2 New Ways that Customers are Getting Screwed by Car Dealers

There are many automobile dealers that are honest and want to give you a fair deal on a good, reliable used car or a new car from the factory. However, there are just as many car dealers willing to look the other way at potential problems in the cars that they are selling and will charge you whatever they possibly can for your automobile purchase, even if it’s well above market value. Although some unscrupulous automobile dealers have been taking advantage of customers for some time now, there are now new issues arising that customers of automobile dealers are facing that are giving them major headaches.

In the wake of the last few years of heavy hurricane seasons, many cars that have been damaged by floods and totaled have been reconditioned and sold. This isn’t much of a problem, since wrecked cars are sold all the time. The scam comes in when an unscrupulous dealer will take the car to a state where they can have the title “washed” and remove any evidence that the car was severely damaged by a flood. Once the car’s title has been washed, it can be sold to any car dealer in the country, and they wouldn’t know that they were buying a flood vehicle.

This wouldn’t be a huge issue if the cars were repaired to factory condition. However, flood vehicles frequently have major electrical issues a year or two after they’ve been reconditioned. You might notice power-windows and power-locks stop working, the radio stop working, various lights stop working or the dash stop working. These repairs are very expensive, so you want to make sure that you don’t have a vehicle damaged by a flood. You can do this by taking it to a local mechanic that you can trust and have him/her thoroughly inspect the vehicle before you agree to purchase it.

The other new issues that’s arising at car dealers is with customers who trade-in their vehicles, and then the automobile dealer goes out of business. Customers of these car dealers are finding that the loan on their old vehicle hasn’t been paid off by the car dealer. They are also finding that the title for their new car hasn’t been transferred either. The contract matters of the purchase are essentially null and void, but you have a new car that belongs to someone else, and someone else has your old car.

This can be a nightmare to clean up. If you find yourself in this situation, seek legal advice immediately. The best way to prevent this from happening is by not trading in your vehicle to a dealer if you owe any money on it. Instead, sell the vehicle to another individual via the local newspaper, craigslist, or online and use the money you earn from selling the vehicle to pay off the loan. Chances are you’ll get more money than you would from a trade-in anyway.

When purchasing vehicles, you have to be very, very careful. Dealers will use just about every negotiating tactic in the book to attempt to make you pay more than you should, and if you don’t get a vehicle checked out by a mechanic, you are asking for major problems down the road.