Trusting What You Read Online
I recently bought a new backpack. Not an exciting purchase in and of itself (unless you are a bag fanatic, like me). I went to a retail store and found a backpack that I thought was cool. It was bigger than I needed, but I can always find stuff to fill it up, I thought.
As I was trying it on, I found a second backpack that was smaller and cheaper than the one I was intending to buy. Throwing an impertinence built on years of buying something I needed like I needed a hole in the head, I put down the bigger backpack and bought the smaller one.
I took it home and immediately had buyer’s remorse. I wanted the bigger backpack. I should have bought that one.
Before going back to the store to return my purchase in favor of my original selection, I did a quick check online to see what people thought of the bag that was sitting on my kitchen table. They loved it. The internet was crazy-go-nuts for what I was planning on returning.
Like the most devout of lemmings, my opinion on the backpack immediately changed and I’m growing to like it more everyday.
That’s a really long story, but it helps illustrate a point.
One of the many powers of the internet is to validate and support a decision you’re looking to make. The amount of information and data online is infinite. And growing everyday. That can be a good thing and a bad thing. Especially to someone like a car owner.
TechCrunch recently profiled a start-up called LoanLook, which is aiming to help students manage their student loans. The company offers live counseling services, applications to help determine how much money to pay each month, and a repository of documents that can be stored and accessed via the cloud. This is a product that could have tremendous applications in the auto finance industry.
The opportunity to chat with a counselor while negotiating a car purchase or determining whether to finance or lease a vehicle would be an invaluable tool. As would access to data that could help determine whether a borrower should refinance, extend a lease or return a vehicle, or finance a longer-term loan at a higher interest rate to try and keep monthly payments down.
Unbiased information like that is very hard to come by online. You never know who has an axe to grind, or who’s behind what you’re reading online.
Information is a great tool. But too much information is a roadblock. Generic auto finance information is available at thousands of stops on the information superhighway. But specific information is nearly impossible to find. A tool like LoanLook could change all that.
