In August my wife and I went to Bob Howard Automall to look at getting a Used GMC Truck. Our salesman found the perfect truck and it was well within our budget. We were trading in a used 4-door sedan and were told that we would be given $1000.00 for the trade in. During the course of signing the paperwork we signed a paper that said
"If my credit or the financing are not approved, I will return the vehicle to you Immediately and you will thereafter return my down payment or deposit, whether in cash or TRADE-IN, and cancel the retail installment sale contract."
We were guaranteed financing and drove away completely satisfied that we hade made the right decision and were finally rid of our old junker. A couple of weeks ater we recieved a notice from the Bank telling us that we had been denied credit approval. I immediately called our Finance Officer (Mike Ferguson) at Bob Howard. He assured me that we had already been approved and we had probably recieved the denial on accident by some automated glitch or something. We continued to recieve denial notices from a total of 8 banks.
About a week later I was laid off from my job. As we had only had the truck for about 2-1/2 to 3 weeks we thought it best to return the truck since we still had not been approved for financing. Our finance office told us that we could not return the truck because we had been driving it for almost 3 weeks, and they cannot afford to let people drive their cars around for free. The he proceeded to tell us that our trade in had already been sold at an auction. We called our attorney and he wrote a letter of arbitration stating that they were to return our car immediately or we would sue for $3550.00 that the car was worth (Kelly Blue Book Value).
They offered us $200.00 for our trade-in which we promtly denied as they alredy had our car, and our $2000.00 down payment.
Finally we agreed on a price of $1200.00 and my wife went in the next day to turn in the keys. She handed the keys to Mike Ferguson and asked for the check. He then said "What Check? We don't owe you anything!" to which my wife replied that she was promised a check for $1200.00 and would not be leaving without it. He asked her to wait, and dissapeared into an office. 20 minutes later he re-apperaed with a check that he handed to my wife for the amount of $1000.00. She said that she would accept the check as partial payment, and would be waiting for the rest. It never came. Our Attorney wrote another letter demanding payment, we received another check almost 6 weeks later for $800.00 We got our $2000.00 down payment back several weeks after that.
Bob Howard Automall is notorious for stealing and underhanded dealings, and I strongly suggest that you think twice before even pulling into the parking lot.
P.S. We found out later that their sales staff had been stealing trade-in corvettes, and several people went to jail or were fired.
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