Hello,
I'm a 26-year-old author and freelance writer living in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. I just had to tell you about my lovely experiences with J.D. Byrider. I would not have even bothered, had I not found out that countless others have been through the same thing my husband and I have been through.
My husband and I have had a number of financial/credit problems, due to job loss and illness.in we purchased a 1994 Pontiac Grand Am from the nationally-known J.D. Byrider dealership. We paid over $7,500 for our car, simply because didn't have any other options. I realize this is a highly inflated price for a car of that age, but with little money and even less credit, we did what (we thought) we had to do, and signed a contract with Byrider. We thought this was standard protocol, too, but now we know better.
Our car started having problems almost as soon as we drove it off the lot. First, the air conditioning pump blew up mere weeks after we purchased the car. Little things began falling apart — the emergency brake went, you could no longer pop the trunk from the inside, some of the lights on the dashboard went out. Nothing major.
Then bigger things started happening. Belts went. The anti-lock brake system started to go. The car started bucking over 40 mph and black smoke trailed from the exhaust pipe. Transmission problems. You name it!
And we have only ever taken it to Byrider's mechanics once, because it takes literally WEEKS to get an appointment, and we both need a car, so we can't wait that long. The one time we took it in to be serviced at the dealership, we were told that nothing was wrong with it. A few days later, it started bucking and blowing black smoke again, so we took it to a REPUTABLE mechanic. Byrider was wrong — there WERE problems, and if they weren't fixed soon, the mechanic feared the engine block might crack, and that would pretty much be the end of our car.
Recently, my husband called and raised hell with the service department, and they told him to bring the car in the next morning, and they'd have it fixed within 24 hours. If it wouldn't run (it didn't want to start), the service manager said he'd pay to have it it towed to Byrider HIMSELF. We considered it, and subsequently decided against it. This was the same man who told us, the last time, that nothing was wrong with our car. We simply did not trust him to take the car to him again.
We have asked Byrider several times to give us an exact date of when our loan will be over, assuming we pay everything exactly on time. They are continually telling us to "call next week" because they "can't figure that out right now." How can they NOT figure it out? It's on their computer system, is it not?
My husband and I — I will tell you up front — have been late before. Nothing more than 2 weeks at a time. The times we were late, we didn't have the money because we were spending our money trying to get our Pontiac FIXED. This piece of junk has cost us thousands. And yet, even when we are one day late (it's due on a Friday, but we don't usually pay it until Saturday because we work 2 jobs each and can't get down there to pay it), CNAC — J.D. Byrider's personal auto leasing company — calls to harass us. They usually call on Friday, to tell us they expect to see us that day, before 8 P.M. When my husband pays on Saturday, they transfer him to a man named Tony — who got us the loan — and Tony berates and scolds my husband as if he were a preschooler. Apparently, there is a "note" on the cashier's computer system to contact Tony whenever my husband comes in or calls, so that Tony can belittle him and badger him about the money. When Tony calls our house now, I hang up on him. He has been known to call back 7 or 8 times. It's amazing to me that people can be comfortable with their lives, knowing they earn a living off of other people's problems.
I sent an e-mail, similar to this one, to Dateline NBC, to their consumer reports division.
I don't care if they ever contact me, but I hope somebody drags these creeps through the mud, the way they drag their customers through it. Clearly, the laws need to be changed in order to allow for a class-action lawsuit or something of that nature. Byrider shouldn't be allowed to hide behind legal loopholes.
Julianne
Lancaster, Pennsylvania
U.S.A.
0 comments