Need Dealer/Legal Advice

[pumpkinodin8844]

I posted this under another thread but I think it needs its own.

Quote "I know the story's long but it's a crazy one.

I have to say the experience was painful. I went through 4 sales people and never once did I get an update. I emailed the last sales guy 4 times to just get a price in preparation to its arrival this week. Ended up having to phone a general manager to get him to respond to my request. I finally end up getting a price and I figured all is fine. On the day I picked it up I confirmed the price so I knew how much to put on the cheque and they confirmed the price from previous discussion. I signed the invoice, paid for the car and drove off. The twist in the story is I get a call today asking for another $4K plus taxes as they made a mistake as it turns out that with the turn over of sales people some of the changes I made i.e. addition of Nav and magnetic ride never got printed and placed into my file. The kicker is when I asked for the price the finance manager used the paper file rather then look it up on screen thus missed the added options. I feel bad but after discussing it with my wife we told them that we have a signed invoice which we paid and felt that we are not responsible for there mistake and so the manager told us they will have to eat the costs. Am I jerk? Or would you do the same ?

 

[pumpkinodin8844]

Update:

I got another call this time from the general manager and they are now saying I have no choice but to pay for the options I added and that the signed invoice means nothing. As far as I'm concerned now that they are pissing me off as they seem to even recognize that they are the ones in the wrong as its not myself to manage there pricing system or staff. Consider this scenario if you go into the Walmart and see a TV you want and the sign says 1,999 and when you go to pay the register rings up 1,799 normally you just pay that and take the TV home. This is exactly what I did. They gave me the price I paid for it, insured it and drove it home. I really don't think they have a leg to stand on but maybe I'm wrong, can they take me to court as it kind of sounded like that is what they suggested?

 

[pumpkinodin8844]

Update 2

The dealership manager just called me again and now says she has emails to prove I added the options and she said they will pursue legal recourse and place a lein on the car. I told her I know I added the option but thats not my problem you never charged me on the invoice for them. It's pretty insane. I actually googled "can car dealership sue me" and a USA story comes up about chevrolet in Virginia making the same mistake and has the customer arrested for theft. Chevrolet president acknowledges the dealership mistake and says the guy can keep the car plus he will make it right. Of course the customer refuses the deal and is suing the dealership for $2.2m lol. I like to see how far the dealer goes and spends to get back there $4K.

 

[AllFlash]

It is all very simple. There was an invoice on that car and, in fact, they had to trip over that invoice when making out your final purchase price. What they sell the car at outside that invoice price is totally up to them. They can't say they forgot to add on features since they were already there on the invoice.

Stick to your guns that you knew and paid the agreed price and their negligence in changing salesmen, along with overlooking the options right in front of them when they completed the bill of sale, is something they need to address internally. Further, advise them immediately that you will file a complaint with GM, the BBB, and you will post their name all over the Forums for advise, noting that Google will make that searchable, if they want to dig in... The loss of one sale from your customer complaint on a Forum...hurts them much more.

 

[tyho]

Contract law can be pretty complicated. There has to be meeting of the minds, there also has to be a consideration exchanged (money for the car) and the contract has the parties that decide how the contract will be formed and executed. By you having a contract with the dealership where there was consideration exchanged with certain time frames, options, etc. you may be in a good position to tell them no ... however there may be a failure in the meeting of the minds - which I suspect they would use ... whether it's due to their error or not. This alone may invalidate the contract. I say this because you state that they told you they made a mistake and you acknowledge they made a mistake. There are always two sides to every story and their side may differ from yours. Ultimately a judge would decide on the validity of the agreement. Yes, they made a mistake but like I stated, contract law is tricky and sometimes when you think you are in the right, it can turn around and take a piece out of your you know what. Both of you have something to loose from litigating this. Good luck.

 

[Matt]

Another suggestion, if you bought at MSRP then the dealer has made $6K to $10K profit on the car, so its not like they lost money even with $4K worth of options. Dont let a threat of legal action cloud your judgement, it will cost them at least, at least $5K in legal fees to even get this thing into court (more likely $10K-15K), it is not worth the money for either party and if they are dumb enough to proceed the best the could possibly do, is get back $4K, but likely the judge would throw it out and say they screwed up so live with it.

Plus all the bad press they will get from it.

I say stick to your guns.

Good luck

 

[tyho]

Depending on the amount owed or claimed owing this may exceed small claims court and go to a Superior Court in which case you are not cost protected. Small claims court has an upper limit for costs. If the judgement goes to the dealer they can be awarded costs and vise versa. If the judgement is in your favour, you may be awarded costs. There is also interest and disbursements along with the legal fees that need to be considered. The only real winners in this type of legal action are the lawyers. The dealer probably has some experience with this. You may claim they bargained in bad faith buy like I indicated earlier, a judge would ultimately decide. Sit down with them, write everything down, date/time who said what and when. Keep a detailed record of everything said and done. Nothing may come of this but if it is litigated, better to be prepared, show them you mean business. Stick to your position, they may move on the numbers to something more palatable.

