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The smell of a new car can quickly become like brimstone when a deal goes sour and the customer is left holding the bag and the keys -- and a payment book.
Readers shared their tales of weird doings at the car dealer.
You want sneaky? How's this for jumping out from behind a tombstone and scaring people half to death? A couple leased a car and "all through our lease agreement the blanks had been filled in with 'N/A'. To most of us, the abbreviation N/A means "non-applicable" And we signed the lease thinking that is what it meant."
When this couple went to terminate the lease, "The bank tried to tell us that those blanks with N/A now mean 'not available'. Which meant that at the time of the start of the lease, they didn't have the dollar amounts to fill in those blanks and now at the end, they could put any amount they wanted in. So they were filling in thousands of dollars that we were to pay at turn in." After a two-year battle the couple managed to get out of the car. The event did leave a bad mark on their credit, but "it didn't hurt us in the long run."
Here's one that's been around since Adam and Eve went (unsuccessfully) trick-or-treating. A couple bought a two-year-old Crown Victoria in Oklahoma for $14,500, financed for five years at 12.5 percent. "We found out the facts next year when we had new tires installed -- the frame was bent." When they moved back to California they got another surprise. The car was already registered in the Golden State -- as a rental car once owned by one of the nation's biggest auto renters.
And maybe you've already heard this one. An e-mailer tells us she went into her dealer, Maniacal Motors, to pick up her new minivan. The deal she agreed to was $298 per month, 60 months, with a total price of $13,920 and no down payment (thanks to a trade-in). The salesman then casually offers to add an alarm for $325, and she takes it. The result? The deal is now $349 a month, or $305 for 66 months, and the interest rate is now 9.75 percent not the 5.9 per cent she had agreed to. "Well, needless to say, I left."
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