On June 8 I purchased a new 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee from Earnhardt Jeep in Tempe, AZ. The salesperson was Gerry Ashland, Fleet Manager. I was purchasing a new car because I had been in a car accident and my previous vehicle, a Jeep Liberty, was totalled by my insurance company. My Jeep Liberty was being held at Earnhardt Dodge body shop where the estimate was completed.
I had just paid my annual vehicle license tax in April on the Jeep Liberty, a total of $283.18. Because of a situation such as this, where you pay your annual tax and then get rid of the car, Arizona allows you to keep your plate and get credit for remaining fees when you transfer plate and fees to another vehicle. I was told that when a copy of the plate was faxed to Gerry by the Earnhardt body shop, the plate would be transferred.in order to draw up the contract however, he stated they had to include the full price of the Grand Cherokee's vehicle license tax in the financing. This amount on my contract is stated as $462.84.
After purchasing the car, I verified with the body shop that the license plate was faxed over to Gerry. Several weeks later however, I received a new license plate in the mail. My previous license plate that was supposed to transfer over, was a vanity plate that I had picked out, so I especially did not want a new license plate number. I went to the MVD office in Mesa, showed them my two license plates and they basically said that Earnhardt's had screwed up.
Earnhardt's had never filed anything to transfer my old plate to my new vehicle and had simply issued me a new license plate for which I was paying the full vehicle tax. The MVD transferred the info to my old plate and gave me paperwork showing that Earnhardt's owed me $212.39 since they never should have charged me the full vehicle tax in the first place.
I contacted Gerry Ashland with this info via phone, email and fax over 20 times and only received one response from him saying they were working on it. I received a check from Earnhardt's for $2.55, showing that they had overestimated the $462.84 charge by that amount. I faxed him the paperwork showing that it was not an overestimation that was in question but a failure to transfer my old plate to my new vehicle, like they said they would, and I have received no response. As it stands, the $212.39 of my money is floating somewhere in never-neverland, and has been for almost 5 months. It was paid by me to Earnhardt's so it is their responsibility to pay it back to me, as stated by the MVD.
Either Gerry and whoever is "working on it" doesn't care that I am missing $212.39, or they can't understand what I am explaining to them, but something has to be done, because I really need my money! You would think by being so "experienced" in the auto sales field they would understand where they screwed up and make it right so I don't have to complain about the situation to everyone, adding to their already negative image.
I feel like now that I have bought the car, they don't care about the customer once they have left their lot. I don't feel this is an acceptable level of customer service, since there are many more cars I will need to buy in my lifetime, and as of now, there is no way I would buy another one from Earnhardt.
0 comments