 

[erg]

just picked up my new c 7 this week, I would not do what you did to the dealer simply because if I ordered the extra options and received them I would pay for them, to me that is no different than theft. just my opinion, you asked

 

[C7Driver]

You have a sales invoice, did they cash your cheque? If they accepted the cheque as full and final payment as was intended then it would seem your end of the contract has been upheld. However that may not stop them from putting a lien on your car or suing you for the difference. If there is no loan against the vehicle outstanding , not sure how they could file a lien on it if at all but they may have their ways. From a legal point of view you never know where you stand until a judge decides if it gets to a court room, regardless of the contract, do you want that hassle? Maybe a negotiate partial payment, wave some fees , find some common ground while not admitting any fault in the matter.

 

[pumpkinodin8844]

No loan as I paid in full. As for the theft comment. I asked them how much do I need to pay for the car they gave me the price and I assumed at the time that was everything I ordered because I had order the car 8 months ago and didn't track the price so I trusted them to do that. As I said I paid what they told me to pay and it was the dealer that came to me after asking for more.

 

[erg]

so you trusted them on the price and you had no idea what the invoice was going to be , wonder how your math would have been if the BOS was $4,000 more than it should have been, are you trying to justify your wrong doing.

 

[AllFlash]

I reread this a few times as there is so much in play here. It is a bit confusing when you say you had such a hard time maintaining contact with them yet they seem to have succeeded in getting your multiple order changes to your liking. I stand by what I said and am still in the dark about how they overlooked final invoice pricing which would have been the norm here, but I am also going to bend a bit with respect to your responsibility. If you asked for the upgrades and they did that for you, imo the moral thing to do is to try and work out a satisfactory ending. Trust me when I say that all the dealers know each other in The Peg; I'm from there.

This to me seems to be a situation of dealer stupidity in their business and your moral fiber. A salesman will pay for that mistake. You got what you wanted with numerous upgrades. The only way I might dig in here us completely dependent on their treatment of me and approach initially. In the end, they cannot put a lein on a vehicle paid in full and they will eat the cost because legal fees will exceed the difference.

With the upgrades, would you not have been made aware of the increased costs?

 

[pumpkinodin8844]

Overall it was bad service right up the day I picked it up when the made me wait an hour in the waiting area even though I had a booked appointment. Anyway thanks for your comments and I'll put some thought into it.

 

[Black 03 Z06]

As I said in your other thread, give it some time to think about what has happened. I agree that you made changes and why they missed them and the dollar amount I have no idea, I would say it would be rare that you came out on the winning end of the negations but this may be different.

To be fair I would start the conversation by asking what they are willing to do for me. This is based on your less than stellar treatment by the dealer. They cannot have it both ways. Court cost, lawyers costs, bad reputation they know to the dollar value of what they are looking at. So the question becomes what is it worth to you? Negotiations.

Have a good idea what you want to achieve in this set of circumstances. Any bravado on their part is simply the art of trying to get money from your pocket into theirs. At this point I would not be the least bit concerned about courts or lawyers, simply too expensive on their part.

It strikes me that you hold at least some of the cards in this game. Good luck, just keep your cards close to your vest.

 

[Keith Tedford]

While I have no sympathy at all for dealers with their arrogance and shady methods, you did get what you ordered and you should have had a better idea of what the car was going to cost. It's not like the extra cost was a deal breaker in the first place. Like it or not, people might think that you just stayed quiet until after the fact, hoping that no one would notice the mistake. People do get ideas, right or wrong. Myself, I would pay for what I got and it certainly wouldn't be out of sympathy for the dealer or salesman. When buying a new vehicle in 2005, we got up and walked out on two salesmen in different dealerships in mid sentence when they started with the tag teaming and BS stuff. My old buddy Ray, who had worked as sales manager in a big dealership years ago, laughed and was surprised that they were still pulling the same stunts as were pulled in the fifties. Your call.

 

[tinman3]

Overall it was bad service right up the day I picked it up when the made me wait an hour in the waiting area even though I had a booked appointment. Anyway thanks for your comments and I'll put some thought into it.

Sorry I haven't been on the forum for a while and just seeing what you're going through. If it's not too late maybe they're trying to hit you up for the price increases from the time you placed the order and the time you took delivery? This is wrong and your price should have not changed. My buying experience with my dealer was not a pleasant one and I wouldn't recommend them to anyone. I would go with my conscience on this one. If they screwed up, they're making over $10k on your car and those options are going to cost them about $2k so split the difference and feel good about it?