Resources

Online Dealers failing to deliver cars and car titles. Without a car title, you can register your car. One victim of Carvana’s failure to deliver a car title has been ticketed several times for not having her car registered with the state. Carvana and other online car dealers may be growing faster than their infrastructure.

Dealers Failing or delaying to pay off a trade in. These are dealers who are typically on their way out of business. In our office, we have sued several such dealers for not paying off a client’s loan balance resulting in late credit reporting. We are still in litigation with one of these dealers today.

Dealers quoting one price for a car over the phone and a higher one at closing. While this is not really anything new, there has been an uptick in these kinds of cases due to the lack of available cars. Dealers are just getting greedy. When you talk to a dealer over the phone, get the name of the person you spoke with and an “out the door price” if you can. If you’re in the market or want to buy that car, make sure you have these two items written down to compare to the final purchase price.

The “Covid premium.” This is a new charge that some dealers are trying to add to the price of a car. Because new and used cars are at such a premium today, some dealers feel that they are entitled to a Covid premium on the sale. In one case that we have seen a car that was supposed to sell for $45,000 had a $5,000 Covid premium added at closing. This is underhanded and illegal.