Santa Monica Mitsubishi
Ripoff liars crooks

First, let me say that based on my experience, I am not the least bit surprised that you went out of business. Last October I cancelled the service contract on the car and according to company Universal Underwriters Service Corporation, they mailed them my refund check (~$1300) and they did not sent it to my lienholder, Chase Bank. Pending their prompt reply to this letter including my refund check plus $1000 for the accessories I never received, I will be seeking legal counsel.
Below is the letter I sent to their dealership last year in February which was ignored.

I have spoken to you on the phone several times concerning this transaction (unless that too was a lie). I bought a car from your dealership on Nov 28 in response to a newspaper ad that advertised the 2003 Mitsubishi Lancer for $9995. That included the 72 mo warranty I thought, incorrectly I might add. I believe they call that false advertising. I am compelled to write down the details of the mistreatment I received.

Salesmen:
Cassim was my salesman and it began as a pleasant experience. After the signing, we were about to leave and so I asked Cassim how much it would be to install cruise control on the car. He asked some other guys and then came and told me a few hundred dollars. I told him great, then I will just leave the car there and have them call me for the exact estimate. When I called a couple days later, I found out it would be $1800 if they could even do it so I told them no, don't bother. I was shocked. Obviously, Cassim and the other salesmen didn't have a clue and just said what they knew I wanted to hear. Several days later when I needed a ride to pick up my car, Cassim told me he would send someone two nights in a row and apparently never told anyone to pick me up. Finally, after two days of lies, Emad told me he would send someone. First he asked me if he could have someone deliver the car to me. I told him I didn't want anyone driving my car. He said OK, someone would be leaving immediately. Fifteen minutes later he called back and asked if I had my keys because they couldn't find the extra set. Again he told me someone was leaving immediately. Thirty minutes later he calls back to tell me someone just left to get me. Another twenty minutes he calls back and says someone is leaving right now. The man never stops lying.

Finally, another salesman named Lucky arrives to pick me up. When we get to the dealer, Lucky takes my keys and disappears telling me he is going to get the car. After 15 minutes I go to look for him and for the next hour he disappears and comes back repeatedly telling me each time he is just getting it washed and I will have it in 5 minutes. I am livid by the time he finally brings it up. I have had to wait three days for someone to get me and now another hour. Lucky just laughs each time I ask him where my car is and tells me 5 more minutes. He seemed to think it was funny to watch me get livid. After taking the car, I discover, I don't have the accessories that came with the car (cigarette lighter, floor mats, extra key) and the back passenger side carpet has a black streak on it, looked like grease. It still has that stain today too.

Finance Staff:
Going back to the day I purchased the car Cassim sent us in to Emad the finance guy. This man is a bold face liar and I will try to recount the lies he told me. Unfortunately, I did not look close enough at the document I signed, a big mistake on my part. During the negotiation, I asked him if it was possible to ship the car directly to MT to save paying sales tax since I was moving there in a couple weeks. He told me well, I wouldn't save much because sales tax in MT was probably around 7% so it wouldn't pay. It sounded reasonable to me so I told him it was OK. I am sure he could have checked easily over the internet or other ways, but all he cared about was getting the papers signed so he just rambled on and on speaking way too fast for me to understand him. He told me I could get 4.29 % financing on the car so I was pretty happy. He never said anything about me having to purchase some damn $1000 accessories in order to get that financing.

Days later, when I questioned him about the $1000 accessories, he said it was paint and fabric protection for three years. He lied then and told me he told me when I signed the papers I could only get the 4.29% interest if I purchased the accessories. He said no such thing and my wife will testify to that. He wanted me to bring the car back so they could install the paint and fabric protection, something they should have done when the car sat there the first week after I bought it. I told him I didn't want the accessories as they were useless to me since I was moving out of state. He said he could maybe have an alarm system installed which would save me insurance money. I told him if I didn't have any choice, that he could do that but it would have to be done while I was in Peru. He said that was fine.interesting how when you guys screw up, you have room for my car but when I asked Karen to store it, she refused because there was no room. I don't know who was a bigger liar, Karen or Emad.

I also pointed out to Emad he overcharged me for the tax and at first he denied it but when I read to him what was written he conceded. I should have paid tax on only the cash price with accessories and the document preparation fee. He charged me tax on the license and tire fees too! He promised me he would send me a check for the excess charge amount. He never did. I am still waiting for it and it better include the extra interest I financed for 60 mo. I am also still waiting for a receipt for the installation of this damn alarm system which incidently malfunctions on a regular basis! It was bad enough he charged me for accessories I never asked for but he couldn't even do the math correctly. The man is incompetent in addition to being a bold face liar. The last lie I was told by Emad was he told me on the day I was flying to Peru, he would have a rental car waiting for me but he didn't, no surprise! I had more stress piled on me as I had a plane to catch and I needed a ride to the airport. Finally, someone took me to the airport and the only thing that was promised to me by your people that they followed through with was to pick me up when I returned. I was shocked.

