Over the holidays I helped both my parents and my girlfriend purchase a car. My GF bought a used car from Fort Bend Toyota and had a third party mechanic inspect it and found that it had been in an accident that was not listed on Carfax or anywhere else and it should not have passed the minimum inspection. We returned the car and they at least had the decency to fully refund the car, but now we see that car is re-listed still disguising the accident and its condition. I can MAAAYBE believe they just missed the accident on their first inspection due to incompetence but this is straight up fraud that they re-listed it without disclosing the accident on it. What's the best way to notify the public not to buy this car? Post the VIN on Yelp or something? Is there an organization to report this? What are some other car dealerships in Houston that are fraudsters from your experience? FYI, My parents had a much better hassle-free experience (so far) buying from Carvana. Highly recommended. The GF ended up buying a car from Hertz, which also was a better experience.
I don't think I'll ever use a dealership again. We bought an SUV last spring and in our search, found one online at Baker Nissan that met our specs and was close to the price we wanted. I called and asked if they still had it, they said yes, so I made an appointment for a couple of hours later. Drive all the way there, even called on the way to let them know we were coming and they were going to "pull the vehicle to the front" to be ready for us to see, and upon arrival we wait for about 30 minutes only for the salesman to come back with 'unfortunately that one has just been sold'. They show us 3 other models but we walked. Funny thing is, that SAME car that we saw online was still coming up in searches up to a week later. Ended up using Carmax. They're not the absolute best price but I think their vehicles are reliable (they auction off any with frame damage so they say), and the best part is you can "hold" a car online to give you a chance to look at it and they won't sell it.
Narc. (Contact the BBB and the State Attorney General, and leave a negative rating on a few dealer review sites)
That's messed up. I bet they bought the car without knowing it wasn't in an accident and now they are not willing to take the hit on it.
Carfax will not pickup accidents unless it is paid by insurance. My brother's car was hit in a parking lot, the offender offered to pay instead of going through the insurance. We check Carfax years later, it never picked up that it was in an accident. As for dealers, never trust them. They are in it to make money from %, trade-in, or value of the car. Dealers make most of their money from servicing, those ripoff 30,000, 45,000, etc... service. My advice dealing with dealers is don't be afraid to walk away.
The Volvo dealership at I-10/BW8. I think it's just called Volvo of Houston. Was there helping out my mom to buy a car. After a while we had made our final offer. Salesman put on a show doing his huffing and puffing and said he'd go see if he could make this offer work with his manager. He came out and said jubilantly, "Congrats, we have a deal!" We were glad. As he hands the documents over for my mom to begin signing, she flips a few pages over and sees that the accepted offer is not what we had given as our final offer. It was like $3K more; an amount that was more than we had ever seriously discussed. My mom pointed it out to him, thinking he had made a mistake. But no, he hadn't. He was just acting like our offer was accepted when in reality they had countered with a different number. He wanted us to sign everything and just be effed when we realized they didn't take our offer. I was pissed. I started out saying something like, "wow, that's pretty shitty to do" and escalated to stuff like "you're a real piece of **** you know that?" which was preceeded and followed by several F bombs. I'm generally a really laid back and not easily rattled person, but I was just getting more irritated about it with each passing second. I stood up and said we were leaving and weren't coming back (more F bombs). My mom left with me. HOWEVER... unbeknownst to me, my mom went back the next day and bought the car, splitting the difference and paying $1.5K over what we had offered. She said she even apologized for me getting so angry. That, of course, would have made me even more mad, but it's my mom so whatyagonnado. Still, I will hate that dealer for as long as I live.
Not dishonest, but I had a bad experience at West Houston Subaru. My wife and I went in, looking to test drive Foresters and Outbacks, see which one she liked for her next car. We had to drive separately, because we had our baby with us, who was less than 6 months at the time, so we didn't feel like doing the car seat thing. Anyhow, we drove the Forester and that was fine. Then we wanted to drive the outback. The only one they had was the "Limited" model which was their top of the line at the time (they have Base, Premium, and then Limited), but it still have the 2.5 motor, so only difference would really be leather, sunroof, etc. When we asked to drive it, the salesmen pulled me aside (wife and all the other people in the waiting room still pretty close by) and told me something like, "Look, I can let you drive the car, but I just want to be upfront with you, that's like a $30,000 car." Basically looking at me like I'm poor. I told him we wanted to drive it. He let my wife drive it, then when it was my turn, he told me "we can only drive in the parking lot, because its low on gas." I looked down, and it was a quarter tank, perfectly fine for a test drive. Anyhow, we left without buying, and ended up buying at Gilman Subaru Southwest. The buying process there was OK, except for when we went to pick it up (I negotiated online instead) and we had to wait for the finance guy even though we already had financing locked up. It took like 3 or 4 hours of waiting around. Car dealers in general just suck.
