When my son turned 18 I took him to Sarasota Toyota to get his first car. We had finally saved up enough money for a down payment, and the beat up car he was driving for a trade in.
Sarasota Toyota sold my son a used suzuki, very nice car, and I co-signed for him. We had to trade in the old car, and 1000.00 cash. After having the car for two weeks, they called and said they could not get financing, so we had to come up with another 1,000.00. My son really wanted to keep the car, so we borrowed the money from a friend.
We thought the deal was all done, and two months later, Sarasota Toyota called and told us we were going to have to bring the car back, because they could not get it financed. We had already wrote a check to the finance company for the first payment and given to Toyota! The car was insured in our name, plates were in our name, etc.
BUT, they told us we could not get the trade in car back because they had already trashed it, and we could not have any of our downpayment back, because they were going to treat it as a rental fee because we had the car so long, and my son had put so many miles on it!!!
My son had a fit! I threatened to get a lawyer involved, so toyota offered to give back only $500.00 of the downpayment. We tried to fight it, but that is all we got. We lost the trade in car, and most of the downpayment for them "charging rental fee" while we were paying insurance and registration on the car!
I will never, never deal with those people again! I spit every time I have to drive by their lot!
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