Not A Lawyer

What if someone were selling you a necklace, and the necklace was pretty enough that you would buy it anyway but the seller told you it also happened to come with a sweet little diamond that would make the necklace sparkle even more? And what if later on, just by chance, you found out that the diamond what just a chunk of glass?

I call that a material misrepresentation.

Well, something similar just happened to me and it cost me $1,295.00.

In July, I bought a new car. I had picked out the one that I wanted online after talking with a salesperson to clarify the trade-in deal that the dealership was offering. When I got to the dealership it was pretty much a bait and switch, what they told me on the phone was not true and I could not get the same car that I had picked out from their inventory for the price I had expected. Instead, to get the great trade-in value for my old car I had to pick a car from their “savings zone” selection of cars.

I needed a car and I was already there, so I looked through their “savings zone” selections and found a car that I liked. It had a lot of extras piled on that I never would have asked for, but they were already on the car and were part of the deal.

As the sales person was showing me the car, one of the selling points that he used was that the car had chrome trim on the interior. While that is not something I would have ordered if I had been building my own car, it did dress up the interior and it was not like I could reject it since it was already on the car. The price tag on the invoice for this chrome trim was $1,295.00.

So, on Halloween, a piece of the “chrome” trim just fell off. As I picked it up I realized that it was not chrome, it is plastic and on the back were three pieces of double sided tape that had been holding it on.

Over the next couple of days I pulled out my invoice for the car and made sure that it actually said chrome on the paperwork and not “chrome tone” or some other language indicating that it wasn’t actually chrome. Nope. The paperwork says that I was charged $1,295 for chrome detailing on the interior.

So I called the dealership and after a little bit of a runaround I spoke with the guy who sold me the car. He said that if I came in they would reattach the fake chrome piece for me, but there would be no rebate, refund or concessions made to make up for the fact that I paid $1,295 for some cheap plastic that is, in fact, taped onto the car.

I feel ripped off. So I mentioned it to a friend of mine who happens to be a lawyer, and even if she weren’t, she’s very smart. She suggested that I look into the BBB and the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Office. I looked to see if the dealership had any outstanding complaints and they do not. They are a member of the BBB though. So I filed a complaint with the BBB and we’ll see how it goes.

I know that I probably can not be the first person to complain about this dealership. So I’m thinking that they will most likely work with me to settle the issue. If they had unsettled complaints against them it would show up on the records, I think.

So here we go. I’ve filed the complaint and the ball is in their court now. I will keep you posted on how it goes. If I get no satisfaction I can always file a complaint with the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Office, and I may do that anyway. The only reason I haven’t yet is because they want to have copies of your documentation and I don’t have scanned copies to send them yet. I do have all of the documentation though, so that may be a task for tomorrow.

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