this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
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100% spot on.
It's absolutely a scam designed to extract even more wealth from the poors.
No joke, I've had a car dealership tell me they can't sell me the car I want because my credit score was nonexistent (no credit history in 7 years). I was paying in full, in cash, literally in an envelope in my hand.
Grand total of 8k, all in 100s, super easy to count.
But no, I didn't have a "good enough credit score" so I couldn't buy that car from them, despite having the money to do so.
Mental gymnastics on that one.
Here in Sweden, that would also have been rejected, most stores won't accept cash at all.
I had to pay for my car using a wire transfer a few days before I picked it up.
I do think that it would have been funny to just use tap to pay, but apparently that would have increased the cost by a lot.
That's insane to me.
I have money to buy something, and I'm being refused the sale despite this money being legal tender.
I get what you mean, and agree to some extent, but the reality is that handling cash is expensive and dangerous.
Back in the early 2000s, there was a large wave of high profile armours car robberies in Sweden.
Some even completely blew up the armoured car.
This lead to a debate and a deliberate effort to reduce the ammount of cash used in Sweden.
I remember reading something about 97% of all transactions inside Sweden are now done electronically.
This has lead to banks having offices that don't handle cash, and that banks are looking at cash deposits with suspicion, since you can't trace cash.
This, as usual, only really affects normal poeple, and criminals have ways around it.
In the US, it is legal tender to pay off all debts. But merchants can refuse to give you debt if you are paying cash. Thus have no obligation to accept it.
Just imagine paying for a car with something like an SJ credit card and get the motherload of priopoäng!
(For the non-Swedes, SJ is a train company with a version of a frequent flyer miles point system, and they like most of those have a credit card where every SEK spent earns you 1 point. A trip from Malmö to Stockholm (600km, ~4,5h) can be bought for some 12-16000 points. A new car costs anywhere from 300000 sek up to a million and beyond.)
I think you just got a shitty dealership. “Legal tender for all debts public and private” means just that, they aren’t allowed legally to refuse dollars. My cousin also successfully did what you are describing.
Not necessarily a shitty dealership, just one with low margins.
Cars are generally sold by sellers with incredibly low margins (talking like a few hundred dollars, max). They make their money through the financing. They probably didn't want to sell the car in cash, because some other chud will come along and buy it on credit and get them a higher margin.
Pro tip - always get your own financing when purchasing a car, don't get it through the dealer. But don't let them know that, look over their finance package when signing the paperwork, try to negotiate out any origination charges, etc. then simply pay the loan off immediately with your private financing.
That's not really relevant here yet. GP doesnt have a "debt" before the transaction takes place. Nothing about that statement forces a business to do business with you. They are perfectly within their rights to only agree to do business with you if you pay in chickens.
That isn’t how holding a business license works.
Sure everybody has the right to refuse service, but they can’t offer service only through one means of pay.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm
A few states have introduced bills to require taking cash (Idaho, Mississippi and North Dakota), but as far as I'm aware none have ever actually passed into law.
I think you would be surprised how many states already have laws like that on the books. Mine does.
They can easily refuse cash. It's not a debit until you owe them money. If they decide not to sell you a car then there's no debt. You aren't obligated to see someone a car if the manner of the sale isn't to your liking.
You are correct. What they can’t do though is only allow you to buy the car with one method of payment, which is what is being described here.
There are car dealers (especially at the low end of used cars) that don't make money selling cars. They make money with horrible debt and payment terms trying to trap vulnerable people. The worst of these dealers may end up "selling" the car 2 or 3 times repoing it each time when the buyer can't pay.
So its first possible that this dealer didn't want to sell you a car for cash because its against their business model.
$8k in cash is super sketchy for a single purchase. Its untraceable and that sets off fraud alarm bells. The dealership also may not be set up to deal in large sums of cash like that lacking the security to do so. Lastly there are laws at the state and federal level called KYC (Know your Customer) for some transactions that require the seller to verify the money is legit. With cash, thats nearly impossible.
You might have had more luck showing up with an $8k cashiers check or offering an $8k wire transfer from your bank. Both of these are exempt from lots of regulations (because there's a paper trail) where cash would not have that luxury.
I'm guessing that was just an excuse to not sell to you because either they're the sketchy dealer (that likes to sell loans not cars) or they thought you were super sketchy as a buyer.
The dealership wanted you to finance so that you'll pay them interest, because they make more money that way. If they completely refused, what's most likely is that the car was being sold at a price that gives them zero/negative profit margin, so without financing, they'd literally take a loss selling it for straight cash.