Mine and the credit union’s, that is… We shall see.
I took it upon myself to try to purchase a 2014 Venza through a large local Toyota dealership. Because I was stressing over the increasing unreliability of my 16-year-old Sienna, I just wanted to get this over with. Mistake number 1: Don’t ever get in a hurry to buy a car.
The proposed new car had the lowest mileage of any comparable vehicle I could find within 150 miles of the Funny Farm: 37,350±. The price was just barely under the limit of what I could pay. Sort of. And it appeared to be in good condition. Probably.
I arranged pre-approved financing through my credit union, and presented documentation in the form of a letter of approval shipped directly from the credit union to the dealership.
The dealership’s hustler…uhm, “financial manager”…pressured me fiercely to accept the dealership’s 2.9% financing instead of the 1.9% loan for which I had been approved. I resisted. After “negotiating” (puhleeeze!) most of the day away, they gave me a bill of sale and the keys to the car, and I drove away, thinking I had an expensive used car to park in my garage.
A day and a half later, the “financial manager” called and said the loan had not gone through because they couldn’t get past the credit freeze to pull a credit report from Experian: a flat lie, because they told me they had downloaded my credit report while I was at the dealership, and proving it by revealing they knew my credit score, which is a shade on the amazing side because of my habit of charging everything on AMEX and paying it off at the end of the month. Nor, of course, would they have let me drive the vehicle off the lot without approving a credit report… That notwithstanding: I must hurry back in, he said, to make this right.
This is what is known as a “spot delivery” scam: They pretend to approve you on the spot and let you drive the car off — at which point they take possession of your car — and then they call you back in for more extreme harassment than the hustle you’ve already been through. If you say the deal is off and you want your car back, they tell you they’ve already sold it.
Rather than arguing with the sleazy guy, I called the loan officer I was dealing with. Long story short, he contacted the dealership and arranged for them to accept a check from the credit union for payment in full of the car. I do not know what he said to them, but figure it must have entailed some sort of implicit or explicit threat, because they did NOT want to finance the car at the pre-approved 1.9% rate, and so you may be sure they didn’t want to take a cash payment. Loan officer called late Friday night with instructions to pick up the check at the CU when they opened and deliver it to the bastards.
Over the weekend, I talked my son into coming with me, at considerable inconvenience to him. He has a very heavy workload and did not feel he could take time off today, but seeing the stress the whole fiasco was causing, he agreed to do so.
Also while passing Saturday and Sunday, I downloaded an auto report from Experian’s AutoCheck, which is similar to Carfax. It indeed did show the vehicle had never been in an accident (not a reported one, anyway), and it confirmed the mileage and miscellaneous other details. It also showed that the saleswoman’s claim that it belonged to one ever-so-caring couple was a lie: it had been a fleet/rental/lease car in Las Vegas and was purchased (presumably by Toyota) on September 5 at auction.
Chuck the WonderMechanic had asked me to bring the car up to his shop for a quick inspection when they opened this morning, which was the soonest he could get his lifts free. When I arrived at 8 a.m., they were open and ready to go. Mechanic Harold inspected as much as one could without taking anything apart. He said the vehicle looked to be in good to excellent condition, except for the front brake pads, which he estimated had 6,000 to 8,000 miles left on them. The rear brake pads had been replaced, he said. Everything else that he could easily see appeared to be OK.
From there I flew to the credit union, where I picked up a check for $22,164.83. The manager there, James, had just bought a car at the same dealership a couple of weeks ago and agreed they were difficult to deal with. He also had arranged to pay for his car with a cash advance from the credit union.
Met my son at his office, and we drove to the dealership in his car, lest the bastards try to repossess the Venza.
We delivered the check at about 10:50 a.m.
The “financial manager” did not even remember me! He grabbed the check and tried to make off with it. I said I wanted a receipt. He said he couldn’t give me a receipt: the check clearing the bank would be the receipt.
My son insisted that we be given a receipt acknowledging that we turned the check over to Bell Rd. The guy offered a photocopy. My son said that would be OK if the guy signed it.
He did NOT want to sign it; he would only initial it. My son seemed to think that suffices; I do not, because the scribble he put on it is pretty generic. No one could figure out what it means or who scribbled it.
So it still remains to be seen whether this is going to go through or not.
My son advised me not to contest the $1300 worth of extraneous expenses “financial manager” had tacked on. This is another scam, known as “packed payments“: piling on a shitload of costs so as to drive up the monthly payments. Among the rip-offs were paint sealer I did not ask for or approve and an alarm system that was already on the vehicle, not an add-on ordered by me.
As it develops, the $429 worth of “document fees” may be illegal. Maybe I’ll bring that to the attention of the state attorney general’s office. But maybe not. I’m so royally sick of this, I surely do not feel like ever hearing anything about it again.
So… I have the car, and supposedly the deal is done — though that remains to be seen. Practitioners of the spot delivery scam have been known to badger their marks weeks or even months after the car was transferred. But since it now belongs to the credit union, I doubt if they’ll try any more antics.
Several errors were made on my part:
1. Let myself get enthused about having that car, rather than being willing to wait, possibly for weeks or months, for some other choice to come up.
2. Dealt with the sharks one-on-many, rather than bringing someone with me to “negotiate.”
3. Failed to look up the car on Experian or Carfax myself.
4. Didn’t read the sales agreement word for word for word for word (because I had a migraine headache and could barely focus on the conversation, much less on a complex fine-print document).
5. Tried to power through the migraine.
6. Failed to challenge obvious rip-offs.
7. Did not know I could ask the CU to advance the full purchase price rather than fiddling with a subcontracted loan deal.
Really…you have to wonder why tactics like the ones that were deployed on me are legal at all.
If I ever have to buy a car again — and I sincerely hope I die before that day comes — I’m bringing a lawyer and a police officer with me.
Okay, we have to figure out what to call this new clunk in the garage. As you know, the previous occupant of the garage was known as the Dog Chariot, not really a personal name, but evocative enough. My first post-divorce car, a beautiful Camry, was named Katydid, because her license plate number began with the letters KTD.
Very Arizona, don’t you think? Except we get license tabs each year in return for our hundreds of dollars of registration fees. Those palm tree fronds on the upper right would obscure the things. And that would annoy the fuzz.
That fleur de lis against the black backround at the top center looks kinda like a vampire to me. Wonder if it looks that way to a driver following you?
Cut me off, yuh crazy fool, and the entire U.S. Navy comes after you!
I think it may be designed for motorcyles, though. What? Little old ladies don’t like tatts?
Brilliant! Literally: those are rhinestones all around the outside of the thing. 😀 How could one NOT buy it?
They have one with shark teeth all around it, but it requires a leap of the imagination to guess what it’s supposed to be…