Long story short, my close cousin recently got out of college, found a job and bought a cpo civic and sent me the sales quote which I went thru and looked decent , so i told her to go ahead.
Now over the holidays when talking to her, i casually asked about her payments and it was much more than i expected, thot may be she needed refinancing and dug deeper. found out that the shady dealership has added 5k of “accessories” (color pro 3k, auto butler 1k, vin etching 500, mats 300) on a used civic.
Is there anything we can do except leaving bad reviews ? how to help people not get scammed like this ? any one we can complain to ?
Look into the contract. Some of this stuff may be able to be cancelled if it is a contract based item.
Accessories maybe not but it can’t hurt to look.
This is precisely why I don’t help anyone with a deal unless I can be there physically in person. Too much opportunity to be screwed around with when they have someone else’s approval or go-ahead.
I tried, they said these weren’t extended warranties or service contracts that can be cancelled, but products that have already been applied to the car(eye roll). So cant do anything at this point. They were smart about it, apparently they do this a lot judging by the few bad google reviews I went thru before leaving one of my own, as only few people even notice this stuff on their sales orders, the dealership even has >500 5* reviews, that tells how naive people can be …
Wish there was an authority that u can call, like food safety that can atleast look into these cases.
my guess is Payment based shopping, apparently they asked her whats her comfortable payment, she said 450, they played with the numbers to get close to that on a 16,500 car, told her they gave her some discount and made it less than that. she was happy, unfortunately she went with an even naive friend who was focused on bright red color … the pic she sent me just had the normal selling price doc fee ttl so i gave her the go ahead.
She got shafted no doubt. But it’s her responsibility to know what she’s signing, it’s a contract after all.
If you know what your cousin and her friend are like and let her walk into a dealership by herself… i mean … u weren’t doing her any favors…oh yea and you telling her it’s ok to proceed when u weren’t there and didn’t know all the details sure didn’t help.
It’s now after the fact, not much you or her can do.
End of the day she is an adult. and i am sure when she sent you number she would have told you what the monthly payment would be for you to give the go ahead, if that number got changed by the dealer it should have made her either refer back to you again or question them.
If the buyer is so naive that they cant seem to figure out a payment difference worth extra 5K(plus interest) over life of the loan, then i am sorry she needs to go for some financial classes.
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but she was shafted more than $5k if her college education did not include basic core math and reading. What was her major?
I think most college graduates are simply naive to the financial scams that are out there. Most of them up to a certain point in life, buying a new or cpo car would be their first run-in with making such a financial decision.
This just sounds like a $5k lesson in finance, we’ve all had them, just with different scenarios, for me bad stock moves. Hardly could fault or warn others that my brokerage was trying to scam when it’s just another part of the business.
Dealers make theirs, it’s their job to feed their family, not yours. Sorry OP and sorry to your cousin for it too, but not much can be done about it.
What lesson? Nothing to do with “finance”, IMO. Most likely she was convinced in the finance office that all this crap was well worth extra $80-100/mo since it fit in the payments she had in mind. Simply a naive young person.
… the pic she sent me just had the normal selling price doc fee ttl so i gave her the go ahead.