Note: I get letters and e-mails like this one all the time. These vehicle buyers operated on the theory that a major car dealership would not rip them off.
In the vehicle sales business there are good guys and bad guys. If you are buying a used car or a new truck that looks a little used, check out the paper work with your local DMV or carfax.com and get a complete breakdown on the ownership of the vehicle. This paperwork will let you know if the vehicle has been in an accident and repaired. In California the DMV charges about $6 for this type of information but you must include a long wait at the DMV office. Carfax.com will charge you $15 and you get the information “right now.”
This single mother who was ripped off lives in Arkansas and gave me permission to use her letter. Please read and use this woman’s letter as a warning.
I would like to tell you a story of a single mother buying a new truck. She worked so hard after the divorce to support her family of three kids…Working long hours on the Mississippi river. One day in 1998 she bought herself a truck. Nothing fancy just the plane Jane kind. No power windows or locks not even a tape player. She bought it from the local ford dealership, like all good towns-people do. The sales person was even a member of her daughters church. Her kids drove her truck. Only after a long long long lecture on not having a wreck in her truck. See that truck was the only new ride she had ever had in her life.
Really the only one that wasn’t broken down all the time. Well one day she let her oldest son borrow the truck…grant it the truck was now a few years old it was still new to her….well to make a long story short she let the son borrow it and he wrecked it. When she went to take this pickup truck to have it fixed her repair man told her that the truck had been wrecked before….No she said it was bought new. No the repair man said it has been wrecked…Then he asked her where she bought it from….(BLANK DEALER) here in Helena, Ark. Why? well your not the only one he has done this to… There was a lady not too long ago in here with the same problem… Well what did she do…Well she contacted her lawyer after being constantly nagged by her daughter who had just bought a car from there 2 years after her, from the same sales man…. well her lawyer said there was nothing she could do about it…..
That mother was my mom. And the daughter is me….She paid a new truck price for a used Truck. Is that right? Can people really be that mean??? How many other peoples mothers did that man do it to???? Will the whole town find out that they have been screwed by someone that they grew up with????
My mother keeps saying that it is over and done with…But is it ??? I know she will never buy another (Blank) truck and might I add one who knows her will either….To look at that woman’s face and know how proud she was of that new truck and to know how bad she was screwed by (Blank) motors brakes my heart. If this letter serves no other purpose but to warn other women of this very problem I will feel a little better. Thank you for listening.
Thank You,
Rebecca
Rebecca, your Mom did business with a crook. He and everyone at that dealership knows that he was selling wrecked trucks or cars as new or sometimes as demonstrators. But you cannot blame the manufacturer for this rip-off deal. You have waited too long to sue him in court, and you would win. But I suggest you send a copy of this letter to the president of the company in Detroit that manufactured the vehicle. Put a not in the letter that you sent a copy to me to use on my Radio Talk Show in LA. Ask them to help you. I am sure they will take action against the dealership, because they leave the manufacturer in a major liability situation.
Also send a copy of your letter to the Gazette in Little Rock, Ark. and to your local newspaper. Call one of the major TV stations and tell them you have a good sweeps story. Remember never but a new or used vehicle without checking its VIN Number (Vehicle Identification Number, found at the bottom left side of the windshield on the driver’s side.) with either the DMV or for the entire country use carfax.com. Used car sales are sometimes compared with the 19th Century business of horse sales. A smart consumer would never buy a horse to pull their buggy without checking its teeth. Today it’s not checking the teeth of your means of transportation but checking with carfax.com. – Judd