Truth I bought a car, and they threw in 2 different sets of paperwork on me and I ended up with GAP insurance I told them I didn't want, in addition to paying more than I had agreed for the car. I got the GAP removed after the fact, but was stuck with the higher sales price. Another dealership tried to give me such a terrible offer on my trade in, because it had been in an accident. They were the same company that sold it to me and I never knew about an accident (we had never been in one). Crazy part about it is if they had given me what I wanted on the trade in, they would have netted more than they would have when they later dropped the price on the vehicle they were selling (which they tried to get me to buy despite me being unable to test drive it because they lost the keys). After they got new keys I went back to test drive it, but they wouldn't negotiate on price, so i walked out again and said I sure hope you don't have to drop the price another $1K again. The manager told me don't worry they won't. Called me 3 days later offering to sell it for less than I had offered them, and I told them I wouldn't buy it from them if they cut the price in half. Had management not come to seal the deal (and ultimately be pricks) I would have bought the vehicle for what they were asking. Firm belief that the goal of the purchase should be that everyone is happy. I ultimately bought my wife the vehicle she really wanted (for more money than I ever wanted to spend on a vehicle) because despite going to the dealership 4 times to look at vehicles, not once did the saleswoman try to pressure me into the buy or hound me once I left.
So if you pull a truecar price on a new car, how much lower off that price can you go to make a realistic deal. Looking at buying a car soon.
make sure you specify you want the 0% financing or else they'll bump you up to 2 or 3% apr even though you quality for the 0% just because they accepted your offer and want to get you on the financing side. This is what Sterling McCall Nissan did to my wife. Sneaky POS
We once looked at a car at Carmax. They set it aside for us and we went in a few days later to test drive it. It had no reports of accidents. But when I drove it, it had an extremely obvious pull to the right and wind noise coming through the windshield. Something happened to this car but the sales person tried to blow it off. Took it back to the dealership and left. He called a week later to say it had been fixed but we had moved on. Point is, it can happen anywhere. I dread buying new cars. It becomes an all day thing at the dealership. Next time around, we'll be looking at Carvana or something similar to make life easier.
We've bought our last 3 cars at Carmax and never had any problems during the process. I do think their cars are overpriced, considering they are all used. Many of them aren't much cheaper than new. The last car I bought from them, I made the mistake of buying their extended warranty. When the AC stopped working, I took it in and the guy told me the car was still under FACTORY warranty and to take it to the dealership. So why did you sell me an extended warranty when it's still under factory warranty? I don't need 2 warranties and the factory warranty actually covers the car for a lot longer than the Carmax warranty. Because that's where they make their money. I paid the car off and cancelled the warranty. I'll never finance a car again, frankly. That's where you get screwed over. We're going to pay cash for cars for the rest of our lives, even if it means we have to save up and only drive used. All dealerships are filled with scumbags. I learned that working for Enterprise back in the day.
Financing isn't a bad deal if it's less than 2%. You can easily invest that for more than you'll pay in interest. With that said, always turn down other dealer options like tinting or waterproofing the interiors. The markups are insane on that as well as service/maintenance. Don't buy the extended warranty until the factory is about to run out. They will lower the price for it when the factory warranty is about to expire, and you can also price shop for it at other dealers, including out of state, since the extended warranty is the same.
This is pretty much it. Dealers are in the business of making money, and I can't fault them for that, but its the lying and telling you whatever you want to here even if it truly isn't the case. Though I did buy my last car from a dealer, I wanted a new car and could get the best rate. Salesman I had was fairly nice, but of course he was since he wanted that sell. When he found out I worked for a credit union I saw his smile disappear for a second because he knew he wasn't going to be able to screw me over. Got a great car, great rate, and an extra $1000 off the price
Sad part is some people don't think of 84 months as 7 years. To them its just 84 months. I have a cousin that is a prime example of this way of thinking.
Mathematically, yes, but that doesn't take risk into account. What if you lose your job or someone gets sick and you're stuck with a $25K loan on a car that's only worth $10K and you're married to that payment for the next 6 years?* *Sorry, I'm a little biased since I just finished paying off all of our non-mortgage debt and we've decided to never go into debt again (except for maybe a house).
Those numbers seem a bit drastic. Any loan of course has the "what if you lose your job" risk but most of the time, you're not going to be in the kind of a hole you're describing unless it's like a 10% APR loan.
I never understood the no haggle price policy of carmax, especially on a used car that still most people will have to finance. If I'm dropping that much money on something used, I'm gonna nickel and dime as much as I can.
I'd say you got hosed on that deal regardless of your job situation. If you take out a $25k loan for a car that's worth $10k as soon as it's in your name, you've made a bad decision. Find a good rate and a car that doesn't depreciate much, then you'll minimize your risk if worst comes to worst and you gotta sell.
