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Comment by endianswap | Hacker News Reader

That seems insane that it'd be the biggest check they've seen. I've bought an 80k BMW and an 80k Jaguar outright, and they both shrugged at me paying by check. BMW let me use a personal check, Jaguar wanted a bank check (easy enough).

Edit: A normal down payment for a luxury car of any brand can easily be 20k up front.

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That heavily depends on where you go and the area. Not the same as a car, but when I went to get the check for the down payment on my home (which was 6 figures), I went to my bank which happened to be in a pretty upscale neighborhood were houses were significantly more expensive on average than what I was buying.

So when I asked the teller to give me a multi-hundred-thousand dollar check, they didn't even blink. "Please enter your pin number sir. There you go sir, have a nice day".

I assume this is very similar. A place selling BMWs is probably used to seeing newly minted millionaires on a daily basis.

It's weird getting big checks if you aren't used to it. I had some money coming out from a home sale and got a cashier's check for 50k or something. They asked for ID and checked it very slowly, but nothing past that.

You went to a BMW/Jaguar dealership, whereas OP most probably went to a smaller dealership aimed at a less affluent population.

> Jaguar wanted a bank check

In case it wouldn't start the next morning ;)

did you get the impression that the parent purchased a new luxury car at a dealership in Beverly Hills? :/

I paid for my current car with my debit card. I asked my bank beforehand whether they needed to authorize that size of transaction but was told that they can tell which accounts are for car dealers.

I wondered about that when I bought our last car. Near the end of the transaction I suddenly realized that I would need to pay a down payment and all I had was my bank card (ran out of paper checks years ago). They took it and ran it as a Visa card, no problem. Guess they get a break on the fees.

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