Why would a dealership need to do a credit check if I showed up with a briefcase full of money to buy a car?

Because the patriot act. https://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/car-dealership-credit-rep...

I was also very surprised to buy a car with cash, only to have a credit check required. It's a real thing. And according to this article, not required, but dealerships are confused by the language of the law and insist on running a credit check, anyway.

I think they know better, but they use it as an excuse to run your credit thus giving them more information about you as a buyer and an opportunity to sell you on their credit products (which is what they make their money on anyway).

The link you posted shows the exact opposite of what you say. The Patriot Act doesn't mandate a credit check when purchasing a car.

You also cannot buy a house with cash. We had to launder my father's life savings in a bank for six months before we could use it to buy his house, because the seller still had a mortgage on the property when he listed the property. (Why my father's life savings was under his bed is a completely different story.)

They don't. I just bought a car from a dealership on August 1 without a credit check.

The dealership wanted to run a credit check if I were to pay with a personal check, but not if I paid with certified funds. I called my bank to have my debit card limit raised to $40,000 for 24 hours and paid for the car on my debit card with no credit check.

Did you have to do the IRS form stuff?

It's hard to recall all the forms that I signed that day. I don't remember any IRS forms.

Can confirm. I bought a car last week in California with cash. Dealer did a credit check.

The system is rotten and (short of moving country) impossible to avoid.

FYI dealers do this because they want to be able to offer you financing if your check bounces. It's also a way to ensure that you go through with the transaction because now your credit is worse and going somewhere else would lead to worse financing. Put a freeze on your accounts with the credit bureaus before you get serious about buying a car with cash. Tell them that they may not do a "hard pull" against your credit. If they try, complain to the appropriate government officials (not sure who this would be, some consumer protection agency) and take your cash elsewhere. It's a scam to lock you in to buying from them. I brought my own financing to a dealership and they wanted me to sign a thing which among other things authorized a credit check. I crossed that part out and signed it. This caused some back and forth with someone who was not in the room (basically my salesman had to go "get it approved") but they really wanted the sale because I drove a rental car down from 6 hours away just to buy this specific car (I had set the sale up ahead of time over email). I was very close to walking out and they probably knew it, and figured that they'd rather make the sale vs trying to sell me on their financing vs mine (I happened to get an extremely low rate from a credit union).

> It's also a way to ensure that you go through with the transaction because now your credit is worse and going somewhere else would lead to worse financing.

There is no need to spread misinformation. While it is true that a hard inquiry will have a minor effect on your credit score (less than a 5 point hit), multiple hard credit inquiries from car dealerships or mortgage lenders within a period of 45 days only count as a single inquiry.

You're not at all disadvantaged by taking your business elsewhere, you're just making things up to furnish your dubious story.

I have low patience with salesman who prefer to BS me with credit when I have the cash available

What would've happened if your reports were frozen? Would you have been denied the car?

I bought a car by check in CA and I'm 99% sure I didn't get a credit check. I did have to prove to the seller that the account from which the check was written had sufficient funds, but that was it.

I'm pretty sure the credit check is done automatically by the dealership software, as part of entering a person into the system to get their paperwork filled out. It's probably done to save time because 99.9% of the time it's necessary. The credit check won't stop the sale if you're paying with a briefcase full of cash or writing a check.

That said, going in with a briefcase full of cash is going to cause a lot of other problems.