My credit score is low but decided to look at some vehicles online at a reputable dealership rather than some other options. I found a vehicle I liked and placed a request form. When I was contacted by the dealership I was up front about my situation and they claimed they could help.
I went to the dealership and after some negotiating was approved. Turns out I was not "approved" after all. I learned later this is what dealerships call rolling financing. They allow you to take the vehicle with the assumption you will be financed.
I received a letter stating a denial of credit from a lender and called the dealership for some clarification. I was told that they had issues financing the vehicle due to it's high mileage and I need to come in to explore other options. I had just filled the gas tank on the vehicle the day before which set me back over $50.
When I got to the dealership I was informed that the vehicle was not within the terms the banks would finance and we needed to look at other vehicles. They showed me a car that was poorly taken care of. I did not like it and ask what other options I had. I was told this was the only one they could finance me for.
Now feeling desperate I took it for a test drive with a salesman. The car was a lemon by all standards. It didn't want to stay in gear, shift or accelerate. It also started to over heat in the quarter mile test drive. They put it in their shop and had me wait in the lobby. Wait is a poorly defined term beings they let me sit there for two hours and no one spoke to me. One dealer spoke to me in passing and I asked to know what was going on. I was told that all the salesman i had dealt with before where with customers, in other words I was not one anymore.
To make the rest of the story short they didn't have a vehicle to "switch" me to. I asked to be reimbursed for the fuel and was refereed to the business office. The business office never got back to me. I even had a spare set of keys that I had given a parent to hold to return, they were not even interested in that. I wasn't going to make them money so they no longer valued me as a person.
I ended up going to a different dealership who investigated the attempts at financing by Lithia. I learned a lot from this other dealership about financing. They had sent a bad financing deal to eight banks all of whom pulled my credit and said no. The vehicle was to old, miles to high and markup to high. On top of this it made me nearly impossible to finance after they had "lawn mowed" my limited credit to do this as i was told. This other dealership called one of the banks Lithia had submitted the bad deal to and got me financed in a different vehicle.
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