I purchased a 1998 Ford Mustang GT from Ed Williams at Texas Direct Auto. They are an internet car sales business and I found the car listed on e-bay. I studied all of the 28 pictures they had representing the car and could find nothing cosmetically wrong with the car except for one small dime-sized scratch on the front bumper cover.
I called Ed Williams and told him that I had seen the car on e-bay and that it appeared to be exactly what I was looking for. I told him that the only thing I could see wrong with the car was the small scratch on the front bumper cover. Other than that one small scratch the car appeared to be in pristine condition. (The car only had 26,438 miles on the odometer.)
He said that this was indeed the case and so I put my trust in Ed Williams and Texas Direct Auto and purchased the car.
I was told that after paying for the car and another $658.00 for it's shipping costs, that I would recieve the car in one to two weeks. I'm not going to go into the long version of the nightmare that ensued trying to get my car delivered to me but I will say that it started with Ed Williams at Texas Direct Auto shipping me the WRONG car 1,300 miles.
Yes, Texas Direct Auto was stupid enough to give the WRONG car to the truck driver and neither one of them checked the VIN number before the car was carried on a trailer from Texas to North Carolina! These guys are clearly not the sharpest tools in the shed, if you know what I mean. (But, come to think of it, Ed williams was quite a tool every time I had to speak to him on the phone.)
When I finally recieved my car I thought that they had shipped me the wrong car again! The car I recieved looked nothing like the car in the pictures I had seen on e-bay. It also looked nothing like Ed Williams at Texas Direct Auto had assured me it did during our phone conversation prior to my purchase of the car.
The pictures in the e-bay ad represented the car as being in pristine condition. When the car arrived to me it was COVERED from top to bottom with dings and dents of all sizes and shapes. Their e-bay ad boasted a "clean" CARFAX report but the car had clearly been wrecked in the right rear quarter panel area and the wheel well area was pocked with several rusted out door dings and scratches.
The front bumper cover, which only showed one small scratch in the pictures, looked like it had been violently attacked with a knife or a screwdriver. It was completely covered in gouges and scratches that were not present on the pictures that Texas Direct Auto had on e-bay representing the car. I wish that was all that was wrong with the car when it arrived to me but there is more.
The hood had been "badly" re-painted and was covered in trash under the new paint which was already starting to bubble up in one spot. There were more door dings in various other places on the car and there were also several scratches and other damage that was not shown in any of the pictures they had on e-bay.
I didn't know what to think. I thought at first that maybe the delivery truck driver had damaged the car but he gave me a copy of his bill of lading that clearly showed all of the damage on the car was already on it when he picked it up from Texas Direct Auto. The bill of lading (signed by someone at Texas Direct Auto) says "Hood scratches, front bumper scratches, rear quarter panel chips, dings and scratches and the rear cover scratched / scraped" but NONE of this damage is shown on any of the pictures or descriptions that Texas Direct Auto had in their ad on e-bay.
I don't know what methods they used to hide or disguise all of the damage on the car but they were successful in duping me into buying the car.
Texas Direct Auto cannot be trusted and you should be very wary in any dealings you have with them. I will soon be posting the pictures of the car in their ad on e-bay and how the car looked when it arrived to me. I will let you decide if this is a company that you want to do business with. Beware of Texas Direct Auto and Ed Williams.
Jeff
Matthews, North Carolina
U.S.A.
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