in effect by making changes at the time of signing because it could be construed that you had an implied contract with JD in that you applied for credit, JD accepted or granted your application and then submitted the contract to you to sign.
If you wanted to alter the contract terms you should have done it before the signing and obtained JD’s agreement. If JD had agreed to the changes to the actual contract, and then you signed and they subsequently notified you that they would not accept the changes, then they would have broken the contract and you would have a legitimate claim of breach. Baring that, you never had a contract until a JD Corporate representative specifically designated to make or agree to contract changes agreed, in writing.
If the dealer let you believe or lead you to believe that he was authorized to make or agree to contract term changes on JD’s behalf, then he was possibly either ignorant or misrepresented himself. In the latter case you might have an action, but I doubt it.
The three fundamentals of a contract you can get from Judge Judy, if not from basic business law. ;-)
Now what may be really surprising is I learned the three fundamentals of a contract in a public high school in Denver, in the 1960’s. Ok, it’s also part of grad school and I learned it again there. But I’d still lobby for it being part of basic public education particularly in like of what has been posted in this thread. But that’s another soap box on American education – which I’m not trying to start!!!
It’s not a free lunch…
There is no free lunch, 0% financing is an equivalent of an offer of a free lunch. The cost is all the aggravation you experienced, the energy you wasted and the fact that consumer credit (the type of credit you obtain from retail businesses like furniture, appliances, etc.), in all it’s forms, is the lowest form of credit, save possibly (but maybe equivalent to) sub-prime lending. And consumer credit is weighted that way within the statistical models for consumer credit behavior used to determine credit risk by the credit reporting agencies. Just as a home mortgage is weighted very, very heavily in their statistical model of credit risk.
Just a personal opinion, I think you and others who get worked up over these kinds of things, I think your time and energies would be better and more productively spent becoming a lot more educated and knowledgeable about finance, financial matters and credit management. That knowledge would give you the power to mange the actual financial and credit systems and instruments to your advantage as opposed to being at their mercy and the whining that has gone on here.
There’s no small amount of poor, missing or just plain wrong information of how financial and credit things work out there in the real world, not to mention a lot of prejudices that may make one feel better but really get in the way of effectively acquiring, using and managing money and credit. Money is a commodity, like beans (is there a pun in that?), credit is just a way of using and managing the commodity. It ain’t personal, it’s a business, the business of money.
On credit agencies:
They’re just like insurance companies. They use statistical models of behavior, human conditions and experience to assess and determine risk, and quantify the risk in terms of potential payouts and policy prices. The credit agencies also use statistical models of behavior and experience with the use of money and the tools for managing money, credit, to quantify risk and translate that risk into a relative qualitative measure in quantitative terms, a credit score. You can choose to manage your life and behavior to live longer and get lower insurance premium rates. You can also choose to obtain the knowledge, manage your life and behavior to increase your power with money and obtain the highest credit rating which provides you with more power and therefore more access to money through credit. :- )
One example of how you can mange the system for yourself. Read all the stuff the credit reporting agencies provide as resources and information on their web sites. Turns out demographically most people rarely use anywhere near the total amount of their total available credit across all sources, independent of secured debt. If you do you suddenly become a much more significant credit risk within their statistical models of consumer credit behavior. The moral of the story, if you think you will need $20k of credit, obtain $45-50K then your percentage used is small, alternatively, never use over half to 65% max of your total available credit (combined).
Disagreement…
“money is credit and credit is money.” (grimreaper)
No! Money is a medium of exchange.
1. Money: “A medium that can be exchanged for goods and services and is used as a measure of their values on the market, including among its forms a commodity such as gold, an officially issued coin or note, or a deposit in a checking account or other readily liquifiable account. “
As a medium of exchange it is also a commodity in and of itself. Bought, sold and/or leased.
As a medium of exchange there are different instruments or tools that are used to complete or manage the exchange. Credit is one tool. Credit is, at it’s most fundamental basis, trust. There are a variety of types of credit instruments, revolving credit (i.e., credit cards, consumer credit, etc.), unsecured credit lines, secured credit (secured by property or assets, i.e., real estate, auto loans, etc.), to name a few. My perspective is that you establish credit, or establish the trust, in order to have access to it, money through credit, in the future, when you want and/or need it. You do not go out and “get” credit or “borrow” when you need it. That’s absolutely the wrong time. You have no power and are at “their” mercy. Never, never give anyone that power!!!
Just one guys mad method. Just remember, money is a commodity like any other! Treat it like one, but with more respect!
Chris,
Sonoma, CA
