I wonder how many thousands (millions?) of dollars they’ve taken from gullible victims.
Perhaps Talos would be doing a public service by filing a complaint with his/her state’s Attorney General’s office. Years ago I had a car involved in an AG’s investigation and the dealer suddenly went out of business. I wasn’t the complainant, but I was asked to stop by the dealership and ultimately received a check for a substantial amount. I never did find out any details.
Thanks JoeMario, I had looked at dealerrater but missed that review. It is almost identical to what they are doing to me. Except they had the lic/reg on my contract, and they took 45 days to come after me.
I also have a second lawyer interested in my case if they try to continue trying.
My lawyer emailed me that the controller at the dealer didn’t return his call to them while I was at his office today, figures.
While the BBB is a toothless organization, one can get a feel for a business by noting how many complaints have been placed on file there.
Depends…I know of one situation where the president of the local BBB was the owner of a large dealership. Funny how this dealership had ZERO complaints filed against it.
Hopefully the controller didn’t return your lawyer’s call because they know the game is over
Maybe the dealer has a Designated Extortionist whose job is to follow up every sale and pull that stunt on everyone. If one person out of every 10 fell for it without complaint a sizeable chunk of ADP (additional dealer profit) could be realized every month. 
They seem to be stuck on that 7 number. Some browsing showed several other complaints over the same thing with additional amounts requested of 1700 dollars, 2700, and 3700.
That “thought we were friends” bit is pretty comical though.
Truly sad. TwinTurbo and MikeInNH appear to be the only ethical ones here.
I think 99% of the people here are ethical, you disrespect an altruistic helpful set of responders less than @insightful
A contract is a contract
The dealer needs to own up to their mistake
The OP doesn’t legally owe the dealer another dime
Since they threatened him and called him evil, they deserve to be told to EAT SHIT AND DIE
If I were in OP’s shoes, I would have behaved the same way he did, especially if the dealer treated me the way they did
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3 possibilities occur to me:
- Honest mistake. Given their behavior, not likely.
- Sleazy tactics to extract more money after the sale. Possible.
- The state came after them for not paying sales tax, and this is their way of trying to deal with it. The resale license might be a clue that this was their response to the state. I find it funny that they would use that tactic because it would mean that they would have to provide the license number to the state and they don’t have it. They are trying to use that as leverage. If that were true, then they should have sent you a letter or a phone call from the beginning stating that they forgot to get your license number. But their initial query exposes the obvious lie there.
My vote is on #3.
Due to the number of complaints about this dealer for doing the same thing to others, my theory is that what the dealer is doing is fudging numbers so as to make the sale.
If the sales department feels a customer is a bit hesitant about the buy what better way to make the sale than to remove thousands of dollars in taxes from the sales total and one-up the other dealers prices. Sort out the numbers after the fact by trying to extort that money out of the buyer.
But it came back to bite them in the butt and they got beaten at their own game
Heh heh heh . . .
@insightful I don’t think it was an issue of ethics at all but rather whether or not the charge was legitimate or a fraud was being committed. To suggest that it is unethical to not pay a $2700 claim after the fact, with no documentation, is silly or worse.
I once dealt with a transmission shop that owed $500,000 to Minnesota for sales taxes collected and not turned over to them. The state had no problem with me, a customer, but instead with the shop that stole the money. It is not unethical for customers to refuse to participate in dealer schemes to fleece the state or themselves.
An Indianapolis television station doing investigative reporting found that we have businesses here in Indiana that have not turned in sales taxes that have been collected. The state does not seem to have adequate personnel to go after these businesses. One local franchise fast food owner was slapped with a heavy bill that wasn’t paid by the previous franchise owner. The second owner didn’t have to pay the bill, but the state probably won’t be able to collect the sales taxes due from the first owner.
One of the funniest experiences I had with sales taxes was with a pizza shop in southern Illinois. The prices for the pizzas were set at a strange amount. A fellow graduate student was dining with me and he realized that the pizza place had set the price so that they were collecting an extra penny on each sale. When we went to pay our tab, my friend pointed out to the owner who was at the cash register, that he was charging us an extra penny that wasn’t due on the sales tax. The owner blew up and ordered us both out of the restaurant. When we got outside, we realized we hadn’t paid for our food. I’m sure it took him quite a few more customers to bilk a penny apiece to pay for our meals.
In my area, there quite a few mom and pop non-franchised lunch type places that outright cheat you on the bill
You look at the menu, add up everything you ordered, factor in the tax, and it still doesn’t jive with what the place is charging you
In this case, they’re also cheating everyone out of a few cents, but it adds up
That said, these are the types of places where you go for a quick cheap lunch during the work day, or a quick cheap dinner when you get off work late
I think it’s telling that @insightful appears to be the only one here naive enough to think that the original poster owes anyone one red cent. And hasn’t been back to the discussion after casting aspersions upon the rest of us.
I think a brief glance at @insightful’s post history explains everything.
I’m not sure if that user ID (I refuse to type it) is meant to be ironic. Seriously, this person adds no real insight to any discussion.
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The guy is off to a great start . . .
“I think 99% of the people here are ethical, you disrespect an altruistic helpful set of responders less than @insightful”
The comma should be a semi-colon and there should be a semi-colon between “responders” and “less”. This makes the sentence understandable.
wrong. there should have been a comma after responders, less than insightful. and there should have been a cmma after my wrong. and I don t use caps. and I hate starting sentences with and. and are you little mouse? and I spelled comma wrong