Earlier this year I decided to trade in my car to get a 2002 Eclipse. One of the closet dealers to me that sold this car was Clearwater Mitsubishi/Toyota. I told the salesman what I wanted and what I was willing to pay. Everything was going to plan. I put down several hundred dollars into the down payment and I was told everything was just fine and I could take the car.
1 week later I was given a call from the dealership telling me that the person responsible for inputting my application for credit made a very severe mistake. The person, who had been sacked that week, entered into the computer that I made $5,000 a week. I no where in the paperwork I filled out put this amount and CM (Clearwater Mitsubishi) admitted this was all an error on their part and I was asked to come back in to fill out some additional papers. I asked if everything was ok with my loan. I was told that all I needed was additional income listed. I said that was fine and had my fiance fill out a report. Combined our incomes Vs our credit was just fine and their should be no problem whatsoever. She filled out the forms and faxed them over. Again I was told everything is just fine with the loan and we had been approved by the Mitsubishi's bank.
I came in to the dealership that following weekend to fill out these supposed 'forms' I was in for a surprise. I sat down with the person in charge of finance and he said to me that they did a mysterious $700 of work to my trade in, which was a 2001 Honda Civic EX that was in perfect condition and had only 20,000 miles on it. It had been professionally cleaned just prior and typical maintenance had been done to it to insure its top quality condition. I asked why I should care because it was no longer my car. I received no answer which was rude. He then informed me that I needed an additional $700 to my down payment for the bank to let the loan go through. I argued that I was told that previous week that the loan had gone through and my old car was in fact paid off already, I called Honda to make sure of this.
Now this guy made the mistake to tell me that they did $700 of work to my old car and they needed the same amount just to make a loan go through when I had already made more than the average down payment along with my perfect credit rating. He would not budge or give me the specifics of the mystery repairs to my old car. I said I wanted my old car back because I was sick of being told several different things by the dealership.
I had to fight to even get my down payment credited back to my credit card and they were also refusing to give me back my registration for my car. I asked again to have the work sheet faxed to me of these mystery repairs they did to my Civic but I was constantly given the run around.
The whole experience was horrible. I then found out a month later that this same dealership had come under investigation for fraud. They had been forging signatures of car buyers and so on.
Kryten
Tampa, Florida
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