Recently my mother and I were shopping for a used minivan for her. We are from New castle, PA and ended up in Boardman, OH. She had found a van she liked and decided to put some money down. During the negotiations my mother asked them if they could fix the loose door handles and I asked the salesman if they could look at the brakes. The reason for this was on the test drive the brake felt extremely mushy when attempting to stop the vehicle quickly; I almost had to push them to the floor to stop fast enough. David Richards was the sales man we were talking to. He said he would have everything fixed in two days and the van would be able to be picked up then. On day four we contacted the dealer and told them we no longer wanted the van because my mother had discussed with my father and decided that it had too many miles. She left a voice message saying she would be back to pick up the check for the deposit and that she would still work with them if they had something with less miles. When they called her back she was told that we could not have the check back because it was already deposited and they did all the work we asked them to do on the van. A couple of days later I called and had a chance to speak with the owner about the situation. They still insited that we asked them to fix the brakes, even though I was told by David Richards that the vehicle was already checked and certified by their mechnanic. If it was already checked then the brakes shouldnt have been bad and their mechanic is the one that fixed them after I told them to have the brakes checked. So I still do not understand how I told them what was wrong with the brakes when I did not fix them myself. After arguing about who is responsible for the repairs to the van, brakes and door handles, even though Mike Ellinos (owner of Spartan Auto Sales) admitted they would not sell a vehicle with bad brakes, insisted we pay for them. Finally we negotiated on a repair cost of 248 instead of the original $378. Mike also tried to add a warranty to get us to buy the van during our conversations. When we went to get the money Mike said that my mother would have to sign a release. At the dealership my mother asked Mike if he had an invoice showing the price of the door handles that she had asked if they could be fixed. His response was I will charge the full $378 if we are going to sit here and talk about this again! We politely sat and waited for Mike to write up his release for the money. When finished we read the release and basically it said my mother was agreeing to pay for the full amount of $378 for the repairs to the van that she had intended to purchase out of her deposit. Bothe David Richards and the owner, Mike Ellinos at no time did we sign any papers agreeing to any repairs or forfeiture of any deposits if we changed our minds, nor were we told that we may not be able to get the deposit back for any reason.
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