On the weekend of the memorial day holiday I stopped at a local car dealership in Amherst, Ohio. A salesman named Ray approached me as I was looking for a cheap used car for my daughter. He told me that I would qualify for a new 2007 Focus and told me to test drive it and he would start the paperwork. I taken it to show my daughter as she would be driving it to school. When I returned we sat down and Ray and i discussed the new car. He fed me a line of bull and he told me he was an ex-marine just like myself. He had to do something and handed me his photo scrap book of his corp service. We in the Marines have a code in which we help our fellow Marines out if we can.
When Ray returned he promptly talked about his time in the corp and laid the wife and children story on me in which they depend on him selling cars. This event was on a Friday evening and he brought back paperwork stating the car was $238.00 a month after the rebates and the A-plan pricing. He told me to go home and he would take care of the financing.
I stated up front that I only have VA comp (225.00) and social security (979.00) a month coming in. I even provided the bank statement showing my income. I get a call the next day, saturday morning saying I was financed and to come in and sign and pick up the car. When I arrived Ray shook my hand and had the car already tagged and ready to drive away. He even handed me the keys. We sat down and he placed the forms in front of me and started saying that the finance company required all this stuff to be added in. This would include a $1900.00 rust module, $750.00 gap insurance, $1200.00 extended warantee, $650.00 paint protectant and $450.00 fabric protectant. This has the effect of eating up the rebates and A-plan discounts up. Of coarse when I called Citi Finance they disputed the requirement. But as I looked up Ohio law and it came to the required paperwork being signed the law states that the financng company is required to get certain paperwork signed. What this means is that no one from the financing company was present and the dealer became their legal representative.
What this all means is the price of the car was now at $468.00 a month and not the quoted $238.00 the evening before. After checking with local banks that give out loans and showing them my income statement they all stated I would not even get in their front doors for a loan. When I told the salesman I couldn't afford that payment he said to let him work on it. He worked on it all right by inflating my income statement so the finance company would finance the car. How do I show they did this, simply by marking the copy I gave to them. It has to match my copy that I have in safe keeping. So I asked Citi to give me copies of the paperwork they recieved from the dealer. I asked four times and they refused to hand over the paperwork which leads me to believe they are not so innocent in this fraudulent activities. I've researched the laws in Ohio and found 6 violations. As a paralegal student I learned how to research the laws. I also found that when they refused me disability insurance which is illegal under the ADA after they found out I recieve disability payments from SSD and VA Comp... Under the ADA an insurance company can deny coverage under pre-existing conditions but have to cover all other that are not pre-existing. I do ADA work on the side so I know what the ADA says. This incident is about a dealer who wants to make money at a time when sales are down so they get a disabled person and then they are connected to a shaddy finance company who prays on the disabled or less fortunate and drive up the price of the car in which they both win even if I can not keep the car. So beware of dealers that do this type of business.
Thomas
Sheffield Lake, Ohio
U.S.A.
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