I am telling you about the horrible day when I went to buy a honda civic LX 2008 at honda of staten island. The salesperson Mr. Siu gave me a price of $16200. With Tax and everything it was around $18,000.
I am new in this country so I had to get a cosigner to get approved. The salesperson asked me and my cosigner to sign a blank contract beforehand otherwise we cannot process the loan application. At that time I didnot know that it was a contract.
He also said that I would get APRs from multiple banks to choose from and if I didnot like the APRs I can always back down and get my $1000 deposit back. I walk in on the day of picking up my car and I go meet with the business manager named Majic (he did not give me his full name). Contrary to what the salesman Mr. Siu told me I had only honda financial services to approve my loan and when I asked him if I wanted to back down on the car now he said I would lose $1000 deposit, which was exactly opposite to what the salesman Mr. Siu told me.
He said that I was approved for APR of 10.75% and he could cut down the APR to 6.25% if I took the special warranty plan. He said that the APR he reduced would go in for the protection of my car through a warranty package and I would still pay the same amount of price. He gave me a final price of around $26,000 including the APRs. He told me that the extra $8000 is going for the special warranty and the APR. At this point you would probably say that I am stupid, but no. He gave me options of paying off quickly so that I can save money on interest and I would be paying around $21,000. And he started giving me all these maths which obviously couldn't understand.
I said ok, as I didnot know I was getting overcharged. When I went home and checked my bill of sale the car price was around $21797 without the tax and with everything including the APR it was $26791.60. I felt quite bad about paying around $27000 for a agreed price of around $18,000 and I called the american honda, honda financial services and honda care. None of these institutions knew about this special package.infact the warranty only costs around $600 and and every honda owner is entitled to it.
I even went back to the dealer and spoke with Mr. Faisal, the finance director, about the discrepancy. He just said what was done was done and they couldn't do anything as I had signed the contract. But keep in mind that the sales person tricked me into signing the blank contract in the name of getting a loan approval. I have been in the United states only for 7 months now. I hadn't imagined that a official honda dealer would do an unfair business like this.
Then i checked Internet about the similar deals this dealer might be involved in. And I found an exact similar incident in the internet. The link is here: / Auto-Dealers/Staten-Island-Honda/staten-island-honda-aka-sg-hy-NN494.htm
I don't know if I will be able to get my money back but I have lost my faith in fair trade in america. During these times of financial turmoil when companies should be building up trust from their customers they are doing the exact opposite. I am not sure if I will be able to buy any honda product in my life again.
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