The next day, Emad called and wanted to straighten out the misunderstanding about the cruise control. I told him then that I found out there was no sales tax in MT so since I didn't drive the car, I would like him to redo the paperwork and I would do what was necessary to ship it directly. He said that he could do that for me without any problems. Later, he called and said there were 2 reasons why he couldn't do it, 1) I had already taken possession of the car (I told him I hadn't since they were going to install the cruise control), and 2) I had to ship it directly to MT (I told him I would put it on a trailer so the wheels never touched CA roads). He said, he didn't realize that and told me then there shouldn't be any problem. Since he told me I could save myself the $1000, I booked a trip to Peru to join my wife. Had he told me the truth, I wouldn't have gone to Peru.

The next day I got a call from his boss, Karen, the Finance Manager. She called to tell me I had to come in and sign a new set of papers because Emad had given me a lower interest rate than he was supposed to. When I asked her about getting out of paying sales tax and CA fees, she told me the papers couldn't be redone. It was too late. Yet, she had just told me I needed to come in and sign them again with a higher interest rate. Then she explained the situation to me about shipping the car and told me I had to hire a shipping company to which I replied that wouldn't be a problem. She also told me I had to be the one to put it on the truck and to receive it at the other end and finally I needed to have a MT address to ship it to. Emad had already told me earlier he didn't think it would be a problem to store the car for a short time. We spoke for about 45 minutes and she continued to tell me why it wouldn't work which boiled down to two reasons, 1) I had to have a residence in MT and 2) she would not store the car for the necessary time because she didn't have any room. She said the storage wasn't an issue because I had to have a Montana address on that day. She started getting rude with me by the time I hung up.

I spent the whole day arranging to get a Montana address as of Nov 28 and then I called her back and told her I had a document showing I had a Montana residence as of Nov 28. All day long she told me she would do everything in her power to help me yet here we were one small detail from making the whole thing work and she refused and then gave me this crap about her integrity, what a joke.

She kept telling me I had to decide what to do and she wasn't going to do what I wanted. She lied again when she told me I had an option to cancel the whole deal. One minute she told me she didn't have the authority to cancel it and the next minute she is telling me I couldn't cancel it because she did have the authority. All I ever got out of that witch's mouth was continual lies. I may have asked her to do something a bit shady, but she lied with every word she spoke. So, from my experience with your financing dept, I would say they are all bold face liars. She tried to force me to resign the documents to which I replied I wasn't going to sign anything as I had a signed document and if it is the wrong rate, then it was her problem, not mine. I asked repeatedly to speak with the owner and she refused to let me.

False Advertising:
Ad said it was $9995 for a 2003 Lancer, I was never offered the car for this price but rather a minimum of $10995. It was never explained to me why. The ad was the week of Nov 24 and it was in the Woodland Hills daily paper.
I was charged $1000 for fictitious accessories I never asked for and never received, yet I couldn't get the one accessory I wanted, cruise control. When I questioned them about this, they told me to get the financing rate I received, I had to purchase the accessories (paint and fabric protection). I only discovered this several days later after they lied to me and told me I could avoid paying CA tax by shipping it directly to MT since I was moving. Rather than help work out the details with me to save me the $1000 CA sales tax and fees, they told me I couldn't ship the car since I didn't have an address despite the fact I did have the address. It also said it had a 10 year/70,000 mi warranty. I was pressured into spending $1500 for the warranty, pressured into purchasing theft protection, for the warranty. While waiting for everything to get done after selecting the car, I was told it would only be a couple hundred dollars to get Cruise Control installed. Two days later I found out it would be a couple thousand dollars instead.

In summary, I was forced to purchase accessories I didn't want that don't work properly ($1000) now, and I had to pay CA sales tax and state fees ($1000) which I shouldn't have had to all because of the dishonest finance staff that just said what I wanted to hear. I booked a flight to Peru because of Emad's dishonesty ($850). I shipped the car to MT ($650). Total cost of my expenses for this fiasco was ~$3500. I could have bought a car here for $13000 in Billings.

Sincerely,
Curtis

Company: Santa Monica Mitsubishi
Country: USA
State: California
City: Santa Monica
Address: 1501 Santa Monica Blvd

  <     >